428: Shibuya Scramble Reviews
After a wait of ten years, finally 428: Shibuya Scramble has also landed in our area. With a fantastic setting like Japan surrounding a compelling and intriguing story, the game deserves to be widely promoted with few reservations. Absolutely recommended both to those who appreciate visual novels, and to those who are entering the genre for the first time even if for the latter the impact may not be immediately the best. If you do not let yourself be discouraged by the presence of the English language alone, you can therefore prepare yourself for a story made up of many, many paths to follow to trace your destiny.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Overall, I really enjoyed 428: Shibuya Scramble. The story is excellent; incredibly engaging, getting my very emotionally invested in all the characters especially as things ramped up in the later hours. The writing style perfectly combines seriousness and occasional lighthearted jokes when appropriate, making it enjoyable even during relative downtime. None of the main characters stand out as particularly weaker than the others, and each of their stories carries the same weight and quality all the way throughout the game. That’s a long way, too; completing everything took me just shy of 50 hours, with just playing through until the end of the epilogue taking just over 40 hours. Even though it’s on the longer side, it still kept me fully engaged through all of it, and is definitely worth the $49.99 USD, having easily earned the respect it has among visual novels. If you’re at all interested in visual novels, mystery and detective stories, or you just want something exciting and different (there’s even a demo on PS4 if you don’t want to take the full plunge right away), I can’t recommend 428: Shibuya Scramble highly enough.
What can we talk about, then? Well, even without giving spoilers, quite a few things. Let's start with the most standout of the gimmicks and tricks 428 has, and one you probably already noticed. The graphics. They're not 3D rendered, they're photographs and video clips. Even at a glance, this makes the game stand out sharply in an era where this hasn't been done unironically in years.
428: Shibuya Scramble is, by far, the best narrative based visual novel you’ll ever experience. Sure, there is no voice-overs and the text is presented as a ‘wall of text’ from the point of a narrator, as you would see within a book, but the whole presentation, delivery, emotion and overall narrative is simply amazing. You’ll laugh, cry, shout, become emotionally attached, and pray for each and every character throughout their ten-hour adventure. However, even though it’s ten hours for them, expect many more hours on your side as you work your way through over five separate stories which are all connected in some form to one another, even if our protagonists aren’t 100% aware of this.
The way 428: Shibuya Scramble is presented is unlike any other translated title, but if you value games with strong stories you owe it to yourself to not let this creative crime drama fly under the radar. Like Shibuya's scramble crossing, the events are chaotic and the passing moments between characters are sometimes fleeting, but crossing that iconic intersection is one hell of a memorable experience.
When all is said and done, this visual novel is absolutely incredible through and through. Again, having no VA on a console VN is a shame, but the game is just fine without it. The camera work is superb while admittingly the amount of motion blur in some shots are definitely a bit much in some situations. But other than that, I can’t give any praise higher to a work like this. The use of Live Action truly elevated what would be considered just another good visual novel. Everything here is just spectacular.