Shuten Order is a game developed by Too Kyo Games and Neilo. It targets to be a multi-genre game, a Visual Novel base but with parts played as other game-genres such as Dating Simulator or Stealth Survival Horror. I would personally say it is a Visual Novel with “mini-games” from other genres. The game is available currently for Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 and Steam. I played it on Nintendo Switch 2.
In the story, you play as Rei Shimobe who wakes up in a hotel room and does not remember a thing. Later, you are visited by 2 characters that call themselves angels and they say Rei has died and got another chance to reincarnate with one condition: “You must find who killed you!”. The main suspects are the 5 ministers from an organization called Shuten Order. And thus, the adventure of Rei Shimobe discovering “whodunnit” begins.
You have 5 suspects, to try and discover who killed you, and you must select one that you think is the culprit. And here is where the game changes from traditional Visual Novels! Each route has a different gameplay mechanic:
1 – Minister of Justice plays as investigation games such as Ace Attorney/Danganronpa games. You will enter a situation where you need to find clues in a point and click style and then present the correct evidence to move forward during a “trial”.
2 – Minister of Health plays as a dungeon crawler with some puzzles, like Etrian Odyssey games in first person, but with some puzzles like connecting colored dots or fitting a set of Tetris-like blocks in a pattern to be able to move forward instead of fighting enemies.
3 – Minister of Science plays as a multiple points of view “adventure” similar to Zero Escape games where your decision with one character affects how the game flows with the others. This is heavily text based, and thus “adventure” may not be the best word here.
4 – Minister of Education plays as dating simulators, like Date Everything! but with some twists. You must make the correct choices to make the characters fall in love with you. This is also a very text heavy gameplay.
5 – Minister of Security plays as a stealth survival horror game, maybe something like Dead By Daylight (if it was single player and the killer was an AI). Basically, you need to explore an area and avoid being found by the killer.
From the gameplay, I must say that I usually like Visual Novels. However, I did feel like the route for the Ministry of Science, Teko Ion, had me a bit tired, it simply had too much information and hardly gameplay, also, if you reach a bad ending, you must go to another character’s perspective and make different choices, but then you have to go through all the text again. Even though I really enjoyed the plot by the end, probably the one I liked the most, it was a bit tiring in the beginning.
On the other hand, the route that I had the most fun was the one from the minister of Justice, Kishiru Inugami. I absolutely love Danganronpa and Ace Attorney series, so it made me so happy to be investigating things and trying to piece things together while I needed to choose the correct clues to go through the “trial”. I really enjoyed it. Oh, I should probably mention that this route may not have been the most mind-blowing by the end, but it was definitely a good one.
I will avoid talking more about the story to not spoil the fun of the plot, but I will say this: if you like plot twists like the ones in Danganronpa or Zero Escape games, I would say the game has some very good ones, so even if you don’t like one of the routes, I would suggest to continue until the end. Also, the characters are very interesting, some a lot more crazy than others, but all with their own personalities. It is very pleasing to see more of each of the ministers, making them feel much more deep and unique. I personally enjoyed the story a lot, and had lots of different emotions towards the characters. I was genuinely happy getting to know more about all of them.
About the art style of the game, the visual novel side is very good, in my opinion. I particularly love some designs like Honoka Kokushikan, The Founder, and The Angels, Himeru and Mikotoru. I do like most of the environments, but some times it seems a bit less carefully designed than the characters. There are some moments in the game with 3D and they are also not amazing as well, especially when controlling Rei in static environments, similar to what games like Final Fantasy VII did. I would say they could have just turned those parts into point-and-click areas, felt like a weird decision. The 3D in the minister of Security part is okay, nothing ground-breaking, but nothing terrible as well. To what the game proposes, I think it works pretty well.
The OST is so good! I really enjoyed it. It feels like it has a wide-variety of styles. It feels like they were able to match it very good to each play-style and situation as well. And the game also has Voice Acting, though I think only in Japanese, which for me is good. I would love to hear it in other languages though, considering I don’t know Japanese. I would love to know how well it is translated, but personally, I think it was a very good story in English, with some little grammar errors here and there but really seemed very small ones and far from each other.
Well, the game length depends heavily on how fast you read, really. It has some options to fast-forward text (which helped my replaying a lot, especially in case I failed in a specific route) and also auto-play, but this one felt quite slow, not sure if there were options to make it a bit faster, though. It was good for eating while playing, usually I stop playing to eat depending on the game, but in this case, it actually helped me continue to understand the story while enjoying my meal. Considering I got the physical version of the game for full price (about £54.99) and that I was able to see everything from the game with around 50+ hours, I would say that it was a good value.
Okay, so rounding things up. Shuten Order was a great experience for me, with a lot of text, but with a very interesting plot and some nice gameplay changes, some not too much, great OST, nice visual art style, and quite a big length that made me lost track of time, in most of the game, at least. If you like Visual Novels, and stories like Danganronpa or Zero Escape, definitely give this one a chance. Oh, and HAPPY NEW END!
| Criteria | Scores | Our Score |
| Artistic Achievement | 1 – 5 | 4 |
| Gameplay | 1 – 5 | 4 |
| Value/Cost | 1 – 5 | 4 |
| Controls | 1 – 5 | 4 |
| Length | 1 – 5 | 5 |
Written By: Amiibru
Favourite Film: A Monster Calls
Favourite Game: Super Mario Galaxy
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About: Hey there, Amiibru here. I am a Brazilian Gaymer who loves Nintendo and Indie games. Love some RPGs, Puzzle, Rhythm and Platformer. I also enjoy books, animes, TV shows, movies, dancing and sweets!
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