Dysfunctional Systems: Orientation

Hoh boy this one hurts. 3 years after the kickstarter, 2 years after it turned up dry and had to issue refunds, we have the prequel episode stretch goal at least, dropping out of seemingly nowhere like a Mediator phasing into our reality from another plane. And what has all this hullaballoo resulted in? A... An okay, but purposeless prequel. Oops. The emphasis is really on [i]purposeless[/i] here. The game follows Winter's first week at the school Mediātōrum as she makes new weird friends and goes to classes. There is barely a plot to speak of, and why should there be? This is an act before the inciting incident, a peek behind the curtains before the play comes on. And all I really see is a lot of stalling and scrambling, with the occasional shining bit of improv. I do not envy the creators. They've somewhat written themselves into a corner and encountered the classic problem with Utopias: They're ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boring. Ideologically interesting, yes - which is why the more dry, educational classes makes for some of the more intriguing bits, though again [i]purposeless[/i] as much of their information is inferred from Episode 1's story and dialogue - but Utopias are unable to sustain any conflict more than mild interpersonal relationship problems. This is why Episode 1 was set on an off-world, as the setting allowed for a driving political thriller that kept the stakes sky high. Here? Winter's a bit worried why her roommate is giving the cold shoulder, in a mystery that resolves itself neatly, cleanly, and with a complete anti-climax. I can buy going for more of a slice-of-life tone, but then you have to deliver on all the messy, complicated, and ultimately, well, [i]chaotic[/i] ways that people behave - an anti-thesis to the world presented. The slice-of-life conflict can't by necessity deliver, and there is no internal struggle to speak of within Winter, and so the lack of a driving plot or motivation leaves Winter a fairly unengaged character, and thus us a fairly unengaged audience. She just kinda bumbles through this episode, stumbling into Scene after Scene with the same 5 whacky characters over and over. Which leads to an overarching feeling of: [i]Why?[/i] A poorly thought out stretch goal, yes, but what more am I getting out of this other than words to fill a Wiki page with? Perhaps just potential: Some of the character shine in spots of sharp writing, the exploration of lofty ideology and philosophy could easily stumble but always maintain logic and even - [i]shockingly[/i] - have some backbone to their presentation, and Winter is just cute as a button. But there is no meaning here, because there was never meant to be one; we see only the shadow cast of a potential Episode 2 or 3. Dischan has, for me, always been a group filled with great potential. Juniper's Knot and Episode 1 shows it in spades. But potential, just like dear Winter, is nothing if not actualized. And when you start charging for your hobby projects, especially ones that are [i]this short[/i], you'll need to deliver more than just promise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eohHwsplvY

The art is a complete and utter failure. It's too painful to even look at. LtMC was really beautiful, but Orientation is sub-average and doesn't match the established asthetic. Winter looks like a complete moron, grimacing and blushing like an vacuous moeblob reject, the new characters are very poorly designed and don't fit in at all with the themes established in LtMC. I was really pleased to see Dischan return, and especially when they published Jupiter's Knot on Steam, and I got really excited when I saw a new Dysfunctional Systems release, but I am viscerally disgusted by the new art. It's like sticking a Saturday morning kid's anime character in a Rembrandt. Either is fine on its own, but together they're just bad. Additionally, the quality itself is poor. The very first image you see when starting is Winter's face with bizarrely mis-proportioned features, staring cross-eyed at a mouse on her forehead. It's way too much to take in. It just looks bad. Sorry. I feel like going any further with Orientation would only ruin LtMC for me. :(

A very short kinetic visual novel (took me 1 hour to finish) and a prequel to [i]Learning to Manage Chaos[/i]. To be honest, I think you really need to get the first game to fully understand (maybe even like?) this prequel. I think that it can be somewhat boring and confusing to new readers so make sure to play the first game. [i]Dysfunctional Systems[/i] was already a “dead project” when I first got into it. The first chapter was good, and I was very sad that the next episodes were cancelled. Time passed and one day I saw that [i]Orientation[/i] was going to be released. From what I read on the developer’s blog it seems that they’ve decided to finish this story. That’s great! Well, back to Orientation. I liked the previous art style better, but this one is good too. BGM was amazing even for such a short title. About the story… It wasn’t that great. I feel like this was made more to “tease” the DS fans for the next chapters. I also found this prequel a bit expensive… Maybe waiting for a sale would be a good idea. 5/10. I only recommend it if you really enjoyed the first chapter and feels like getting more DS material. Even so, it’s not so exciting like the previous game and it’s about Winter’s days at her school. That’s basically it. [spoiler]I also loved Jack’s hoodie. It was adorable lol[/spoiler]

