Review for Steins; Gate Elite. Game for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, the video game was released on 20/09/2018 The version for PC came out on 19/02/2019
"It's me. I was commissioned to write about Steins; Gate Elite. The Organization could look for me after this stance, track down the brilliant scientist who wants to bring chaos to the world, but this ... this is the will of Steins; Gate “.
In 2009, a visual novel called Steins; Gate arrived with the specific aim of revolutionizing the genre. It was only the second title in the series called Science Adventure, of those characterized by the semicolon and developed by 5PB, Nitroplus e Chiyomaru Studio, but Steins; Gate was destined to be more successful than the previous one (Chaos; Head) and become the progenitor of a franchise so ramified that it reaches the present day, a good ten years later.
Steins; Gate Elite is in fact the definitive version of a visual novel born, as the genre wants, in Japan, to then arrive on the black and white pages of manga and get one anime version of 26 episodes aired in 2011 thanks to White Fox, considered among the best anime of this century. Form with which - perhaps - Steins; Gate is best known and form that became the basis for Chiyomaru Shikura's new project: the Elite version of this sci-fi series takes up, in fact, the animations of the Japanese cartoon abandoning the classic and static visual novel to achieve what was the goal of the distant 2009: to revolutionize the genre of the visual novel and what it represents.
Repurposed around the world by Spike Chunsoft (Jump Force), Steins; Gate Elite tells of Rintaro Okabe, who under the sinister and irreverent aura of the mad scientist Kyoma Hooin - as he prefers to be called - hides a penniless university student who nevertheless manages to rent a floor of the building of the stalwart Mister Braun, who has a cathode ray tube television shop. In the studio converted into a laboratory, complete with an official lab coat, Okabe plans to lead the world into chaos with his wacky experiments. Helping him are members of laboratory # 002 and # 003: the sweet and naive Mayuri Shiina, his childhood friend, and Itaru "Daru" Hashida, a pervert with the precious gift of being a 'super hacka' who reveals himself to be the ideal right-hand man of the self-described mad scientist.
As the game is a visual novel, the plot is more than of primary importance: that's all. For those taking their first steps in the genre, know that the interaction is at an all-time low. The gameplay is reduced to the bone by a cannibal plot that provides that its story is followed with little interactivity. It is therefore essential to mention the turn (undoubtedly intriguing) that Steins; Gate Elite takes during the first minutes of the game.
Hunted (in his mind) by an obscure Organization, Okabe has a great interest in the time travel theory, coming soon to follow the lecture of a certain Professor Nakabachi who ends up calling fraud: for Okabe, Nakabachi is guilty of stealing his theory from John Titor, alleged member of the Resistance who travels through time to warn the world of the SERN threat many years earlier (European Society for Nuclear Research), which has secretly managed to build a machine over time and to establish one global dystopia in 2036. In this dystopia there are no wars, there is no internet, the concept of travel is completely eradicated, as well as individual choices, withered under the illusion of a false peace.
Titor wrote on @channel, a kind of Reddit in the world of Steins; Gate, until he disappeared in a mysterious way leaving a rich legacy to the conspiracists - including, of course, Rintaro Okabe is at the forefront.
In the same building, Okabe will get acquainted with Kurisu Makise, a genius girl of the same age with which a strange complicity is created despite the divergences of ideas and character. After a fleeting first meeting, the second will be much more shocking: the mad scientist will see Kurisu poured into her own blood, dead. Upset, his first thought after the escape will be to send an e-mail, the main communication system, to his friend Daru and - unknowingly - he will become protagonist of the first of a long series of travels through time that characterizes the work.
Okabe will arrive in a timeline in which Kurisu has never died, and which in fact ends up becoming a member of the ramshackle laboratory, bearing the most varied titles chosen for her by Okabe. As an "assistant", Kurisu will be instrumental in discovering that one of the lab's inventions, a telephone microwave, it hides more than it gives to see. Double-stranded with a cell phone, the microwave has the function of sending emails (then d-mails) in the past with the potential to change the future.
Thanks also to the help of John Titor, who has returned to this universe line, Okabe and the others manage to hack the SERN website after spasmodically searching for the IBN 5100. Through this computer with the secret ability to read languages owners of the SERN (parody of the real IBM 5100 Portable Computer), they manage to discover the terrible conspiracy that would lead to the dystopia prophesied by the time traveler in twenty years, taking action to blow the primacy over the time machine to the particle physics laboratory to predict the pseudo-utopian future.
This, roughly speaking, is the opening words of Steins; Gate. The Elite version does not make any changes to the plot, but replaces the more classic graphics of the visual novel with the same animations of the anime. This operation forms the pivot of the discussion on Steins; Gate Elite: is it a listless job or what all visual novels should aspire to? The answer we feel like giving is: half and half.
