Punch Line

It really just wasn't worth the wait for me. The puzzles offered only a couple minor challenges requiring serious effort or forethought and were only really a present for the first half of the game. After that it became a very binary visual novel experience with either 'the right answer' or 'the wrong answer that leads to a bad end'. The final chapter of the game is basically just literally ripped from the anime. At 50 bucks it most definitely just was not worth it as a video game in my eyes. Save yourself the money AND the trouble and just buy the anime and watch that instead. I generally hate writing reviews but this game was such a disappointment I had to say something. With a story mode that I felt like I was slogging through, puzzles that were at best mediocre, and the fact that these puzzles stop half-way through the game, this game is the first I HONESTLY wish I could get my money back instead of accepting that I simply bought a bad game.

Going to preface this by saying that i played the PS4 version of this game and this review is copy-pasted from my thoughts after I finished that but my opinion remains pretty much unchanged. This version may have fixed small issues with the translation or UI since this is being released almost a year later and i haven't checked but that does not change this VN's problems as a lot of them would be prevalent in any version. Anyway my review: A lot of the game is cutscenes ripped straight from the anime which are unpausable and unskippable, this includes the OP and ED which play at the beginning and end of each chapter, of which there are 21, and they are unskippable. The translation obviously has its flaws (see: "directer" in the op) which are honestly shocking that it made it into something official like this. The visuals are quite bad and the textbox and menus look absolutely horrible. The gameplay sections are completely predictable and involve literally repeating the exact same thing 12 times until you don't have to anymore, and the content of that is... punchline. Panties and ♥♥♥♥. People would say that the second half (last 10 chapters) is much better than the first and I feel that would be a valid judgement, if not for the fact that each chapter of the last half is so short, lasting around 15-20 minutes, the 'last half' may be its saving factor if not for the fact that it's more like 5 hours when you have to put up with way more of just bad panty minigame before you get to it. furthermore, i feel almost as though i have been scammed in buying this and even using my time on it as i was under the impression there would be content that was original to the VN, this was not exactly false but i can only think of 2 scenes that are actually new. One of which is controversial (i've seen people talk about it) and the other is literally 3 minutes added onto the epilogue. To be honest this added content was quite nice and answered a couple of questions i had at the end of the anime, though at the same time, it's literally 3 minutes... Besides this, there is no new content. To emphasise this, the last chapter, chapter 21, is literally just episode 12 of the anime. And i don't mean that it's that presented in vn form, I mean it is literally that episode of the anime playing. Ripped straight from the anime. Just 15 minutes of straight anime, unchanged, and unpausable/unskippable. And as for the actual content, I liked a couple of characters, hated particular others, but other than that it's standard Uchikoshi. If you've played other VNs from these creators such as the infinity or zero escape series, you won't get much from Punchline Considering the anime is the exact same content, presented in a quicker way, and gets to the point much faster (and actually has a much higher ratio of the good half to bad half) I seriously cannot reccomend the vn when the anime exists. The anime is actually very decent, it's well animated and has good pacing and hey with only 12 episodes it's not much of an investment, it can be worth watching In conclusion, the fact that they have, and continue to charge $50 for this is a joke and is seriously taking the piss. If I could ever get back the money I spent on this I would do it in a heartbeat. To anybody reading this is my best warning: Watch the anime instead. If you have already bought it try your best to refund it. I would only reccomend if you are a die-hard fan of punchline the anime series and even then i would implore you to reconsider. with this in mind, the punchline anime is around a 6/10. The vn (this version) is a 3/10 What a sad waste of time...

