GNOSIA

i was really surprised by how shallow this game is. this game was [url=https://vndb.org/v26063]removed from the visual novel database[/url] because they didn't consider it a visual novel, which confused me. now i can see why. the gameplay heavily outweighs the visual novel aspect. this makes no difference to me at all, but the gameplay itself is very mediocre aka poop. you are drip-fed the story throughout a time loop of tedious repeats in the most unintriguing way possible. this game is comprised of "loops", which are basically the same game of social deduction that keep repeating aboard an isolated spaceship. each loop there are a different mix of characters and one or two "Gnosia" (which are the people you need to vote off). each night the Gnosia choose someone to kill off, and each day you choose to vote someone off, hoping they are Gnosia. a single-player text-based social deduction game is a unique concept with lots of potential. but this game executed that concept in the worst way possible. what makes a text-based social deduction game fun and intriguing is its interactivity and ability to form bonds and distrust, as well as actions which hint toward if someone is suspicious or not. this game has none of that. you would think there would be some sort of interactability given the wide cast of characters and their unique personalities, but there is nothing. sometimes you get special events to learn more about characters and advance the story but this has nothing to do with the gameplay itself. you are also never given any actual events to help you decide who to trust or distrust, it's a complete gamble. i'll just visualize what a typical loop is like below loop begins day 1 you are thrown into the game and you're already discussing who to vote for with absolutely no prior character interactions or events to allow you to arouse suspicion in anyone. the only thing you can do right now is randomly choose someone to accuse or defend. when you do this, random people will either agree or disagree with you. whether they agree is determined by a dice roll which is increased based on your stats. not to mention their agreement is inconsistent. they can agree with you during one accusation and then immediately decide they hate you the next. there is absolutely no logic to their decisions or voting. you never know "why" someone thinks the way they do or what caused it, it's just a constant skill check and dice rolls. during each accusation, it will go around the room and show if characters either agree or disagree via their own lines of dialogue. these lines of dialogue are the same few each time with no new lines and it's a single one each time. this gets old very fast. there is no actual action in this game at all and nothing that would lead you to believe someone is suspicious or not during that loop. the only thing, which is once again a dice roll based on your stats, is having a random chance of a pop-up telling you if someone is lying or telling the truth. most of the time this immediately tells you if someone is innocent or guilty. the only thing you can do after that is to keep spamming accusations and defenses and hope rng is on your side and people to start to agree with you. you have around 5 quick accusation/defense periods before voting starts. you need to vote someone out no matter what. with such little information at this point it's just a random selection. you vote someone and they are eliminated. evening 1 you can level up your stats in your room to increase your luck throughout the game (every single stat is luck-based). you can also "hang out" with someone in a room aboard the ship somewhere for the evening. this gives you one single line of recycled dialogue that simply tells you if they trust you or not (which of course this can randomly change by tomorrow). sometimes there will be special events in certain rooms to develop the story with certain characters. nothing to critique here, but don't expect this to add a new layer to the social deduction aspect of the game, just pretend it never happened during this loop. night 1 you are told someone is killed day 2 again, absolutely nothing happens and you are already thrown right into discussing who to vote. there is not one single line of unique dialogue throughout this entire phase, they are all repeated variations of "this person is suspicious", "i agree" or "i disagree". in fact i would say there is not one single line of unique dialogue throughout an entire loop, excepting special events and the little intro scenes they sometimes have. there are no patterns to discover either. more than once i've seen a Gnosia suspect and vote out their fellow Gnosia, which could be a good strategy for an actual multiplayer social deduction game, but given how this gameplay already feels truly random and inconsistent it just adds another layer of annoyance. one of the only ways you can speculate who is suspicious, which is looking at who voted who, is rendered almost useless. you keep going until either the good people or the Gnosia win. sometimes you are the one killed. you get xp based on how you did. then you immediately head into another loop. sometimes there is a little intro scene with a few lines of dialogue. a lot of the time there isn't. sometimes you get to be the Gnosia. but this is as disappointing as everything else. as you progress through more loops new "roles" get added. these include a role who can check someone at night to see if they're Gnosia or not, a role who can protect someone at night, a role that can check if someone voted off was Gnosia, a role belonging to two people at once who can confirm each other, a role which accuses random people even though they aren't Gnosia (i get it's sort of meant to be, but it's just annoying given how lackluster and random everything already is), and a role which wins and kills everyone else if it is still alive by the end of the game (there is absolutely no way of telling these apart from Gnosia, and since the goal is to get rid of them before Gnosia, it's completely random. it's not fun) you can ask certain roles to come forward and reveal themselves. once you do, odds are more than one person will claim to be a role even though each role is unique to one person. finding the liar(s), like everything else, is by chance. it's not fun or satisfying. i'm not going to talk about the story because that's not the purpose of this review. but after i got over the beginning hype playing through this game was a drag, knowing what i was getting myself into, my hope for change shattered. the soundtrack is very nice though. if you feel like you could see yourself agreeing with my points above i recommend against buying the video game