Review by John Hellier
DOA, Lollipop Chainsaw, Tomb Raider…If you thought these games were focused on breasts a little too much, you might want to give this Our World is Ended a miss.
Our World Is Ended is a new visual novel from pqube. As such, I’m not sure if I’m the right person to review this, or should I have gotten a literature buff to give it a shot? Either way, let’s get on with things. For those who can’t figure it out from the name, visual novels are exactly that, novels with accompanying visuals and voice acting. Not the most interactive medium granted, but for those who enjoy them (mainly the Japanese and Weebs) they love the sense of slightly interactive manga.
So let me get the “gameplay” aspects out of the way first, easily done as there aren’t many. Basically, you can advance the text page by page manually, or you can set it to auto scroll and put the controller down, hands-free gaming is here. Actually, that’s not entirely fair, there are the occasional choices to be made, and the closest thing to challenge is the Selection of Soul portions. This basically boils down to a quick time event, but instead of pushing the right button, dialogue choices move around the screen and you have to choose which to say. These choices affect which story path you go down and presumably which girl you will end up with.
Ahh, you picked up on the presumably, good for you, 10 points to Hufflepuff. I say presumably, because at the time of writing I hadn’t finished yet, and I’m like 20 hours in. That’s not to say it’s bad, it’s just sitting in front of a screen reading subtitles is only enjoyable in shortish sessions at a time. I fully intend to finish, however, as the writing is amazing, as I shall now elaborate.
Oh boy, how do I start to explain Our World Is Ended without sounding like a crazy person? You play as Reiji, a college student who is working part-time for a games company called J7, which rather unsurprisingly has 7 members, and you are working on a new AR (Augmented Reality) game. Things glitch out and J7 finds itself facing off against creatures from their previous games while trapped in an endlessly looping Tokyo district. I’m barely scratching the surface here, just trust me that it’s odd.
Not that odd is in any way bad. If nothing were odd then we would all be playing nothing but Call of Duty and the like. Here is where Our World Is Ended shines. The characters all actually have some for a start. There is the weird otaku who screams a lot and talks about eldritch things he makes up on the spot for starters. Then there is the boss of J7, who is just perverse enough to not be fully creepy. Also, there are the sisters, the young ditzy airhead and the elder violent one with no people skills. The list goes on.
So about that opening statement about breasts. No it wasn’t click bait, I’ve just been making you earn it by reading through until now. I honestly can’t count how often breasts have been brought up, between the perv, the elder sister (and her noticeable lack compared to her younger sister), random characters that appear briefly, the game gets breast obsessed at points. I’m not complaining, but I’d be shocked if feminists don’t. Now before you get too excited, don’t go expecting too much titillation (see what I did there?) because the images are all hand drawn and static, no Hyperdimension Neptunia heaving bosom models here.
So, if you have read this far, and not been completely put off by the sheer strangeness, and you can put up with buxom girls being attacked by tentacle monsters (in a totally softcore way before you get too excited) whilst the flat chested older sister is being mocked for being ignored, then I’d recommend this game. Usually I prefer a little more gameplay in my games, but after my other game this week (Fate/EXTELIA LINK shameless self promotion) my thumbs needed a rest, which this game more than provided.
Overall Score – 6/10
Not for everyone, but then again most people are boring
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