[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/]Follow our curator page: [b]IndieGems[/b] if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.[/url][/quote] [i]Punch Line[/i] is a visual novel expansion on the anime of the same name. The game has been out on Playstation in Japan for several years, in Europe and North America since last year, but it recently released onto Steam. The price tag is a bit hefty. After all, the demanding $50 with the game time around 10-15 hours means that you really have to be a fan of VNs or a fan of the anime to go out of your way to buy it. And if you own a Playstation, I just checked the prices on Amazon, you can buy the physical game for half that price in the US, so it would have been nice for a relative reduction in price with this PC port. If you have watched the anime, you know the things that go on and you understand a lot of the stuff that happens. I will not divulge any plot twists in this review, because it really would really be a disservice to you, the reader. If you haven't seen the anime but are interested in the story, know that both the game and the anime will basically follow the same plot. Different aspects of revelations may be moved around for episodic inclusion and for comprehension in the game. After all, the anime is all passive, and you can keep watching even if you don't understand. Well, what am I saying anyway? The game is rather passive as well. There are only a small handful of interactive gameplay parts in the first half that can only have so many variations. The incorrect ones lead to game over, which in this case is the world ending. And correct solutions will progress the story. In the second half of the game, when certain situations change, this mini game is no longer employed, instead it's just a purely choose-your-death visual novel--as in the right choice will progress the story, but the wrong choice leads to a game over. You get a lot more in-depth look at what is going on, and you learn a bit more about the individual characters in the game compared to the anime. What is really nice about this visual novel compared to many others is that the characters are not just 2D still-image representations with a few appearances that recur throughout the story. Rather, they are textured to have a 3D appearance, completely recreated to give a different appearance compared to the flattened hand-drawn 2D anime characters, and all of the characters are given fully looped animations. Each scene does not show much, but you definitely see where a lot of additional work went into giving this VN its own life aside from the anime. What is nice is that the story-writer for both versions were the same person, so there wasn't a fundamental shift or drastic and unwanted story plot change going from one to the other. There are segments of the anime interlaced into the game as well, where they are put in works quite well, so I have no complaints about those. But for the most part, almost all of the dialogue were reworked into the VN format and you get a fairly fresh experience compared to sitting back and watching the anime. At the end of the day, if you are fan of the anime or you have heard about this some other way, and want to have a good laugh at some really silly jokes (some that are translated quite well into English as well) then this could be for you. Just be aware of the basic concept of the protagonist who cannot look at any girl's panties without endangering the entire world. The plot twists and turns in all kinds of unexpected ways, and the story is really where this game/VN shines. Forget about the mini-game in the first half and the choose-your-death adventure in the second. They are just there to stunt the story a bit. In my opinion, they don't need to be there at all. I think both the anime and the game have their own strengths and weaknesses, and I think they complement each other quite well. I am not going to tell you whether you should play the game first or watch the anime first. The game proffers better understanding overall with its better and lengthier explanations. But I personally think that enjoyment of the plot twists can happen from either, and is not a problem for me. Like I said above, if you are a fan of VNs (as this is basically that) and the anime series by the same name, you will probably enjoy this story and everything it offers. Just be aware that there is really very little interactive gameplay and sit back for the ride. If that doesn't sound like you, this is probably too pricey for its offering of anywhere between 10-15 hours of a visual novel that might have a basic concept that is too awkward for you. Then I would think you want to save your money and look for entertainment elsewhere. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] -It's mostly a visual novel, with minimal interactive gameplay in the first half, and a selection of choices in the second half (with only one viable answer in each location). [h1]Controls[/h1] -Keyboard -There's a gamepad default launch option that I couldn't get to work properly. So I ended up mapping keyboard controls to the controller through an emulator and that worked fine. [h1]Graphics[/h1] -Mixture of 3D recreated characters with good animations and some cut scenes from the anime. [h1]Music[/h1] -A lot of music from the anime, works pretty well with the VN set up. [h1]Audience[/h1] -Targeted audience for sure, see above for details. -Warning, the basic premise has to do with the protagonist looking at girls' panties, so if this sounds like it will turn you off, it probably will. [h1]Pricing[/h1] -Quite pricey, in my opinion, especially for a targeted audience title. Of course a lot of visual novels are quite pricey, though I don't understand why. [h1]Positives[/h1] +Good story that you should not ruin by reading about it. You can choose either the anime or the game and have quite a blast weaving through all of the random twists and turns. +Visually appealing and recreated characters in a 3D animated texture is nice compared to the anime. +All dialogues big and small are voice-acted in Japanese with English subtitles. +A good amount of entertainment. [h1]Negatives[/h1] -Opening and Closing songs/credits per episode cannot be skipped. -Game locks to 1080p at 30 FPS (though it's a VN, so it's not a huge deal) -Game gives keyboard controls on a layout, but the manual included gives PS4 button layouts. Yet the controller mapping seems to be off. (Resolved by mapping everything onto an emulated PS4 controller, but seems to be unnecessarily difficult.) -No achievements (they are there on Playstation, just didn't get ported over with triggers.) [h1]Conclusion[/h1] [i]Punch Line[/i] is a good and fun distraction from reality with its absurd story twists and turns. The over-the-top humor seen in the anime series are carried into the game as well. It's purely a VN and after a while, the episode ending/opening song/animation might get a little annoying because of it showing up numerous times and are unskippable. But it is what it is, it does work out in the end as a worthy visual novel. I don't regret playing it and spending my time with it. As for the cost of things, if you have a Playstation, it might be the more wallet-saving measure for you. For the specific audience that I mentioned above, I would recommend it. [quote]I received the product for free. I did not receive any compensation to write this review. The opinions represented here are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way.[/quote]

