World End Syndrome is a visual novel with an interesting mystery involving identity, bullying, and supernatural romance. The dead are coming back to life in the city of Mihate. The characters are complex, the dialogue (for the most part) is really well translated, and the lore behind the Yomibito is intriguing. Unfortunately, World End Syndrome also relies on a cumbersome game mechanic that makes uncovering the full story a grueling experience.
Saving The World One Date At A Time
I played the Switch version and had no previous knowledge about it going in. Based on the “world end” part of the title, I expected a visual novel that was dramatic, apocalyptic, and earth-shattering. And that’s there with the legends about yomibitos that come back to life every 100 years causing a whole lot of destruction. But the main part of the game is much more personal, focusing on a mystery in the rural seaside.
World End Syndrome felt like a Dating Choose Your Own Adventure book where multiple paths open up depending on who you spend the most time with. There are five students in total the protagonist can date, though only three are available initially. At first glance, they might seem to fit into anime tropes. But as you get to know them, most of the relationships become much more meaningful.
The way the gameplay loop works is that the city of Mihate opens up after a lengthy prologue and players can decide where they want to go. That includes the school, the seafront, complete with hotel and lighthouse, and the suburbs with a local cafe the students like to visit. But players are never given any indication where a specific character will be, so it becomes a random choice who the protagonist might run into. That wouldn’t be a big issue except for the fact that once a player visits an area, time progresses, even if they don’t meet the person they want to. Given that the game ends within the month of August, that becomes a problem.
To get around that, World End Syndrome expects the player to constantly save and load game files as it remembers where you’ve been previously. Icons appear next to different locations upon a new load or playthrough, indicating who was where. I’m perplexed this wasn’t done from the opening, padding the game and forcing players to constantly save and load. At the least, they could have treated it like Persona 5 where players can see who’s where at different locales, but not penalize them by progressing time.
One of the students is Saya who’s part of the wealthy Kamashiro family. Upon initially meeting her, she seems arrogant and cold. But the more the character gets to know her, the more he learns about her past. Again, it seems tropish that the affluent daughter turns out to have a heart of gold, but it’s handled elegantly in Syndrome. That is if you can get through the first fifteen days or so where the majority of interactions are brief and seem pointless as she hires the player to be her assistant.
But as her arc progresses, she struggles with a stalker, a shadowy figure who seems to be threatening her. It turns out that stalker is her real biological father, who isn’t the aristocratic Kamashiro. Secretly, she suspected something and struggles with her sense of illegitimacy. She wonders how it affects her identity, compensating for her insecurities with overbearing pride. She’s also very good with the naginata. When the two actually started dating, I was touched by their high school romance.
Unfortunately, it concludes with the main character’s death. A Yomibito kills them. I was befuddled, wondering what I’d done wrong. I tried loading older files to see if I’d made the wrong choice. Finally, I had to consult a FAQ to figure out how to save them. It turns out, you can’t.
This was the moment the illusion of freedom was dispelled as I realized I had to play through the game five times to find out what was really going on. Ultimately, only one of the girls you can date is the right one, that being Miu. Since you can only access her relationship after you finish the four other storylines, that means you’ll have to sit through every romance, which isn’t bad in itself. Again, the writing is really good. But it robbed me of a sense of agency knowing it didn’t matter who I chose since we’d have to loop through until we got to the relationship the developers determined was the right one.
Miu story is very compelling from a plot perspective as it reveals the secrets behind Mihate. It follows her legacy as a crucial part of the Yomishito curse and her special ability to track them down. Her Hawk’s Eye allows her to sense people’s auras, but since the undead have none, it reveals their unnatural state.
If you stick it out and get the “Truth” ending, the revelations about the main protagonist are shocking and tragic. The identity of the actual Yomibito also completely caught me off guard. The story is well worth the journey. But this is also why I’m so frustrated with the game mechanics. I know it wasn’t their intention, but it felt like the developers wanted to make getting to the heart of World End Syndrome’s story difficult.
With Friends Like These
There’s also another massive significant blocker to enjoying the story.
Many games have an annoying sidekick character. They’re often there as comic relief, but have some redemptive qualities to offset how annoying they are. I’m pretty patient with characters like this. I didn’t even mind Jar Jar in Phantom Menace (forgive me if this totally invalidates every other opinion I give from this point forward, but I’d pay money to watch a Darth Jar Jar series).
Kensuke, who’s supposed to fill that role in World End Syndrome, is one of the worst characters I’ve ever seen in a game. I don’t know why he’s there other than as “comic relief.” But he’s not funny at all. On one of the field trips, he attempts to take photos of the female students while they’re playing tennis in a compromising position so he can sell the pics online. He even asks Miu after she is attacked and lying in the hospital bed if he can take her photo so he can sell it to a student in another classroom that likes her.
As I mentioned, part of the gameplay loop involves the main character visiting sites randomly and encountering other people. Every time I saw Kensuke, I was annoyed. The fact that he joins the mystery club thanks to the main character seemed like he was enabling him when he had no place there. Whenever I talked with someone and tried to make sense of the disturbing events happening in the town, he’d interject with some really lame comments (no Kensuke, that girl is not trying to hit on you!). I could go on and on about how much he ruined the experience, but my biggest issue with him is that his presence defeats one of the main themes of the story.
You learn the protagonist has just suffered from the death of his sister, for which he blames himself. As though his personal guilt weren’t bad enough, people on the internet blamed, bullied, and attacked him relentlessly. He left his life behind to come to Mihate and take on a new identity. It’s a somber and moving reveal about the dark nature of humanity and the internet. The “world end syndrome” doesn’t just involve the literal end of Earth, but is the traumatic change individuals face when events shatter their reality. The cure seems to be meaningful friendships, compassion, and empathy arising from a deeper understanding of what’s causing their pain. But Kensuke continually makes light of exploiting people, destroying a lot of the gravity of the narrative.
I really really wish there was an option to kick the guy out and never see him again. At the least, it’d make the end of the world more bearable.