It's... quite good for the price. A bit short, with a few story discrepancies, rushed parts, but good nonetheless. The departure of the main animator from ep1 is the main flaw of this kinetic novel. Still, I would recommend it for people who have been following Dischan for a "long" time and want to see more from the studio. Steam users, if you are not familliar with the works of Dischan, this is not recommended for you. This product is the prologue of an already-existing series that also already had the drawback of being extremely short for the quantity of story it wants to tell. Make sure you play episode 1 and/or see playthrough videos first to see if it floats your boat. Overall this product is 6+/10. The music and the story are excellent, but the art and the format are subpar compared to what we have been "sold" in the last products. The potential is there for a 9/10 episode 2 and I can only hope it will go well.

Dysfunctional Systems was something that I backed after playing the first episode for about $120 on Kickstarter, and was terribly disappointed when the project was cancelled. Despite reaching above the limit, they somehow misspent all the $67k they gathered. Thus, I was really surprised by the return, starting with the Prequel the promised. The first thing to note is that this is a prequel, and as expected, tried to do some character introductions that appeared in Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos (Episode 1/5). They mostly succeeded in that aspect, and explains why your roommate, Waverly, had her reaction to certain characters. It does spin a little thread around describing a utopia but unfortunately, the interest isn't really gripping; to be precise, it's very boring. Unfortunately, this takes a majority of the entire game [well, it is school week] and I can't help but feel like there should be a better way to tell us what's their definition of a utopia. What they literally (really) did is put Winter in a classroom with a teacher, and he/she will ramble on about different aspects that occurs in their world. Unless you're really interested in stuff like that, I, personally, will get that same bored look Winter has in each of the classrooms. There's a noticable change in the artstyle comapred to Episode 1, and while not terrible and can get used to, I still would prefer the first one. The character sprites don't have many expressions or interactions, while that's not really the drawing point (no pun) of a kinetic novel, I wouldn't mind several more. The settings where such interactions occur are very limited. I count a maximum of 5...maybe 6, but I'm pretty sure it's 5. Music is good, however, CombatPlayer did well in putting a similar style to his music as he did in Episode 1. I feel this is one of the better parts about this purchase but hey, you can pick that up on his Bandcamp for free [or donate] The game isn't very long, got through it in about an hour and a few minutes and this is at a rather slow pace. Overall I'd like to note that the only reason you should buy this is to support the developer [and Steam?] because this Prequel is really not necessary whatsoever to Episode 1. That's my main gripe. If you were interested in Episode 1, you can go ahead with waiting for Episode 2, 3 and so on. This prequel was probably a stretch goal that wasn't really planned and not-so-perfectly executed. It's pretty boring. Hurts to say that Jeremy (creator) was right, this wasn't something really good. It's just "Okay", and that's why he decided not to release it initially. I would rate this 5/10. Definitely worth checking out, but no loss missing out too.

I'll start off by saying I was a huge fan of episode one of "Dysfunctional Systems" when it first released. I loved the entire presentation, the whole concept of its sci-fi elements and plot, and how the characters are pretty interesting and how they interacted with each other. I should also mention that I was a huge fan of Dischan before the incident and their announced closure in 2015. In short, I think "Dysfunctional Systems: Orientation", or episode zero, is pretty good on its own. Its presentation is just as good as episode one, the art style though new is consistant throughout and easy to get used to, and the writing (which I found to be the weakest part) is pretty consistant across the board. The only strong part about the writing would be how each character interacts and bounces off one another through dialogue. At its weakest, you are forced to sit though info dumps in a classroom lecture setting for a pretty heafty portion of the VN. When brought together with episode 1, it's hard for me to believe that this takes right before the events that happen in episode 1. There is a large gap of time between the main character Winter's activites of her first week of school to her 2nd time traveling to another planet. The new cast of characters in this episode are very interesting and have potential to be good characters, but only one is in episode one and her presence is barely there. It begs the point: why does this VN exist? It's not long enough to set up the events of episode 1, and it fails to bridge the gap between the two episodes. In closing, would I recommend this? Honestly, if you're a new reader to this series I would advise you to wait until episode 2 comes out. Currently, there is no timeframe of release and, given Dischan's track record, it may never come out at all. It pains me to say this because on release I thought "Dysfunctional Systems" had the potential to be a great visual novel. I would only recommend it if you already have some investment in the series and have read episode one before because it's just more of the same. I've been burned more than once with Dischan, so I have to give this one a thumbs down. Read my full, in-depth review here: https://kupowrites.wordpress.com/2017/07/27/visual-novel-review-dysfunctional-systems-orientation/

