Shuten Order review — The power of god and anime

Shuten Order had a tough uphill battle to win me over. The marketing pushed three names to the forefront as the masterminds behind this murder mystery visual novel: Kuzutaka Kodaka (Danganronpa, Rain Code, Hundred Line), Takumi Nakazawa (Ever 17, Root Double), and Takekuni Kitayama (Rain Code, Danganronpa Kirigiri). Barring a few exceptions, my thoughts on these games and series range from mild enjoyment at best, to contempt at worst. It’s important to note that the three writers being spotlighted in the marketing aren’t the sole authors. Various creatives from TooKyo Games lent their aid as writers and co-writers. In fact, Kodaka only co-wrote both the prologue and one of the routes. His primary role was creating the concept of the game, and planning out its scenario. 

That being said, all of this is information I learned after the fact during the credits. For this reason, I still approached the game with caution assuming the marketed creators were the sole writers. Despite my worries, I tried to keep an open mind, not letting my feelings about past works taint my ability to give this new title a fair shot. After all, I went into Hundred Line with a similar level of pessimism, but ended up absolutely adoring most of Kodaka’s contributions in that game. I’m happy to say that Shuten Order earned a similar turnaround. 

January 1st: a dismembered corpse falls from the sky; all but a torso rain down onto the heart of a fictional, religious nation. The body is identified as the Founder of both the country and the religious organization that governs the land: the Shuten Order. All the while the citizens of the Order welcome the year by wishing each other a “Happy New End”. Celebratory counters displayed across various public spaces tick down, displaying “168 remaining until the end of the world…”, the end of humanity. 

Afterwards, protagonist Rei Shimobe awakens without her memories in an unfamiliar hotel. She is subsequently informed by two self-proclaimed angels that she is the Founder resurrected thanks to “the Power of God”. The catch is that the resurrection hasn’t been completed, with the amnesiac only having four days and a temporary body to fully resurrect and regain her memories. To achieve this, Rei must succeed in “God’s trial”, using the allotted four days to force a confession from her killer, resulting in the murderer’s death. 

The five primary suspects are the Ministers of Shuten Order, subordinates under the Founder, each of whom controls a respective facet of the government. In Rei’s pursuit to unveil her own killer, she needs to investigate each Minister to solve the case. Five suspects, five stories, five gameplay styles, one culprit. 

So, how do a group of writers with works I’m largely mixed on make a game that wins me over? Well the answer is to simply take ideas from their past games and make them good. That’s not me being facetious by the way; Shuten Order’s scenario is a mishmash of minor to major revelations from Danganronpa, Rain Code, and Root Double. It takes these recurring elements to create something subversive. 

The premise of the dismemberment of a religious figure serves as a sturdy framework to avoid Frankensteining these recycled ideas together. Rei’s status as the nation’s founder is the thread that stitches together all the disparate aspects between each route. She isn’t just solving her own murder, but unraveling the enigmas and conspiracies of the Order she established. The overused amnesiac protagonist trope is elevated to great effect here, facilitating the inciting hooks that had me excited to seek answers. 

Thus, while the individual stories of each of the five Ministers largely deviate from the culprit hunt, they still feel relevant in sleuthing information about the nation. Everything loops back to Rei’s status as Founder. Moreover, the lack of a killing game structure means the mysteries build up more naturally. Each route is given the freedom to craft a storyline that drip-feeds clues on its own terms, without being constrained the structure of prior game’s chapter based death game. As a result, the adventure feels much more cohesive despite lacking the aforementioned originality. 

Speaking of the Ministers, a bulk of the title’s quality hinges on nailing the development and characterizations of the government leaders. After all, they are front and center in all of the game’s promo art, with each route centering around one of them. I’m glad to say that I grew to adore most of them. Every time one is onscreen, you can expect some chaos to unfold thanks to their strong, unhinged personalities. 

It’s clear the Ministers have zero tolerance for each other. The only reason they put up with each other is because they share the same workplace and one friend they really like: the Founder. Well, shared that one friend. This air of self-assertiveness from the group means they don’t feel any sort of concern speaking their mind when their innocence is challenged by Rei’s interrogations; not even hesitating to gleefully throw another under the bus behind their backs. This keeps the bizarre murder mystery compelling on a micro and macro level. 

On a micro level, each route has its own set of clues to be discovered, similar to finding one piece of a larger jigsaw puzzle. Depending on which route you start with and subsequently funnel down, the different reveals create vastly perceptions of what the bigger picture is. This is where the macro level of Shuten Order’s story comes into play. With the Ministers looking out for themselves, I found myself comparing newly acquired evidence to old ones, looking for the various overlaps between stories and the inevitable contradictions. 

Beyond their initial, superficial characterization, each Minister masks their vulnerable layers, requiring Rei to peel back their layers to get closer to the truth. Outside of one of them, I dug getting to learn more about these government leaders. They’re not the deepest characters in the world, but they have just enough complexities and insecurities to invest me in seeing them overcome their plights. 

