Sickness

I found this to be a fairly mediocre visual novel that was neither as unconventional nor as frightening as I expected it to be. Purportedly this is about the inexplicably named Suoh Tesla's titular 'Sickness', which manifests as nausea and intrusive thoughts, such as "I want to kill this person" or "My sister is hot." After killing his boss at work he gets drafted in to working as a collector for mob boss Karasu. From then on the game settles into a routine where the player can make choices about how to approach various hits, and about who to spend Suoh's free time with. Suoh's 'Sickness' pops up now and then, but doesn't make as much of an impact as one would expect. In short there is never any tension in regards to it - the player is never faced with any difficult decisions when it comes to managing his 'Sickness', thus rendering it little more than text displayed as BG instead of within the textbox. There is also little tension outside of choices, as Suoh more or less accepts his 'Sickness', reasoning that with the help of either Sara or Misa, he would keep it at bay. Which brings me to the two heroines in question. Sara is a common anime trope, immediately recognizable after her first few lines of dialogue. Namely - a possessive sister who cares about nothing, except for [strike] the harem lead [/strike] her twin brother. In weebspeak, her character would be summed up as the 'yandere imouto'. Misa would be more interesting as a reluctant assassin knowing little other than a life of killing. However she is also unable to speak. This effectively defangs her character, as she is unable to put to voice any of her thoughts and opinions. She lacks menace and essentially becomes nothing more than a blob of cute affectations. Because its heroines are so rote, the game struggles to get the player to invest emotionally. Suoh could have been a good link for the player to invest intellectually - after all, amoral protagonists are interesting. However, Suoh oscillates between amorality and morality, never fully committing to either. Another point that saps interest in the novel is this: the player is constantly being told that Suoh is very good at what he does because he is preternaturally adaptable. There are multiple scenes of mob boss Karasu praising Suoh and how he could do anything he puts his mind to. However, since that is his key strength as an assassin, the reader knows that Suoh will succeed in whatever he does. I had high hopes for 'Sickness', as I was expecting a fresh, unconventional visual novel that was disturbing and truly not for the faint of heart. Unfortunately, due to its lack of narrative tension and cookie-cutter characters, it can't measure up to other visual novels competing in that space.

[I] Sickness [/i] was released long time ago, one of so many visual novels in my steam library I still need find time to play. This story deserves all those numerous positive reviews and mine will also be a praising one. Though it took me so much time to finish it with lots of recent real life distractions. Judging by the title I thought I'd experience something scary, gory, truly sickening and thus highly emotional but frankly speaking my expectations were deceived xD That was astonishing! My MC is a despicable criminal, not bound with any moral principles accepted in modern society. But the story is so immersive that I totally share what he feels. At some point (and quite soon) I stop judging, I believe he acts natural in those circumstances. And that WAS kinda scary. When similar shift in reality perception happens, when you start sympathizing criminals, villains, mentally sick people... that makes me feel as if my very core is shaken, as if I'm a bit losing myself in someone else's (absolutely different to my) personality. And that's what I find exciting in well-written stories forcing me to experience something new, smth I'll never experience in real life. So, once again, I totally disapprove MC's actions, I don't support violence in real life but disappearing in his personalty I'm totally into everything he does in virtual world. I hope I don't sound insane the way he was XD https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2725138947 The story has quite a number of disturbing topics, a player should be warned: mental illnesses, violence, rape attempts, incest, distressing images of death, possible suicide, bloody images of killing... Incest is especially sickening for me. I thought I'll avoid it. You still can reach all the endings and achievements without taking those nasty choices but... some CGS will be blocked in this case. At the beginning of the game feeling sick with that abnormal sister's behavior I thought for the first time ever the completionist in me will have to bear with the unfinished game but you know, again, by the end of the story I felt so entranced by it that I played through all possible choices and even felt it was natural. I felt no one should be judged if their actions don't harm others and it was totally consensual. Again the moralist in me is disgusted that I felt that way while playing XD https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2752587367 There are several routes, some of them were absolutely unexpected for me. Seriously, after some obvious love interests, suddenly more candidates appeared, that was great fun. Love in this dark story is not the main focus, there's just the right amount of it among all the crimes. I'm not a fan of stories with male MC romancing cute girls. But here I enjoyed every love/friendship scene available. +despite general dark motives the story was often funny and relatable; +great art, lots of CGs that are btw named in the gallery; +achievements, cards, plus one 'perfect' game in steam statistics; +enough save slots; +some nice features, for example, the gallery is accessible without leaving the story. No need to save, leave, load again to check the progress of CGs. --some typos; --I still miss one CG and some variations of another CG, and the available guide isn't helpful, dunno maybe it's a bit outdated as there're some inconsistencies with the sory in the guide; --replaying the story through the eyes of another, female char would be less boring if the repeated part was skippable, or CGs were changed as they were still presented via Suoh's eyes. There was not enough new content for me to enjoy that. So, if you've read through quite a long warning list on the game's store page and you are still not afraid to give it a try XD, I highly recommend to do that! [table] [tr] [th]More thoughts about the game in a [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/readingnook/discussions/0/3202622271464483623/] Reading Nook [/url][/th] [/tr] [/table]

