Chaos;Head NoAH

Playtime: 35.1 Hours

Finished 14 March 2025.

Played the default Switch version, warts and all - without any translation fixes. Read through all routes, viewed all delusions (as well as the neutral path, of course), and tried out the different answer combinations for various differences in some character costumes and the psychology exam diagnosis. Everything in the status screen (CG, Music, Movies, Tips, Endings) is at 100%, so I'm pretty sure I've seen all there is to see. Sena FTW :)

I had a launch copy of the C;H / C;C double pack that came with underwear DLC, which is pretty funny. Unsurprisingly, it takes quite a bit away from the atmosphere of the game so I didn't use it much, but it was amusing when I completing delusions and stuff.

This technically isn't the first time I've played through Chaos;Head, but the previous time was with a old fan translation of the original PC version. Therefore, while a lot of the main storyline was quite familiar to me, I've never seen the individual character routes, nor the new "true end". I think it's pretty neat to get some additional context into this world and its characters, given that the original C;H was probably one of the most "sterile" games in the series in its original incarnation.

In general, I quite enjoyed my experience with it this time around - I have a reasonably high opinion of it now, though. It's not hard to see why it's one of the more divisive games in the series, as Takumi is one hell of a lame character, essentially the pinnacle of the "nerdy loser" stereotype. One one hand, it makes him quite difficult to actually relate to - he's so far down the deep end that even the most withdrawn and socially-awkward people might find it difficult to understand what he feels. But that helps to build up the story around him; firstly, it justifies the "horror" atmosphere of the game, as he's so afraid of his own shadow normally that the events throughout the story send him into a permanent state of paranoia. Also, it gives more of a limelight to the other characters around him, who are generally more interesting. Finally, on a more cynical note, it's actually quite fun to step out of the "first-person perspective" and root against him in the story.

The other characters are all quite interesting, too. Unlike most of the other games in the Sci;Adv series, the side heroines all play separate parts in the story and do not form any kind of "group" or "club" surrounding Takumi. This is because on a fundamental level, the main characters were gathered together artificially because of their Gigalomaniac potential, not because of any shared interest or goal. I don't hate this, to be honest; each character has their own distinct scenes and moments (even if they are fewer & father between on average), so you don't end up with an awkward situation later on where it feels like every character needs to have a token contribution to each conversation in the game. To be honest, I feel like a few characters, ESPECIALLY Kozue, are criminally underused in the main route, so the addition of character routes in NoAH was very welcome to flesh their personalities out more.

The main story route is quite interesting, and held up very well on this second reading. The big twists were obviously spoiled for me already, but watching Takumi get terrified by everything was very fun. The concept of the Gigalomaniacs is still very interesting to me given how much potential it has, and playing it now does help give a lot of context to lots of events that happen in the other games as well. I think some of the characters could have used more screen time, and a lot of Rimi's actions feel quite illogical to me, even in context (for example, killing Takumi at the end of Silent Sky to give Shogun another week of life). I'm a bit split on Norose's character as well; supposedly he has a reasonable goal of using NoAH to end suffering and establish peace, but his actions in the real world are effectively the absolute antithesis of this. These inconsistencies damage the experience a little bit, but not enough to turn it into a bad experience in my opinion; you need to suspend your disbelief to a certain extent in this game regardless.

The other character routes also add lots of additional detail to each character and the world as a whole, which was a very nice new addition for me. I found Nanami's and Yua's routes to be rather pedestrian, as they don't really provide any significant revelations (c'mon, Yua's entire schtick was pretty obvious from the beginning of the game). However, Ayase's, Kozue's, and especially Sena's and Rimi's routes were all excellent in my opinion, providing valuable insights into the way each of them sees the world and their history before C;H. Sena's route was the high point of the game in my opinion, and as of a few days after beating the game, is still my favorite ending overall. Both Takumi and Sena go through an immense amount of character growth during that brief chapter, and it cemented Sena as my favorite heroine (if it wasn't obvious...). The little bit at the end is also quite ominous, especially given that the role is reprised in C;C.

As for the quality of the Switch release and retranslation, it's kind of debatable. Coming from the R;N games, which have a pretty clean UI (not without flaws) and even the nifty PhoneDroid you get to play with, this feels a lot more limited - lacking useful shortcuts, not having character names attached to dialogue lines for some reason, and with a somewhat inconsistent skip feature. To be fair, that last one was much worse in R;N. On the upside though, the game looks and runs well, and the swimsuit DLC is really funny (beware the cursed Momose in the screenshots). Without a retranslation patch, I noticed a decent number of typos and strange translation aberrations, but still nothing that really took me out of the experience; even in the worst cases, I didn't have any issues extrapolating meaning out of any line.

I'm glad I played it again; I was initially debating whether or not to get the C;H/C;C Double Pack since I've technically played both C;H and C;C before, but there was enough new stuff in the NoAH release that I never got to see that it ended up being very worth it. I still think C;C is better, but I've definitely warmed up to this game now, far more than what I thought of it in the past at any rate.

Sena > Rimi >> Ayase > Kozue = Nanami >>>>> Yua
Don't hurt me plz.