I want to preface this by saying Quantum Suicide isn't a [i]bad[/i] game. It's just not a very good game, either. Do I think it's a total waste of time? Not at all, I actually enjoyed many parts of it. It managed to hold my attention for hours, and I think you'll be able to say the same if you decide to play it.
== Story ==
This is, in my opinion, where the game falls flattest. I think it suffers from a lack of focus. It tries to be Danganronpa, Zero Escape, and a dating sim all at once, and it never quite succeeds at being any of them. I bought this game because I was starving for a game like DR or ZE, and while it [i]sort of[/i] filled the role of both, it struggled to capture what makes those series enjoyable.
It comes closest to capturing Zero Escape's essence with its timeline hopping and sci-fi mechanics, but it definitely falls short. The sci-fi mechanics aren't as heavily integrated into the story, and the explanation for each one is vague, if one is even provided at all -- if you don't understand time dilation already, this game won't explain it to you adequately, even though it really should. It's a shame, as this was one of the aspects I was most looking forward to.
The Danganronpa aspects are much more lacking. It follows the general structure of a Danganronpa game, with several days of peace, a killing segment, and then an execution, but all of them have shortcomings. The executions in particular were kind of bland and uneventful, which is a shame, because they had a lot of potential for emotional depth. I never felt sad about any of the deaths, and for that matter, neither did the characters. The writing failed to accurately portray how the characters would be feeling. They've known each other their entire lives -- why do their reactions feel so apathetic?
I wish the game didn't try to be a dating sim. There were a lot of routes that I had [i]no[/i] interest in because it really tried to push romantic tension with one of the men. In a few instances, you were even [i]punished[/i] for rejecting their advances, even when said advances involved drugging you. I like some of the characters -- Kimiko and Beatrix were my favorites -- but a lot of them didn't really interest me, and I would've liked for each timeline to focus less on romance and more on story.
The conclusion felt like nothing but a formality, to be quite honest. It didn't feel like I had to work for it. Finishing the game wasn't rewarding, it was just a, "Oh, that's it?" sort of moment. This is by far the worst part, I think. Danganronpa and Zero Escape games both have very intense, bittersweet endings, but that's not the case with Quantum Suicide.
== Gameplay ==
It's a Ren'Py visual novel -- nothing too crazy. The only major difference is the timeline function, which works well enough. Many reviews talk about bugs, but I didn't encounter any. Sure, there was some dialogue that didn't have voice lines (which I presume was a bug), but for the most part everything seemed fine.
This wasn't really a bug, but a lot of the later segments only make sense if you picked certain people to spend time with in the earlier segments. People acted really close with me even though I had barely spent any time with them beforehand. One example that really struck me was that very late in the game, Melody called me "Monkey", even though she had never done that before. I was extremely confused, as I was just asked to input a password that I didn't know, and put "monkey" as a random answer and I thought I had somehow triggered an extremely obscure event. But no. Upon replaying earlier segments, I found out she started calling me Monkey during one of those. It was a really jarring experience, but things like that were all over the place.
One gripe I had with the gameplay is that it forces you to play as a boy to get the True Ending. I was under the assumption that you could choose your gender and play the whole game as that gender, and I operated fine under that assumption until I got very close to the True Ending before getting hit with a story lock instructing me to play a certain timeline on the male route. I was not happy about that. Sure, if you'd like, you can play as a boy and get a completely different set of endings and deaths that didn't appear in the girl routes, but I don't particularly want to.
My biggest gripe has to be with the Deletion Games, though. The second one is by far the most interesting, as you can actually try to figure it out yourself, which I found to be very engaging. The third one is the one you have to play the most, which is really frustrating as there's no strategy to it whatsoever -- I basically just picked random choices each time until I found a timeline I liked.
Something that mildly annoyed me was that dialogue that's the same across different routes is unskippable. That's a minor nitpick, though.
== Visuals ==
I like the art! It has a nice anime style, and the CGs were really well drawn, especially some of the executions. There was a panty shot CG which made me really uncomfortable, though. I also didn't like seeing shirtless men so often. Other than that, I don't have too much else to say.
== Sound ==
The music was alright. I feel like the soundtrack was too small, if anything. A lot of the time, the music just didn't fit the situation. While it was usually serviceable, it didn't really have any impact to it.
The voice acting was less than ideal. I'd heard bad things about the English voices, so I played in Japanese, and I can say they really weren't that great, either. A lot of the voice acting felt really monotone, even during executions. It definitely added to the problem of executions not being emotional. I understand that the voice actors were all amateurs, so I can't fault them too much, but it really broke my immersion when a character was about to lose their best friend since birth and the tone of their voice only managed to capture the feeling of "Damn, this sucks."
== Conclusion ==
I just said a lot of negative things about Quantum Suicide, but I want to reiterate that I don't think it's a bad game. I still enjoyed many aspects of it, but the more I played, the more its flaws started to reveal themselves, and the more frustrated I became. As a fellow woman game developer, I know how hard it is to make a complete game, and I think it's remarkable that MoltenCherry released this game! I also admire the work she puts in continually patching bugs out! I'd like to see future games from her, because I do think she has a lot of potential to improve.
Overall, would I recommend Quantum Suicide? Not really. If you're a Danganronpa/Zero Escape fan and you're [i]really[/i] desperate for games similar to those and you've exhausted all the other possibilities, then this will [i]sort of[/i] scratch the itch, but I think more than anything else, it'll just leave you wishing you had replayed Virtue's Last Reward instead.
