Ever17

Playtime: 34.1 Hours

Finished 26 June 2025.

Played the Switch remaster released earlier this year; the translation might not be the greatest, but I didn't notice too many of the faults and the game was perfectly understandable. Note that this remaster is apparently based on the Xbox port, so some parts of the plot were shuffled around a bit - apparently this ruins the game for some people, I don't think it was a big deal for me. Played the routes in the order Tsugumi -> Sora -> You -> Sara -> Coco -> BW. Did the bad endings before the normal/good endings in all cases, but that doesn't really matter much to be honest.

As far as I'm aware, this is kind of an indirect or spiritual sequel to Never7. It takes place in a seemingly different world with a completely separate cast of characters, and I don't think any background worldbuilding really overlaps either. Maybe there was a throwaway line about clones? (Minor plot point in Never7.) In any case, I think the fundamental premise and setting of this game is much more interesting than in Never7; the looming danger of being trapped in an undersea park with limited oxygen and no surface communications is far more interesting than a random summer getaway. Also, the different heroine routes don't feel shoehorned into this novel anywhere near to the same degree as they did in Never7, which probably represents an ongoing confidence in the Infinity concept, and a general trend in VNs that are more plot-focused in that era, beyond just being simple dating sims.

So the main premise of the game at first involves an accident in LEMU, an undersea amusement park. I'm already a fan of this kind of story - the mystery, the danger, and the uncertainty of the environment without necessarily involving some random villain creates a very tense atmosphere, yet also emphasizes the bonding of the characters are they suffer together. Going through the first couple of routes from Takumi's perspective, witnessing each of the unfortunate events happening one after another as they slowly escape down the levels of LEMU, and feeling the cast get closer together over the course of the week they're underwater was simultaneously exciting and calming somehow. Then, when the twist kicks in and the implications of the entire party being infected with Tief Blau set in, I felt a very real sense of panic. For a standalone mystery/science-horror route, this game was already executed extremely well. The bittersweet endings really hammered things home for me, especially given how close Takeshi & Tsugumi were, and how Sora increasingly learned to act and feel more like a human. While the characters aren't really the most "original", they fit well into the tropes that define them and feel consistent and realistic enough to make the game believable.

Then the second part of the story kicks in -- of course it does, because it's an Uchikoshi game and those always involve really intricate and detailed gimmicks. The second set of routes all take place from the Boy's perspective. A huge part of this route just feels like a near-exact repeat of Takeshi's side, which I consider to be a problem with this game that is shared with Never7. Even though the real context behind this perspective of the story is (spoilers!) VERY different than Takeshi's side, you don't really feel it too much. Lots of small events and minor details are basically the same as before, so to some extent the big changes (everyone's clothes, Sara's presence, the Coco hallucinations/dreams, other notable differences in the events) kind of get lost in the sauce, since I'm kind of tuned out watching them walk through the same hallways, holding the same conversations. Not to mention the skip function between routes on the same perspective isn't really implemented well either - entire scenes will be counted as different even if the real differences only occur on a few lines. Naturally, I'll just switch to skipping manually - but that means I'll accidentally miss out on a couple of the changed lines. Not the best decision to leave the skip function half-baked for something like this.

With that tangent aside, it turns out that the Kid's perspective eventually diverges very significantly from Takeshi's perspective. Namely, nobody gets infected with Tief Blau, so the party doesn't end up dying horribly. The good & bad endings here feel a little bit more contrived to me, with the Kid learning a bit more about the nature of the second incident, and a bit about his relationship with Sara, the mysterious replacement for Coco. These felt more like setup for the Coco & True Ending routes, where the twists are finally revealed. Essentially, the entirety of the Kid's route actually took place 17 years after Takeshi's route, with the entire experiment being carefully orchestrated to deceive you, the player - manifesting as a "Blick Winkel" entity in the world of Ever17 to act as an observer to essentially "peek" into Schrodinger's box. The "bittersweet" but somewhat abrupt endings of Takeshi's routes didn't actually definitively capture his death, as it turns out - so the original Kid & original You decided to find a way to draw you into your world to "define" their fates. In doing so, you are finally able to locate and rescue Takeshi & Coco, who were still in cold sleep in the IBF research facility on the ocean floor across the 17-year gap.

Even having an inkling of how ridiculous the story was going to be from Uchikoshi's reputation, I still feel like this game managed to throw me for a bit of a loop. A pretty big chunk of the game was fairly predictable to me given the kinds of information that was obfuscated: I didn't think the routes were actually simultaneous or from parallel worlds (though that was obvious), the perception-bending and "grand experiment" narratives aren't too much of a stretch after Zero Escape, and other similarities to concepts utilized in Never7 and the AI games also came to the forefront as well. I'm kind of wondering if this spoiled some amount of my enjoyment, but it definitely didn't ruin the game for me; I still think the entire "Third Perspective" and BW stuff was all quite different, and super interesting in this game. I personally really liked how everything came together for a pretty unambiguously happy ending at the end of the game; I appreciate that this felt like a very complete experience in itself without baiting for any other random sequels. (Might be noted that most of the original victims of the first incident are still afflicted by CURE Syndrome, so Takeshi & Tsugumi might outlive their kids...)

Anyway, I really liked this game as a whole. In particular, after reaching the True ending and seeing how nicely everything fit together from all of the previous routes, I feel like I've just been liking it more and more as I think about it in hindsight; it's really deserving of the reputation that it has. I don't know if I could go back and play it again, given the repetitiveness of the main routes and without any tension in the buildup towards the twists, but it's definitely left a lasting memory for me.