As for Rei, she’s a mixed bag of strong and weak execution. The amnesiac isn’t a bad character, far from it. When solely examining the trajectory of her arc and the role she plays in the overarching mystery, she’s fantastic; embodying the thematic conceits the title goes for. It’s just she’s so dully written. Both her dialogue and inner monologue has her sounding confused at everything happening. Understandable for someone who lost their memory and then told that they run a religious cult! One of the highlights of the mystery is Rei attempting to rationalize why her past self would center her faith around something apocalyptic. It just gets really tedious when most of her lines consist of that confusion, especially when doing all five routes. 

Due to the five campaigns to play through, Shuten Order possesses a gargantuan cast beyond just the Ministers. Fortunately, each storyline makes it explicitly clear which individual(s) the plot will focus on, and who will primarily just be fodder or comic relief. It doesn’t entirely alleviate the cast bloat in certain branches, but it is a decent compromise that avoids the writing stretching itself thin. In general, the dialogue feels much more grounded than the writing in Danganronpa, Rain Code, and Hundred Line; a byproduct of Kodaka taking a step back from being the primary scenario writer.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of over the top moments and individuals with dominant personality traits. But on the whole, there is a stronger reliance on subtext to convey these characterizations. At the very least, we can all rejoice that there are no explicitly horny characters who have a hard on for groping women like in DR and Rain Code, thank god. 

Elaborating more on Kodaka’s role for this project, I found him overseeing the creation and outlining the initial story to be a boon, playing towards his strengths as a creator. As I alluded to earlier, Kodaka’s writing leaves a lot to be desired. He excels at crafting scenarios and characters that orbit around a thematic center, but struggles in writing subtextual character dialogue, and tying together events during the mid-game to the overarching plot beyond their thematic parallels.

That’s where Nakazawa and the writing team at TooKyo come in. Nakazawa has greatly improved as a director compared to his efforts in Root Double. Shuten Order’s goal as a mystery that can be tackled in different orders risks having scenes of repetitive exposition, an issue that plagued the previous title. With the exception to the abhorrently paced climax, this game mercifully possesses a more concise script, keeping me engaged for the approximately five hours it took to speedread each route, and the 30 hours I spent for completion. 

Crucially, it’s this strong script that allows Kodaka’s core concepts and narrative to shine without the baggage present in previous works. Shuten Order continues the trend of the writer’s works post Danganronpa ambitiously exploring contentious political topics. While I detested the first two thirds of Rain Code, its final stretch was a thoughtful critique towards police state governments. Hundred Line’s 130 hour playtime was a grab bag of themes, exploring topics such as racism, genocide, colonialization, military propaganda, and religion. Shuten Order ambitiously zeroes in on that last aspect in particular; standing on a narrative foundation that is set on critiquing religion as a nation’s form of governance. 

Ambition is one thing, but it all hinges on execution, especially for a topic as complex as religion. It’s easy to fall into the trap of just going “religion bad” and receiving brownie point applause. It would make for a simplistic, uninteresting deconstruction. Thankfully, Shuten Order circumvents this by painting nuanced critiques of the topic.  

Anyone who doesn’t believe in the church’s ideals are labeled as heretics, enemies of the Shuten Order. Some of these make sense. Murdering someone is indeed bad. Being a drug lord is indeed bad. However, there are stricter rules where the Order is overreaches on what a citizen can or can’t do. Beyond just actions, they accost those they view are inherently dangerous, as these devout members live a silent, tortured existence for being born different. 

Without diving into spoilers, one particular storyline revolving around gender identity was a major surprise. While the character is explicitly trans, their gender intentionally doesn’t play a role in the conflict at all. Instead, it cleverly shifts common tropes within a queer versus religion framework, paralleling a major aspect of religion to the trans experience. It makes for a subversive tale that still stays true to the subject matter. 

Another highlight is how the title tackles power dynamics within a religion. How those in the higher echelons of power are able to break their own teachings on a whim, avoiding the consequences they are set to enforce. Conversely, your average followers struggle with their burning desire to blindly uphold the nation’s core principles, with some deathly afraid of being labeled as a heretic when they intentionally or not do something against the doctrine. Accosted from a community and home they feel like they can belong. Like their world has ended. 

A gamble Shuten Order takes to add nuance to its depiction of religion is by presenting sympathy towards certain aspects of the Order and its formation. When faced with learning facets about the nation’s origin, I found their plights and subsequent responses to be tragically believable, tragically human.

The line between good intentions and extremism is so thin. How something meant to give people hope can morph into something cultish. Following the story through the perspective of Rei and the other Ministers allows the players to see them give in, question, or revel in an institution they’ve been conditioned to believe in. 

On a gameplay front, I was curious how different the five self proclaimed “game systems” would be. Right off the bat, calling them “game systems”, let alone five of them feels a bit too generous. It’s more like three visual novels, a visual novel where you occasionally walk in straight lines, and a stealth horror game with VN segments. This reality didn’t bother me, as story is the main attraction of the genre instead of gameplay. While most of the paths are an established style of visual novel, the ambition of five different routes feel like a celebration of the storytelling potential of the VN genre. To get into that further, I’m going to break down each of the paths themselves.

