Our World is Ended (Switch) – Review

Life has come to be very hectic for me and video games always worked as just a form of entertainment. I’m not the type of person to look at games as a way to escape from the troubles of reality, but this visual novel is beginning to change my opinion on that. Even further, how about a story where the boundary between reality and video games are now being broken? Well, that’s what you’ll find as you join team JUDGEMENT 7 in Our World is Ended for Nintendo Switch. Great thanks to video game publisher PQube for granting us with a review code!

Story:

First, I want to give some background into what this game is in terms of localization. Our World is Ended is a visual novel developed by Red Entertainment and originally released for the PS Vita in 2017. The game was remade and titled as Judgement 7: Our World Is Ended for PS4 and Switch in Japan and is published by 5pb. This game, as published by PQube, is not a localization of the remake and is actually the original PS Vita game ported to Nintendo Switch. This review of Our World is Ended is based upon the original, not the remake and as of right now, there isn’t any word about localization or DLC for the new content and updates from the remake. I wouldn’t have known this without thanks to Gematsu’s tweets on the matter, so thanks to them. Now that that is out of the way, let’s get into the story!

Our World is Ended tells the story of college student Reiji Gozen, a part-time worker of a small video game company called Judgement 7. The story begins with Reiji performing several experiments in Asakusa, Japan with another part-timer at J7, the airheaded high school girl Yuno Hayase. These experiments involve testing out the New World Goggles, a new AR headset developed by J7, but most importantly by the Director and head of the company: Sekai Owari. Sekai, although very smart, is a huge pervert and you’ll come to find that out as one of the experiments involve being able to alter and replace the walls and banners of the real world with images of sexy women.

However, in the midst of the experiments, the N.W.Goggles freak out, layering a mash of code and screen tearing over Reiji’s eyes. Everything turns black for a few moments, but when Reiji regains his eyesight – Asakusa is in complete shambles. Buildings are destroyed and the once lively streets full of tourists are barren. However, at this moment – Reiji sees his coworkers at J7 crucified with chains on a building and a strange girl appears, wearing a white dress and pink sweater. With her lavender hair blowing through the wind and her eyes fixated on Reiji, she mutters “Be careful… The World… is about to start…”

That honestly is where I want to leave you with the story, I really don’t want to go any further as it will take away some of the experience for when you play through the game yourself. However, I will introduce you to more of the characters, specifically the team of Judgement 7. Iruka No.2, sporting sunglasses, a leather jacket, and a fedora is a longtime friend of Owari that is fixated on the very strange worlds and abilities created within his own mind. He works as the planner, scenario writer, and scripter. Next is Natsumi Yuuki, a cold-hearted girl in very goth like clothing that comes off as very secluded, but has a very warm heart. She works as the main artist for the team. Yuno’s sister, Asano Hayase, is a pretty saddening girl. She goes to Karaoke alone and drinks a lot of beer, but can deal very hard punches. Sporting red hair, a colorful jacket, and headphones, she makes all of the music for the team’s games. Finally, there is Tatiana Alexandrovna Sharapova, a blonde Russian middle schooler that is incredibly talented in coding. She helps Owari with his projects, but his style of coding tends to make it complicated for her.

I currently have 20 hours spent with this game and I will tell you right off the bat that this game is incredibly addicting. The story is always progressing with perversion and comedy, but the core plot of the game is so interesting and well crafted that I just can’t wait to pick it up again when I’m not playing it. I’m not sure how long the game is overall, I don’t even think I’m close to the ending yet. However, if I’m not, I have no problem with seeing what other antics Judgement 7 falls into.

Gameplay:

This is going to be a pretty short section as Our World is Ended is just a simple visual novel! Like most other games in the genre, at certain times you’ll be granted with the option to make specific choices that can change up the ending of the game and how relationships form with you and the rest of Judgement 7. In addition to the normal choices you’re given, there are “Selection of Soul” choices.

These are events where you’ll need to make choices in specific situations in the heat of the moment, where your choices will pan across the screen for a few seconds. With this, you also have the choice to not say anything at all. However, don’t think this means that you’ll be very quiet. Reiji Gozen isn’t a silent protagonist, he is an actual character within the story which makes the game and story so enjoyable.

Presentation:

If you’ve followed some of the things I’ve said in past reviews, I tend to go for games that have a nice looking art style. Our World is Ended is another one of those games. The game features pleasant character designs and environments, but sometimes it really looks as if the environments are just pictures of actual places with a filter on it. However, that isn’t really an issue for me. It’s honestly pretty relaxing to see images of Japan edited with a filter that gives it a more relaxing vibe. Some of the CGs and backgrounds make for some pretty nice wallpapers. The artist for this game is Shirai Eiri and I suggest checking out her Twitter to see more of her art. The background music, composed by Narita Shun, is incredibly catchy, I’ve caught myself putting the game down to jam out to some of the tracks several times.

There are a lot of options that the game gives to you. Want to go back to the previous dialog so you can then change a choice you made? You can do that. Want to separately increase the volume of dialog, environmental sounds, or background music? That’s possible as well. Want to practice on your Japanese instead of reading the game in English? You can change the language as well! I’m incredibly grateful for the number of options this game has to offer.

Presentation is also where most of the complaints come in, but these aren’t as bad as I’m phrasing it. To start off, there are quite a few instances with typos or mistakes. In some instances, the translation doesn’t match the actual Japanese dialog or is phrased differently in such a way that the original meaning behind the dialog is lost. In some cases of dialog, I really wish there were portraits of the characters directly looking at each other instead of constantly looking at me. Feels weird to have two characters talk to each other, but they’re always looking at Reiji.

Although I don’t really use the skip function because I want to read all of the dialogue, there are instances where the skip button doesn’t skip anything at all. It just starts you off at the exact point that you wanted to skip from. I’ve also come face to face with a few glitches, such as the game freezing when loading my save or the game stuttering in between dialogue. It’s really weird for a visual novel game to have a stuttering issue when none of it is really graphically intensive.

Final Verdict:

Our World is Ended has a few presentation issues, but overall it is an amazing visual novel game. I could not recommend it more and the fact that it has helped me manage through some personal issues thanks to acting as an escape from reality, I’ve honestly grown somewhat of an emotional attachment to this title. I want to cover it on an even bigger scale, but right now I’ll leave you with this. Our World is Ended, for Nintendo Switch receives 4.5 out of 5 stars from me. As soon as the glitches and typos get fixed, this will be a 5 out of 5 star game.

Our World is Ended releases on Nintendo Switch digitally on April 18th, tomorrow! The game will also be released physically in North America on May 28th, so if physical is your preferred way of owning games then you’ll sadly have to wait a bit longer. Otherwise, I highly recommended that you play Our World is Ended and I hope that the remake’s content can somehow come to the west in either a New Game+ DLC or maybe in a free update. Thank you once again to PQube for providing us with a review code.