I enjoyed Head AS Code, the prequel game, enough that I immediately hopped over to this game. Head AS Code was plagued with grammatical errors, but it wasn't egregious enough to impact the experience for me. Birth ME Code is another story. The strange grammar and tense switches creates major problems in narrative given all the actual rules to follow and the logical deductions the player has to make. With the imprecise nature of the wording, the effect is far more aggravating than the prequel. Just some quick examples:
"And also, you haven't been exploring with the others earlier."
"You can't see it just yet, but the cylinder in the middle will be gone… In front of you, once your vision will have come back, will be a shotgun."
"Hopefully you didn't kill off your best puzzle solver yet, or else you would regret it now."
In a game like this, the explanation of the rules and any infodumps must be tight and concise. The author seems to be someone who learned English as a second language, and unfortunately this writing style really impedes on the player's understanding of the entire story.
As an improvement, or perhaps in some cases a deprovement, there are actually puzzles to solve in this game. It's still barebones in terms of escape room, but there are puzzles nonetheless. Unfortunately they are essentially all riddles - most are wordplay, some require abstract thinking, some are just plain not good. Especially towards the end, the more nonobvious puzzles gate the story.
Head AS Code is relatively linear in path, whereas this game actually uses a flag system to determine the route. Unfortunately the narrative isn't tight enough to support this switch, which results in some glaring plot inconsistencies and continuities. It's quite immersion breaking in my opinion. Two glaring ones that stand out to me:
1) In all routes, it doesn't matter who you choose to vote for. It always states something like "Character X's face popped up," which is totally fine. In one specific instance, the game railroads you into choosing a specific character, but still gives you the option of choosing someone else. If you choose someone else, the next scene it still treats it like you chose the character you're supposed to pick. Why even bother giving a choice?
2) After Deduction 4, there's a specific sequence where you see certain shenanigans happen to the voting machines. You literally see exactly what a specific character does to manipulate the vote, and yet if you don't have enough TRUST with certain characters, the MC never brings that up and acts all surprised at the result. It doesn't make any sense.
The ending is also big disappointment. It's essentially a big wall of text with lots of pseudoscience jargon, I literally can't tell exactly what the game is trying to relate to the player. I'm almost entirely sure the ending mixes up characters G and H at several points, which, combined with the dubious ability of the author to use the correct grammatical tenses, results in unacceptable levels of confusion.
Overall, I was tempted to give this game a thumbs down, but I still feel like I got enough enjoyment out of it for a thumbs up. I really hope the writing in the 3rd game is better.
Another gripe that require some MINOR SPOILERS
The mastermind's justification for kidnapping the characters for this death game is weak. Most of the characters are high schoolers, as young as 13 or 14 years old. Yeah, many of them did some bad stuff, but there's a reason that we have a juvenile justice system and don't just lump children together with adults in prison (for the most part). Seriously, giving a kid the death sentence for forgery is beyond the pale. The main character just accepting the mastermind's explanation is bizarre.