a good and long Visual Novel. can recommend it. lots of answer options. some different endings. has steam cards. the price of the game is in offer -75% good.

a piece of wet tissue has more personality than the characters in this vn. and that's enough reason i wasn't able to push myself to finish it. even if i was just looking for gorey/disturbing shock content, there isn't anything remarkable here. idk i just need to leave a negative review, since the amount of positive ones is surprising and mislead me into thinking i'd enjoy it lol

Avoid it, terribly mediocre The beginning is a slog, and it takes a long time to accelerate the story And the plot has more holes than a swiss cheese

When life spirals out of control and a disturbing sickness infests the mind, clinging to the last remnants of normalcy becomes the only escape left. But one day, that resolve will falter. There will come a moment when the spiral runs so deep that escape is no longer possible. In fact, maybe there was never any escape to begin with. Enjoy the sickness. It bears fruit.

I don't know why I wasted so much time with this. I guess I was hoping the reviews were true and it would get good at some point, but I got to the ending and guess what: it does NOT get good. It is the one of the most mediocre, boring, bland Visual Novels I've ever played, and I've played hundreds. PS: Now I see that I've "only" wasted 9,8 hours with this. It honestly felt much longer because of how incredibly boring it is

Sickness is a very refreshing game for anyone familiar with the medium of visual novels. Gone is the boring protagonist surrounded by a variety of highschool classmates waiting to be swept off their feet, and in its place we have a gritty story about a teenager forced into the criminal underworld to support his sister after the death of their parents. Don't get me wrong, there totally is still romance options and character specific endings but the primary focus is still the story which while not totally original is still executed very well. The art and OST are both excellent and most of the main cast is fairly interesting, and there are several different endings to pursue, with 6 bad, 1 neutral, 3 good, [spoiler] and a secret route from another characters perspective [/spoiler] however some of these are hidden and locked behind routes only available on fresh saves after completing one of the good endings. I would highly recommend pursing all of the endings as a lot of interesting details and backstory can be found on each of them [spoiler] Even the sister route, yuck [/spoiler].

DONE Although I've skipped a bit at the ending, can't recommend it (at least for starters) You're starting your new life as a criminal, and halfway through the game, the story changes to slice of life including romance and not-yet ending protag's crime participation. Should you follow morality rules and alike, the game has a interesting concept of the protag himself not having any least bit of it, ultimately leaving you together with him pondering about his course of action; rather it was moral or nah (but it happened really maybe only 2 if not 1 time; trivial at that) After ending the main game story, you may replay it from other person's view, kinda new-game + but there are no more decisions to take during new conversations You may choose between first-story girls but you'll get a wider choice after you finish the game which I don't think is anything cool considering you'll have to go through it all once more, using the skip button just like I did minutes ago. Vn-lovers should go try it but I didn't find it ammusing once the Pl0T began..

I LOVE this game! I wish there were more games like it! Not because of any graphics or anything, or even the story-line (while the pictures are nicely drawn, they're pretty average. And the story is fairly good too, but not anything spectacular) but because of the THEME! I absolutely adore the 'Dark Passenger', to use a Dexter term, that this game revolves around. And your choices to give in or not. I was a little disappointed at the limiting of the options, and that your character's personality doesn't really change all that much, no matter what you do, (and in all fairness, I DO wish he could end up dating his sister, he seems like he wants too. lol) but all in all, it's a good game. And, what's more, it's the ONLY game I have seen that touches upon this specific contriversal topic. I dearly wish there was more games like it. Especially if they have choices that allows you to dive deeper into the Sickness of the mind, and have you end up in very interesting dark place. (Likely trying to make a choice that let's you avoid the cops and/or mental institution and have an ending based on your success or failure to do such. I imagine a person like this could do a killing --literally-- working for the mafia or something. Like the Iceman did.)