Date A Live: Ren Dystopia

Date A Live: Ren Dystopia is an engaging visual novel that series fans will enjoy. What Date A Live fan wouldn’t want to experience hijinks with their favorite characters and meet a new one who could potentially become a favorite? The game is hollow without prior exposure to the Date A Live light novels, anime, and especially the Rio-Reincarnation visual novel (with all its included extras), so I recommend Ren Dystopia to established fans only.

DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia offers entertaining gameplay and, despite its name, doesn’t really have a negative overall tone. The numerous characters are all unique and provide plenty of humour. The many individual routes and their varying lengths mean it’s also well suited to shorter sessions.

DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia presents several intriguing tales about what someone would do with three wishes. Multiple routes and endings provide different perspectives and lots of replay value. Unfortunately, this series assumes you have existing knowledge of the franchise, and ending routes can be unclear. Otherwise, it’s a great visual novel that provides hours of enjoyment.

DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia is a truly head-scratching game. A game that looks and plays no different from its predecessors. All the while presenting fans with very underdeveloped and uninspired routes. While the Live2D models look great and the voice acting is phenomenal, it just can’t carry the weight that is everything else. Even the True Ending, which is some of the writing team’s best work, can’t save this. Ren deserves better. The reader deserves better. Especially when the company is asking for the same amount of money as the triple pack that came before it. If you do happen to own this title, please work your way to the true ending to get your money’s worth. The fact that only 9% of readers, at the time of writing, have seen it drives me insane. Otherwise consider waiting for a sale.

Tsunako’s art is, as always, gorgeous. The game’s a joy to play and hard to put down. It introduces some new (great) characters to the fiction while also giving me more time with Tohka.

DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia is just like any other visual novel. You should get this if you are a fan of Date A Live in general to see where the story goes. If you are interested in playing this game, you should give it a chance; however, you may want to start watching the anime or play something with a wider appeal to a wider audience first.

Date A Live: Ren Dystopia is a game that I personally enjoyed but can only recommend to fans of the series. This game doesn’t do anything particularly unique in the Visual Novel space. It will mainly be enjoyable to those who have played the previous games or have watched the series.

DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia is a visual novel that fully manages to transpose the atmosphere of the series, offering an original game that fans will surely appreciate.

Date A Live: Ren Dystopia continues the Date A Live series with another veritable banger of a visual novel. It features artwork from Idea Factory’s legendary former illustrator and now freelance artist Tsunako, as well as amazing voice work from some of the industry’s finest talents. While the story certainly isn’t friendly to newcomers, despite the game’s claims, it does carry on the spirit of the series very well. In fact, there’s so many routes and endings to go for in this game that you could very well just learn as you go.

Just like Rio Reincarnation, Date A Live: Ren Dystopia is a visual novel that complements the series and allows fans to have a little extra taste of the beautiful characters' unique sides. Unfortunately, the title doesn't go beyond that, with a predictable plot and little development to the characters, elements that make the game not so good as an entrypoint. However, even so, I'm very happy to be able to play it officially in English.