Birth ME Code definitely deserves a thumbs up, but I'm not sure how to rate it. There's one big con that really bugs me, but the rest is all pros. I'll start with the bad.
[h1]Con[/h1]
I generally play these kinds of games for the crazy plotlines more than anything. This game's story was certainly as ambitious as I could ever hope, but I don't think it succeeded. Games like Zero Escape are confusing, but by the end I do finally feel like I have a good sense of what happened and why. Birth ME Code, on the other hand, left me with far more questions than answers. The ending infodump explained a certain someone's motives and it cleared up a few details, but it didn't really answer many of the pervasive questions of the story. I honestly couldn't tell you why this whole convoluted death game was needed at all.
Take this with a grain of salt, since maybe my reading comprehension just failed me horribly this time. But like I said, I haven't had this issue at all with Zero Escape, Danganronpa, AI: Somnium Files, etc. Another issue that most likely contributed to my confusion is the fact that this is the second game of a trilogy. I was given the impression that Birth ME Code can be played as a standalone game, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Many questions seemed to get shoved off until the third game, and some others required knowledge from the first game. The game tells you that you can't answer the final question at the end ([spoiler]what is the main character's name[/spoiler]?) unless you've played Head AS Code. And another pervasive plot point that was, as far as I can tell, completely ignored in the end, is apparently about a character from Head AS Code ([spoiler]The fact that almost every single person thought they were Marco when they died for some reason, but an Invidia was the real Marco and repeatedly hid anagrams saying so; a Google search says he's a Head AS Code character[/spoiler]), so I assume it would have made more sense with the knowledge of who that person was.
Basically, this game's story was very satisfying until the end, but the end answered far fewer questions than expected. I can't tell you whether that's due to poor execution, due to the game being mistakenly considered standalone, or both. I'd recommend playing Head AS Code first to be safe.
There was one more issue that made the story hard to understand. This one's slightly spoilerish. The game is advertised as though you get to play as the mastermind of a death game, but she doesn't act like a mastermind at all. She barely even remembers setting the game up, and nonchalantly accepts all kinds of inconsistencies in her own game that should be EXTREMELY CONCERNING, like waking up in a room with a giant mysterious metal box that she didn't even put there. She says she's looking for a traitor, but never explains how she found out about a traitor, why she set up a whole death game, why she risked putting herself into it with no safeguard, or how she actually plans on using any of this to catch the traitor. I can't tell how any of this was supposed to make sense in her head. [spoiler]Of course, it wasn't supposed to make sense since she wasn't actually the mastermind, but she should have been very worried about how little sense it made, how little she remembered actually masterminding anything. Instead she just sort of seemed...out of it, most of the time. Going with the flow. In other words, acting nothing like a mastermind.[/spoiler] The problem is, when the protagonist doesn't especially seem to know or care what's going on (especially when she should both know and care more than anyone else), it makes me feel like I'm not supposed to try to know or care either. [spoiler]The alternating first/third person narrative, though important, definitely further compounded the confusion about what the protagonist is thinking.[/spoiler]
[h1]Pros[/h1]
Just about everything else was a huge pro.
The GUI and flowchart system were genuinely the best I've ever seen in a visual novel. You never have to replay giant chunks of the game to try and return to a specific point and make a different choice; the flowchart system makes the game extremely quick and simple to navigate.
The art was much better than I expected. The music was also great and did a good job of setting the tone.
There were many interactive segments, which were generally fun and well made. Most of the puzzles involve wordplay or out-of-the-box thinking, rather than logic puzzles with straightforward rules, which can be both good and bad. (I'd say some riddles were a little too obtuse even with hints; expect to check a guide at least once).
The characters were fantastic: well-written, interesting but not too tropey or absurd, and much easier to come to understand and get attached to than you'd expect considering that you can't see anyone's faces.
The pacing was great and the story was gripping. Although the game [i]might[/i] leave you with a bad aftertaste due to the aforementioned problems, you'll almost certainly love the journey itself and be unable to put it down from start to finish.
I think I'll give it a [b]3.9/5[/b]. If you're into the genre, it's definitely worth checking out. And you've got to appreciate the quality low-budget games made by a few people fueled by passion like this.
