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Review of Rewrite

SubjectRewrite
Rewrite
ByHelpfulness: 11
Vote: 8
touhouproject on 2020-09-06
ReviewI got introduced of this little gem by some people on Discord and after a while decided to play it. When I thought Key, I thought Clannad and Air, with cute slice-of-life and some romance, that kinda slow boring stuff. But the people I talked with compared this game to Fate/Stay Night and Root Double which really surprised me. Indeed, this game is pretty different than most Key works in terms of feel and presentation, which I think factored into why it's one of the most overlooked titles by Key.


Gameplay and Length

Rewrite being a traditional visual novel doesn't have a lot of gameplay, though there's a decent amount of choices. The Common Route has a lot of things to do and ways to branch off of, some of which will cause you to go into one of the heroine routes (or a bad end if you don't trigger enough flags for a heroine). The heroine routes are pretty linear and with the exception of one or two shoehorned in bad ends don't really have much choices. The secret routes have no branching whatsoever. People said the branching was clear enough that you could kind of guess how to get into a heroine route just by making choices that get you closer to that heroine, but I used a guide and would recommend one as well.

Key visual novels typically have some sort of minigame, like baseball in Little Busters. There isn't really one in Rewrite, but rather there's a mobile app called Mappie that lets you explore the town (through Google Maps, no CGs unfortunately) and talk with random passerbies. This can affect branching into the heroine routes as well as trigger various "sidequests" or mini-stories in the Common Route. Overall, the Common Route has a decent amount of content and is fairly replayable.


Story

Rewrite's story is on the longer side for VNs and will take you about 50 hours to get through. In addition to the Common Route there are five heroine routes as well as two "secret" routes you unlock after beating the heroine routes.

The story takes place in the futuristic Japanese metropolis called Kazamatsuri City obsessed with environmentalism (to be honest the city reminds me of the eco-metropolis of Islamabad, Pakistan). What seems to be an innocuous eco-friendly "green city" on the outside holds more than meets the eyes, as our protagonist, Kotarou Tennouji, get wrapped up in secret societies, conspiracies, human augmentation and ancient druidic magic. This is one thing that makes Rewrite unique for Key: it's not a moege, but rather an action drama/thriller disguised at one. Alot of the content focuses less on romancing the main girls, more on the world at large and the political intrigue around it. Several times the game will divert its attention for long periods of times away from the main girls towards adult side characters, doing things more in line with a Tom Clancy novel. Because of this, the story is not as emotional as the typical Key VN. This can turn off a lot of Key VN readers interested in cute girls doing cute things, but was honestly what drew me into the game to start with, so if politics and action is more your thing, I would recommend this VN.

Rewrite is also unique in that the characters routes were written by different people. Kotori Kanbe and Akane Senri's routes, as well as the Common and secret Routes, were written by Romeo Tanaka, who has not written for Key before. Yuuto Tonokawa of Little Busters fame wrote Chihaya Ohtori and Shizuru Nakatsu's routes, while Lucia Konohana's route was done by Ryuushiki07, writer of the Higurashi series. The routes all feel very different as a result: Kotori's and Akane's are the most integrated to the world at large, Chihaya's and Shizuru's are typical Key feels trips, while Lucia's is one of the darkest, grittiest routes in any of Key's works to date. The routes are all of varying quality in my opinion, with Lucia's being the standout best, while some of the others feel a bit lackluster (one of them ends in a very frustrating cliffhanger at the peak of the drama). The secret routes in my opinion were kind of underwhelming (and was clearly affected by Romeo only doing two of the character routes), so this is a game where you mainly play for the interesting character routes.


Characters

Like the routes, the characters can be pretty polarizing, as the heroines' character development was greatly impacted by having multiple writers. Some characters I really adore and underwent great character developments, while others kind of feel cookie cutter and flat, or just flat out annoying. In particular, this game has an issue where heroines only show up for one or two routes and then mysteriously vanish/is wholly irrelevant in others, likely a consequence of lack of coordination between the writers. I hear the fandisc gives more personality to the heroines and ties up a number of loose ends, though I didn't play it (it's coming out for Rewrite+ though).

My favorite character in Rewrite is Lucia Konohana, largely because of her route, but Kotori Kanbe and Akane Senri are both great characters (shake it now, baby now!). Kotarou Tennouji is one of my favorite protagonists in any game I've played though. Far from being the typical cardboard box that somehow gets a harem around him you see in a lot of in these types of stories, he's a cynical jokester that constantly throws in internet humor and video game references with his friends (particularly with Kotori), and goes through some great character development in the character and secret routes.


Music and Art

Of course being a visual novel, presentation can be just as important as a good story. The soundtrack for Rewrite is pretty memorable, and the music helps keeps the feels going many dozens of hours into the story. Something I really liked about the music is that the violins were done by TAM/TAMUSIC, who is one of my favorite composers in the Touhou/doujin music scene. His violins have an emotional, soft quality to it that feels like it's literally playing your heartstrings. Philosophyz is a pretty good OP, and all the EDs are pretty great, though Rewrite (the OP for the secret routes) is kind of meh.

The art is, well, typical Key. By that, I mean big bulging bug eyes with enough space between them to land a Boeing 747. Something I liked was each character had a lot of different outfits they wore making the game feel fresh, though the Kazamatsuri uniform really is something else and unlike any other school uniform in anime (it makes the girls look like cute fairies!) CGs were all well done, but I feel like some scenes especially in the later routes could have used more CGs, as in many scenes there was nothing but a black screen with text flowing down.


Conclusion

Overall, Rewrite is a solid VN with great characters, music, and some kickass action scenes, though it is more like Fate/Stay Night than Clannad and might not cater to the typical Key moe lover. The presence of multiple writers keeps the game feeling fresh but can also feel very unfocused and messy at times. If you're into action-thriller and mystery, and don't mind going from cute girls hunting Dunsparces in the school garden to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in the same story, I highly recommend this visual novel for you.

One last note: Rewrite is receiving an updating version, Rewrite+, which includes a retranslation of the base game and translation of the fandisc by Sekai Project. There is some controversy about the game being censored, removing references to events and pop culture in the real world as well as drastically changing the story of the secret routes. For those of you who haven't played Rewrite and are thinking about waiting for Rewrite+, I would actually recommend diving into the current translations first, as in my opinion the real world references gives Rewrite and some of its internet humor a lot of charm.

Also there's no H-scenes, you perverts.
11 points