// KOTAKU — GAMING
World End Syndrome Has A Fascinating Story If You Can Get Past Its Frustrating Game Mechanics
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.
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