First a little background, some time ago Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos was released. The game was short, it wasn't great but it had potential. Then kickstarter happened, they funded the project (next episodes) and ultimately the whole thing crashed. Now, we have another release, this time a prequel. Is it good? It's disappointing. The art is completely different from the Learning to Manage Chaos. It's Inferior. It lacks the Japanese look, futhermore the characters designs look somewhat...lacking. The plot, characters, writing are uninspiring. Some people from Learning to Manage Chaos return, some new ones are introduced. But will you care about them? No. Does this world features finally a solid foundation? No. Yes, we get to know few new bits about this world but it's still not enough. Furthermore similarly to Learning to Manage Chaos the game is short. Sadly the only really good part of the game is the music. CombatPlayer did once again a good job. Then again even this part is inferior compared to Learning to Manage Chaos. One can dream about another track as powerful as "Cado Astrum". While I'm all in for supporting western made visual novels I can't recommend this. After Learning to Manage Chaos an improvement should have happen, instead we got a step backwards.

原来是前传，Episode0，讲Winter刚入学时的事儿。 [b]虽然是英文，但生词不多，也不涉及复杂的语法，很容易看懂。[/b]哦，如果你不计较那些词条的话。 至于这个突变的画风，一开始确实很抗拒，不过玩着玩着也就习惯了，甚至还能觉出些美感……就是新人设之浮夸我怎么也无法接受，跟作品逼格太不相配叻。Episode1里入江出场的时候我还脑补成东方样貌的色气大姐姐，结果是预览里那位红头发戴太阳镜的奇人，我…… 主要内容就是通过上课抖世界观和人设。都是些日常剧情，看她们互怼还蛮好笑的。最后出现了据说是第二章主角的新导师，不知道第一章的那位还好么，是不是人气太低被砍了哦。 百合福利大概有。舍友剧情比较爆炸，撇开入江那样臭屁惹人烦的不说，Waverly对别人都十分友善，唯独针对什么都没干的Winter。原因不剧透，想也知道可概括为傲娇，嗯。 反正，喜欢Episode1的话还是推荐买的，虽然总体而言比较平淡，可有可无的一章（咳）但在没有后续作品的情况下，玩得还算满足啦。 （我可能是个脑残粉吧） 而且我觉得照Episode1那个调调，整作起码得5章才能讲出点像样的东西，加上本章销量不高的样子，能不能看到Episode2都很难说，反正我是不抱希望了，但会提醒孙子帮我留意的。

A short but sweet prolouge to episode one and the potential future of the series. In this episode the artist has changed. However I feel they did a great job in their own style. Outside of that the production quality in the music and dialog is as high as ever for a Dischan Media project. The story itself is despite it's short length has a lot of great moments and even offers some interesting questions to ponder within the story itself and maybe even your own life. I'd recommend this so long as you buy it with Episode 1 as well (if you don't already have it). Since both games work well off each other in their own ways.

As a fan of Dischan since the initial Cradle Song demo, I'm pretty biased here, but I enjoyed Orientation. Another reviewer summarised my main gripe - Dischan has a lot of potential and has sort of written themselves into a corner with a prologue episode that doesn't add much to the main story. I can see where things are being set up for future exploration, however, and I'm interested in seeing where that goes. The main story of Orientation mostly suffers from being a bit detached from the main story of the rest of Dysfunctional Systems, but it's a charming little slice of life that works to explore the setting and characters (particularly their mindset) a little more. The writing is believable, though some characters can be inconsistent, which in a character focused VN is important. The art is a mixed bag. Some of the models look rushed and have odd anatomy, while others are well made and show a lot of attention to detail. Backgrounds, however, are great and show a good understanding of conveying information without being distracting. The music is simple but that's precisely why it's nice. Overall I'd recommend Orientation to any fans of Dischan's prior work, and I'd also recommend any of their prior work to anyone. Juniper's Knot especially was a great kinetic novel and I feel like if the team can achieve such a tightly written KN, they can pull it off in the future with more Dysfunctional Systems episodes. It's good to see such a promising studio getting back on their feet.