Game of Fate: Chasing Through Time

Story:

It all starts in 2019 with our protagonist and his fellow female student Qiu Shuya doing some testing on their experimental communicator that supposedly can communicate through space and time. Mainly, it is supposed to communicate with the past. Except it doesn't. The experiment is a failure and on top of that, on the day of the protagonist's birthday, Qiu Shuya gets killed in a car accident. We get questioned by the lovely Inspector Gu Siqi where we can enter our names. After that, we go drinking alone at the bridge where we meet a reporter Cheng Linwei who becomes our friend, and over time you start dating. After that, in 2024, on the day of your birthday, you invite your new girlfriend, kiss her, and live with Cheng Linwei happily ever after, forgetting all about Qiu Shuya. THE END.

Wait, what? That can't be it! And you're right, it's not the end. Well, it's not the end if you don't want it to be. Because what I didn't tell you is that up to this point, you're given a series of choices that affect the outcome.

If you choose not to kiss Linwei and not to forget about your old flame, the protagonist will decide to use his failed experiment one more time on a rainy night and will be able to send a message to the past to Qiu Shuya, warning her of the incoming danger, thus saving her. Past is changed, you and Qiu Shuya reunite and live happily ever after. Yay! It's done, the end! Right...? Except, turns out that in this timeline, Cheng Linwei gets killed by a serial killer named "Rain Man".

This triggers the series of events forcing our protagonist to rely on his newly obtained power to send messages to the past. Will he be able to save Cheng Linwei? Will he choose to? Who is this the mysterious Rain Man killer?

At first, I thought it'd be a complete ripoff of the Steins;Gate and you'll be stuck in a loop of desperate attempts to save the one you love. Turns out, not really. The game quickly shifts focus from sci-fe elements (although they're still present) to murder mystery and dating sim. Yup, you read it right. Dating sim. You'll be sweet-talking girls to left and right. Shuya and Linwei are not the only girls you can and will romance.

Graphics:

Since it's an FMV game, what graphics are we talking about? Video quality is alright, seemingly locked at 720p but there's an option to download the 4K version. I'm also not competent enough to judge cinematography and all that fluff.

However what I can say is that the game is filmed from a first-person perspective and more often than not, the operator's hands are a little bit shaky. Also, despite some of the actors having acting roles in real life (Fang Jin - the actress playing the role of Cheng Linwei has several dorama roles behind her) acting can be a mixed bag. Supporting actors (including the main character) are mostly amateurs and were a hit or miss and even the main female cast can be "so-so" from time to time. It's okay, just don't expect the quality of Christopher Nolan.

UI is solid but it's clear that it was a mobile title before.

Audio:

The sound itself is crisp and clear. The soundtrack is mostly there to provide a background sound. Nothing spectacular, but there's a solid selection of tracks. Can't say anything about voice acting itself (since most of my Chinese cinema experience comes from the 80s and 90s) but what I can comment on is the technical aspects. There are many scenes where audio doesn't match the video and you can see that lipsync is way off. From what I can gather, sometimes actresses are re-recording their lines in the studio to preserve the audio quality.

Gameplay:

Nothing I can say on that front either. It's essentially a visual novel but in video format. You have to choose your answers and actions and watch the consequences. Sometimes you'll be given a static screen with investigation "bubbles". Upon clicking each one of these, you'll be shown a video of the protagonist, well, investigating them.

Sometimes your actions will lead you to a Bad Ending. Ranging from losing a clue to dying. It's a good thing then that at any given moment you press a button and return to the "timeline" menu where any timeline deviation is shown. It's a very helpful thing. If you don't like an outcome, you choose another and see what happens that time.

Some routes require you to make a certain choice or have a certain level of relationship with a certain character, which can trail back to the previous chapter. It's okay though, since you can change it any time and go back. Also, rewind/skip features help immensely so you don't have to watch the same scenes over and over.

Also I have to mention that game has a tarot card system where upon playing the game for at least 3 hours, you can get cases that contain tarot cards with female characters from the game. Nothing raunchy or anything like that, just actresses being cute. You can collect those or sell them on a Steam Market (but I doubt that you can make any money from that).

Now to the negatives, since I didn't know where to put this section.

First and foremost: the translation. English language translation is quite bad. It feels like they took the script, ran it through Google Translate (not even DeepL), and put it back into the game. You can understand what characters are talking about (most of the time) but the amount of absolute gibberish and misspells is atrocious.

For example, my first time playing through the prologue section, despite reading the subtitles, I had no idea that Shuya was our girlfriend. I found out only by manually translating a Chinese walkthrough guide that specifically says that we should speak the truth to Inspector Gu when she is questioning us. One of the questions about our relationship with Shuya has two answers: "She's my girlfriend" and "She's just a classmate". And "she's my girlfriend" is considered to be the truth.

Then there's the fact that the game requires a constant internet connection to be played. Huh? What's up with that? It's a singleplayer game, what do you need internet for?

But what mostly stops me from fully enjoying this title is its very FMV nature. Look, as a 30+ years old man engaged in a long-term relationship with a woman, I usually have zero problems playing Japanese dating sims, since the characters are not real. But here, I see real girls (probably younger than me) fluttering their eyelashes and pretending to kiss the protagonist (but smooching the camera) I die a little bit inside from cringing too hard. Every romantic scene makes me want to avert my gaze from the screen.

In the end, I feel like this title (or any FMV dating sim title) is not for me. Maybe if the game had no romantic sections whatsoever, I wouldn't had these problems. It's not like there's something inherently wrong with the game or even the genre, it's just that I am not the target audience for it.