If it is true that a quality and depth of this type are alien to the genre, it is also true that the foundation of the title are the animations that made Steins; Gate a successful product. Steins; Gate had a boom thanks to the potential of the basic material (video game) but above all thanks to the anime version, which made it a real mass product and to which the Elite version is grateful to the point of owing him almost everything, starting from the animations that are totally taken by the guys from White Fox. Anyone who has seen the anime, which itself is a more accessible product (it is available on Netflix) and arrived with an excellent voice acting, must arrive towards the end of Steins; Gate Elite to see something new and unreleased. The story and the “graphics”, if we want to call it that, are the same.
Here's the problem with Steins; Gate Elite: the anime exists. From this point of view, resuming the animations of 2011 and re-proposing them in the videogame medium by passing it off as a definitive version - which is, as far as the videogame is concerned - could therefore appear as a market operation to revitalize the development studio and replenish the speakers. .
It must be said that Steins; Gate Elite offers less and more than its animated counterpart, such as the multiple endings which have not found space in the Japanese cartoon, and which for this reason are corolled by brand new animations commissioned from White Fox herself in the video game. The different endings are present in the original version (2009), towards which we want to break a lance for the colorful manga-style drawings that gave it an identity and a characteristic that was inevitably sacrificed in the Elite.
The details and insights present only in the videogame edition end up being a welcome complement to the beautiful universe of Steins; Gate but not enough to justify the selling price. The recommended price of the Elite is in fact 60 euros. An investment that combines it with the most famous triple A but with which it cannot compete for having arrived years late. For the almost all of the story, we found ourselves pressing the X button to advance the dialogues. It's an unspoken deal with the visual novel genre to ask the player for that unnatural passivity in the video game and take him by the hand page after page as if it were a novel on the screen.
The only phases with a little pepper are the so-called "phone trigger ”, a system that allows (sometimes) Okabe to respond to e-mails received to particular phrases underlined in blue in the message as if they were hyperlinks. The different answers alter the course of history over time up to the possible alternative endings mentioned above. The fact is that the "phone trigger" function is scripted, meaning that it pops up when the game decides it. You only need one button to play Steins; Gate Elite and not even that, given the existence of the "auto" screen button that makes the dialogues automatic. Just put down the controller and enjoy the show, but at this point it is preferable to watch the anime version, which costs a sixth less than the video game with a Netflix subscription.
The game allows you to save at any time, sipping and personalizing your experience with the commitments of everyday life. What could be ported to this Elite version was a alternative dubbing to the Japanese one, the only one present in the title. We are aware that asking for dubbing (we repeat, excellent and characterizing) would be like asking for the moon, but we would have expected at least English, a language limited to subtitles only. Anyone who doesn't chew either Japanese or English may not enjoy the Steins; Gate story as it deserves.
Steins; Gate Elite in fact offers beautiful moments and intense reflections, from the most classic ones on time travel - supported by scientific explanations - to twists and characters that remain in the heart thanks to their characterization. Not to forget the enviable charisma of Rintaro Okabe, the true heartthrob of the title, protagonist of two of the ten short stories that make up a “exclusive” content for the PlayStation 4, the version we reviewed, the Linear Bounded Phenogram, (originally released in 2013 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PlayStation Vita), which allows you to become attached to the characters and deepen their stories.
We have revealed only a handful of the characters in the title, in fact, but we are sure that you will not forget anyone when the final word - whatever it is - will go to obscure the screen like the last page of a novel.
If nothing else, thanks to the dictionary of scientific terms used in Steins; Gate Elite forming an interesting compendium about the world built by 5PB to understand computer, scientific and cultural vocabulary (such as Japanese honorifics, SERN and all the inventions of the Future Gadget Laboratory) Steins; Gate is hatched, after a trip ten years long, so completely, but perhaps less accurate than it could have been.
Steins; Gate Elite is a game that can divide the videogame audience: on the one hand we have one of the most beautiful science fiction stories of recent years, on the other a partial copy and paste of its previous anime version. Steins; Gate has been revived in various sauces, this time in a version designated as a solution by the mother who generated it, certainly at a higher price than it should be. An anime in which we dictate the rhythms, due to its visual novel nature, it presents an inertia not suitable for all palates. Virgins with animated experience the Elite version fits into the genre as its most precious gem, perhaps, but aware of it ... Rintaro Okabe may also take different paths at the crossroads of time lines, but the shadow of the anime version stands out in an almost dominating manner over him and the title he represents. And there are no differences that hold. This is Steins; Gate's choice.
► Steins; Gate Elite is an Adventure type game developed and published by 5PB for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, the video game was released on 20/09/2018 The version for PC came out on 19/02/2019
