I've been a Steins;Gate anime fan for a while now and last summer during the record sale I finally decided I wanted to read the whole SciADV VN series. Bought the whole series and got started with the first entry: CHAOS;HEAD NOAH

I did my research and discovered that the community overwhelmingly considers the C;H N official translations to be bad. Therefor, I used the fantastic Committee of Zero translation patch. It not only improves the translations, but adds (removed) content too. Highly recommended.

CHAOS;HEAD NOAH is a totally different story compared to Steins;Gate. Do not expect a prequel or sequel: rather consider it a story that happens in the same universe, but more or less separately. Some small universe elements and details will be carried over to the S;G VN though. The theme is also very different: don't expect time travel or time lines, expect gore, murder, mental illness and sci-fi magic.

As soon as you get into the game, you notice that the protagonist, Nishijou Takumi, is not normal. Rather, he is a "weird otaku freak", as he calls himself often. He seems to be a very paranoid and sometimes even schizophrenic person, trying to flee from every situation he is in. In most stories, the protagonist will engage in the story; Takumi tries to escape the story. He would rather play games inside at his place and get ignored by the whole world: the only thing forcing him to go outside is school. In doing so, strange things start to happen all around him, involving him against his will. He gets in contact with mysterious "3D" (ie real) girls, mostly out of necessity. Is the world after him? Or is it all just his paranoia?

Takumi's character results in a very slow story: right when stuff is happening, Takumi will run away. This will feel pretty annoying and frustrating; you'll probably hate Takumi, at least in the beginning. He will get a little better later on in the story though and you'll start to slowly understand him and feel bad for him along the way. Finishing the story is a rewarding experience, with most mysteries solved at the end. In any way, consider this fact if you can't be asked to sit through a part of a story you don't like.

The VN features a common ending, 6 character endings, an alternative ending and a true ending. Reaching the true ending is recommended here, this ensures answers to most of the story's mysteries. The delusion triggers could be explained better however. It was confusing to me how much effect these actually had on the story at the start. But once I understood their workings, they really added some fun or disturbing scenes.

I personally hated Takumi at the start but I'm glad I got through with it: I soon grew fond of him and the other characters around him and started to care about the story. It took me about 84 hours to 100% the game (all achievements, all delusions, every ending). I took my time to take in all details.

One could call me a Chaos;Head fan now.

Sonome, dareno me?

RIP my boy Ban </3

Went into this after STEINS;GATE, not really quite knowing what to expect. It's a decent story, definitely way more fan-sevicey than STEINS;GATE (admittedly, lots of stuff behind "positive" delusions you explicitly choose...), but it ramps up the horror as you progress, leading to tons of very tense, spooky moments. Didn't leave me with as much of an impact as STEINS;GATE did after finishing all the content, but it was still a decent time.

Make sure to play with the CoZ patch, does a whole bunch of cool stuff, fixes some translation errors, etc.

My dislike for Takumi is unfortunately too great. I know the story around him is good and interesting that’s why I finished it but it felt like torture. I ended up skipping all the cinematics and just reading the text in the backlog. Without that, I couldn’t have finished some parts. I know this is why the game is considered good, but I simply cannot stand him.