Bad port. Only available in fullscreen or windowed with no options to tune the graphics settings. In fullscreen it seems to be locked to 60fps. Now that would be a good thing if it didn't seem like the animations are tied to frame rate making everything look like it's playing in fast-forward. Couple of other bugs I encountered in my short time with the game. Not worth $50, just go watch the anime and save your money.

Absolutely shameful these devs are charging almost 60$ CND for what is essentially a 10 hours or so Visual Novel that takes a ton of clips from the anime adaptation. This is a horrible port for what could had been a decent supernatural comedy anime game, all the inputs prompts use buttons from Xbox controller even if your using keyboard (which makes it extremely confusing remembering what key does what), you can press F1 at any time to see what key does what, but its still confusing, for example if the game asks you to press X... it actually means D key...So you essentially just press random keys and hope you get lucky. Also, the game has achievements but not a single one works and devs just abandoned the game. Do yourself a favor and just watch the anime if you are interested, or buy this game if you ever see it on sale for very cheap (we talking like 10$ or less), and play it with an Xbox controller, otherwise you are just throwing your money away... the game is charming, but sadly it lacks some basic polish to make it playable.

Overall, I can't recommend this game in its current state. The characters are interesting, and the story itself is decent enough, but in this case it's better to go watch the anime instead (which in a rare event for anime and game adaptations, the anime actually has more story than the game does). While the anime does have a "go play the game" ending, and the game does have the happy ending that the anime is missing -- and it is a nice ending -- I don't think it can really justify doing pretty much the whole anime over again in game form. There is a bit of fairly simplistic puzzle-room-esque gameplay in the first half, while the second half (and anime watchers already know what the tipping point is) has none of that and just goes back to a mix of dialogue choices (and by that I mean "pick the single correct answer or it's game over), animations, and VN scenes. But one of the most compelling elements to perhaps choose game over anime -- the achievements -- while supposedly present, don't actually work at all. You just can't get any of them, which is presumably a simple bug that the developer has never bothered to patch. The game also has more of a focus on the panty shots (which I felt were the weakest part of the story and entirely gratuitous, even though there's an attempt to justify it in-world) -- including a gallery of ones you've seen, despite them causing a game over for whatever sequence you're in. Add to this that the game comes with a full anime OP and ED sequence repeated for each "episode" (which [b]is[/b] skippable, but in a very unobvious way that is not revealed through the tutorial, only in the included manual), and some of the puzzle sequences are timed -- well, it's all just a recipe for frustration rather than fun. The game does include some scenes from the anime as well -- most especially in the second half. But some of the final scenes play out just a little bit differently, and there's an extra OVA unlocked in the main menu once you've finished. Overall, if you loved the anime and just can't live without seeing the happy ending, then it may be worth the trouble, but only at a deep deep discount. Otherwise just don't bother. If the developers ever fix the achievements, then that might bump it up a little bit higher.

An epic man's quest to save the Earth by avoiding panties; ends up dying BILLIONS of times in an attempt to unknowingly recover his balls while becoming immortal; and is most likely going to have sex with himself. Nope. I'm serious. Can't believe I almost gave up on this game! Okay; slow start, do be warned. The story takes a bit of time to pick up, but after a while I couldn't leave it alone; I had grown endeared to the character and the story and mysteries of the series piqued my interest. To be fair, I'm a sucker for WELL-DONE time travel shenanigans - and panties - so my opinion is certainly biased. Gotta say; this doesn't happen often; I'm usually pretty good at sniffing reveals and twists but this one got me completely by surprise in at least two separate occasions. The last scenes were beautifully animated; basically a whole anime episode included just for closure. Definitely recommended.

people are right about it getting good halfway through, but theres too much you have to put up with before that to make it really worth it. the puzzles are trial-and-error, the characters start off too generically, and the pacing is like if one piece was slice-of-life. there's a bunch of details that make things just that much worse too, like how you cant skip the anime opening and ending between episodes, the controls are labelled wrong for the controller, and the achievements are broken. again, if youre patient there's a lot to like after the story takes off, but i'd say its only for uchikoshi superfans (even then you can just watch the anime). and dont buy it at full price i got it for like 5 bucks

