The Science Adventure franchise is… one that I’ve had several entanglements with ever since I started getting into the visual novel genre. Among the various games that are part of it, I feel none are as iconic as STEINS;GATE. This beloved title has seen many adaptations over the years, from anime shows to even live theater events, which is why it’s not at all surprising to me that Spike Chunsoft and MAGES would want to bring it with a fresh new coat of paint. But is STEINS;GATE RE:BOOT worth it? Or should you just buy the original game? Let us take a trip down to the streets of Akihabara, and see if we can grasp the truth of these questions.
But before we do, a quick disclaimer: this review will feature some light spoilers of the main story. Reader’s discretion is advised if you wish to play this title completely blind.
The Mad Scientist
Our story begins with one Rintaro Okabe, A.K.A. Hououin Kyouma, a self-proclaimed “mad scientist” who claims to have the budding ideas for over a hundred inventions, even though all he has are some proof of concepts and a dream. Together with his two friends, the cosplay lover Shiina Mayuri and the “genius hacker” Hashida Itaru, he founds the Future Gadget Laboratory, or just “The Lab” for short. And well, I’m not going to sugarcoat it, but Rintaro is a total “chuunibyou”, which means he tends to just talk to himself almost as if he were delusional.
My favorite part about the game’s writing is just how sometimes, the game seems to be “self-aware” of itself, which is a way of telling a story that I’ve become fond of, ever since I played games such as the AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES series. There’s just so much stuff about the story that is enough to hook me to the point that I sat down and completed an entire chapter in one sitting. I would totally dissect it, were it not for the fact that this is one of those games that you really get the best out of it if you go in knowing little to no spoilers. It’s super fun when you piece it all together alongside Rintaro, as much as he might sound over the top. And of course, this title feels like it would be perfection on the Nintendo Switch’s Handheld Mode, but alas, that version won’t be available until October of this year.
For the majority of the time, I just had the game on AUTO mode to advance the text. The default speed at which the text advances was pretty in line with my own speed, so it was nice to sit back and enjoy the show. However, that doesn’t mean this is a kinetic visual novel. The most important mechanic of STEINS;GATE is Rintaro’s own phone, which will periodically receive e-mails from others, and some of them will trigger important flags that will lead you to the true ending. This is called a “Phone Trigger”, and you must be ready to turn off AUTO mode whenever prompted, because otherwise, you’ll miss the timing at which you’ll be able to reply. Although there is an auto-save that triggers multiple times per chapter, as well as a backlog available by pressing the INSERT key on PC, so rewinding to a section of the story in case you feel like you’ve missed something is not incredibly difficult.
The Effect of Divergence
To make a long story short, STEINS;GATE already had a “re-release” in the form of STEINS;GATE ELITE back in 2018. What made it infamously different was how that re-release cut down the script of the original game, alongside adding in cutscene still frames from the anime adaptation released in 2011. So the issues of it were twofold: The anime cutscenes made the visual novel experience arguably worse, because the still frames were not of the highest quality, and the cut-down script wasn’t too well received by the fanbase.
STEINS;GATE RE:BOOT attempts to address some of those issues by giving the characters a visual refresh, with the original character artist, huke, redesigning them and even adding some new outfit variations. The developers also made use of something called the E-mote animation system, so everyone has this Live2D-ness to their character models, which makes them feel very expressive. Sadly, I’ve never had the chance to play the original game or the Elite re-release, but I must say that, if this is the so-called “cut down script” from it, then I didn’t find any egregious pacing issues or had any particular gripes with it. I played so many visual novels that had very perfunctory plots over the years, and STEINS;GATE is anything but that.
There is just one rather annoying issue that I noticed, which is how the game renders text in English. If any text passes three lines, the font will quite literally squash the letters, as you see in the image above. This is really jarring, and it happens seemingly at random, which is strange, considering the textbox does seem to have plenty of space for the English dialogue. I’m inclined to believe that this is an issue with MAGES.’s own text rendering engine, as one visual novel title I played 2 years ago, B*PRO Ryuusei Fantasia, suffered from similar issues. I hope that this can be addressed before the release on consoles, especially on Nintendo Switch, where visual novel titles truly shine.
As for the translation quality itself, I did not notice any egregious typos or mistranslations, and the localization team did well in conveying some Japanese-specific slang into English. Something else I’ve noticed is how some CGs have no English translation. As someone who knows Japanese, this isn’t a big deal, and considering the place the game is set, it makes sense that would be the case. But given how some scenes reference what you’re seeing pretty constantly, it can be hard to keep up with what’s being said by text alone. One example I can give is the whiteboard Makise Kurisu uses for her speech in Chapter 1, which is full of complicated kanji, and even I had trouble making out most of the text shown.
A Solid Starting Point
Honestly, playing through STEINS;GATE RE:BOOT as someone who has never really read or played the original or Elite was something I had a lot of fun with from beginning to end. While some minor issues still need ironing out, such as the lack of subtitles on images and the “text crunch” issue the game’s font suffers from, I feel like I now totally understand just why people hold STEINS;GATE in such high regard. Once the issues I’ve mentioned have been ironed out, I feel this might be a fantastic starting point for those looking to get their feet wet with the series, and I would love to see more modern re-releases from MAGES.’s catalogue.
Disclaimer: Spike Chunsoft provided a PC (Steam) copy of STEINS;GATE RE:BOOT for review purposes.
 review of STEINS;GATE RE:BOOT, developed by MAGES. Inc. and published by Spike Chunsoft Co., Ltd.){kind=link}