This game is overall good, but hard to recommend. I wanna start off by saying this is a visual novel at heart and if you're looking into buying this for the puzzles then don't. The major cons of this game are that the first half is very slow and the puzzles are just mindless trial and error. It's also worth mentioning that this game has a lot of fanservice, and while not necessarily a bad thing depending on your tastes it can take you out of it. The pros of this game are that it has a very strong and complex story reminiscent of Uchikoshi's other works, as well as decent characters. tldr: Good story if you can get past the slow start, stupid puzzles, and aren't bothered by fanservice

A punch line without the set-up. It’s frankly amazing how little effort PQube has put into this release while asking 49.99€ for it. The Steam version is shipped broken. As soon as you launch the game from the launcher, Steam will mark Punch Line as not running and thus will not update your gameplay time, won’t show you the Steam Overlay, and most importantly, will not allow you to use Steam Input. Seeing as I was trying to play this with my DualSense controller, not having my controller working at all was quite the issue. Thankfully there is a workaround for this: open the game installation directory, remove the MAGESgamelauncher.exe executable, make a copy of the Game.exe executable and rename that copy to MAGESgamelauncher.exe. Congratulations, you can now use the Steam overlay, Steam Input and you will be correctly marked as playing Punch Line on your profile. I’m guessing that this issue stems from the launcher launching the game executable as a completely separate process instead of a child process, so Steam never hooks the overlay/Steam Input into the Game.exe process and thus breaks everything. I’m also guessing that PQube has absolutely no quality assurance process since this should be the thing you notice immediately. Punch Line also used to have achievements on Steam – except those achievements never worked, so they “fixed” the issue by just removing them entirely. And they have the gall to ask 49.99€ for this release. Once you’ve managed to actually get the game working, what you have is not that great. Ostensibly Punch Line is a visual novel with puzzle elements, but the puzzle elements in the game are so poor, annoying and unrewarding that the game would be better as a straight visual novel. There’s not really any way to figure out the puzzles, so you’ll just end up taking wild guesses and then doing a reset if you guessed wrong. There isn’t even any kind of fun interactions for non-progressing choices like there is for example in the Somnium segments in Uchikoshi’s AI – The Somnium Files games. The game is also around 12 hours long, and the annoying puzzle segments stop appearing around eight hours in – really for the game’s benefit. Besides the obvious launcher issue, there are a bunch of smaller issues that pop up while playing through the game. While it never prevented me from finishing the game, the default controller layout seems to be broken (at least on a DualSense controller), with buttons that should do something not doing it. The background audio sometimes eclipses dialogue audio, even with the default volume settings. And perhaps the most annoying issue: unskippable anime-style opening and ending themes that you will have to watch about twenty times each. It’s possible that these smaller issues could be fixed by tweaking the settings, but I don’t want to spend all of my time fixing this game on PQube’s behalf. Visually the game looks about okay – the character visuals are nice, but the environmental details leave room for improvement and the video segments, despite this having a tie-in anime, are kinda bad. I think they’ve had to retime the animations for the dialogue and it ends up looking more awkward than I would’ve imagined. At least during the final hour of the game, which is almost entirely video, the quality is at least decent. Thankfully there are no issues to point out on the music and voice acting side. Well, beyond the volume mixing issue noted earlier that is. Really the only highlight of Punch Line is the story. It’s definitely not Uchikoshi’s finest work, but there’s a fairly interesting story with likeable characters. A lot more lighthearted than a lot Uchikoshi works too, considering how much of it revolves around panties. The writing also does a good job of resolving all of the mysteries that it sets up, so you won’t be left with nagging questions at the end. I actually really liked the Punch Line anime when I watched it over a decade ago, and it made me want to play through the game. But since it took several years for the game to actually come out in the west, I kinda forgot about the whole thing and only got to it now that the anime’s already over ten years old. Perhaps that was for the best, since I’d already forgotten a lot of the details about it, and most of the story is the exact same as in the anime. Really what the game has going for it over the anime is that there’s a different (and better) ending, and the story is more expanded, as the game has about double the runtime. But alas, it’s really hard to recommend going through the story through the game rather than by watching the anime. Punch Line is a good story hidden in a bad game. There’s just way too many issues with this game and they will never ever be resolved. If you absolutely insist on playing the game instead of watching the anime, buy this on a deep discount. PQube simply does not deserve the full price of admission for this mess.