Ministry of Justice (Takekumi Kitayama, Takumi Nakazawa)

Alright, homefield advantage. Fans of point and click detective visual novels will feel right at home in the Ministry of Justice path, written by Takekumi Kitayama and Takumi Nakazawa. What starts as a simple reading of an inheritance will quickly devolve into a deadly who dunnit. The tale and mystery it weaves is nothing extraordinary, but it is a competent one filled with interesting murder methods.

Outside one character, the supporting cast of this branch is one dimensional, but no doubt this is intentional. The story dives into the tried and true message about the consequences of greed, with the inheritance on the line revealing the worst in people. They’re cartoonishly evil, monetary gluttons, and fulfill that narrative function well. 

Regrettably, the solid narrative and satisfying mystery get bogged down by numerous nitpicks. The main gimmick is the Snapping feature. When interviewing witnesses or clicking on objects, certain keywords are highlighted in green. The player can have Rei snap her fingers to uncover more information. It’s a neat concept that plays into the “Aha!” moment trope in detective stories. In practice, the implementation is clunky. 

Figuring which keyword to Snap at feels too random. Sometimes the correct answer is to Snap phrases to reaffirm info that are known quantities. Other times that same exact frame of logic has cast gaslight Rei for making them repeat themselves, lose a point of health called Trust. Adding to the inconsistency, keywords that lead to interesting lore dumps happen as the result of incorrect snaps. Thankfully these don’t deplete Trust, but it’s annoying locking these interesting tidbits behind a randomly punishing mechanic. 

Once an investigation is complete, a Meeting phase will begin where Rei must use the evidence acquired to reveal the truth of the murders. These are essentially a bite sized Ace Attorney or Danganronpa trial. Very few things in life are as satisfying as shoving evidence in the face of a douchebag to expose their lies. Meetings are relatively well paced with one major caveat: the Evidence Puzzles.

Don’t be fooled by the gamified presentation. These are essentially a glorified way for the player to answer questions the game asks. My patience for this mechanic was inversely proportional to the number of pieces present in each puzzle. For the lengthier ones, a decent chunk of the earlier panels are spent reestablishing basic facts of the case; minutes on end disguising them as new revelations. Basically a tedious middle man replacing a simple question and answer prompt. 

Adding onto the annoyances, I found the descriptors of some clues often overlap with another, making it difficult to parse which pieces of evidence is the correct one when they’re functionally the same. It’s an issue that has plagued this style of VN, but it feels particularly egregious here. There was even an instance of a claim stated as fact being straight up incorrect. It states that a yellow string is the same color as a red string, but another red string isn’t. 

The sour cherry on top of the clunky evidence system is being unable to review the list on the fly. As someone who loves piecing together the clues beforehand, I found the absence of a quality of life feature to be a bummer, especially since information related to the larger case of Rei’s murder accessible anytime. All of these annoyances add up to make a decent route overall, but one that didn’t leave a great first impression as my starting route. 

Regardless of the ups and downs, Inugami is the main highlight. Being high all the time, the Minister of Justice possesses a laid back, stoner uncle’s energy, exuding so much smarmy charisma that you can’t help but want to see him run around a washing machine like a hamster wheel (affectionate). But when push comes to shove, his keen eye and sharp mind for mysteries always kept me on my toes. 

Ministry of Health (Yoichiro Koizumi)

Up next is the Minister of Health with the himbo doctor: Yugen Ushitora. A VTuber has abducted 21 participants and has trapped them to play a death game. The gameplay style is touted as an “Extreme Escape Adventure”. Based on the wording of this descriptor, I expected needing to solve escape rooms similar to Spike Chunsoft’s Zero Escape series. Instead, I hope you like mazes because that’s most of what this route consists of.

The point of view for these sections is comparable to the dungeon crawling of an Etrian Odyssey game: exploring a maze in a first person perspective. However, there are no gimmicks or traps to contend with, no strategic movement decisions to target or run from other players. Rather, Rei must consecutively follow the numbers painted on the walls, occasionally solving Tetris block puzzles or connecting colored wire puzzles in between.

What baffling is how story wise, each phase of the death game attempts to build stakes, establishing elaborate rules and win conditions for their respective rounds. Conditions that are designed for players to hunt or avoid each other. Yet all of this essentially boils down to flavor text. You cannot interact with any other players outside of scripted encounters. Just follow the numbers like some first person game of connect the dots, only with different colored walls each round. 

Fortunately, the story in this route pulls its weight. It starts slow, suffering from a dull first round and a bloated cast, but it blossoms once things become focused a third of the way in. Despite being obvious, there are fantastic twists during the latter half, remixing one of my least favorite reveals from a prior Kodaka game, and making it emotionally investing.

This route has a lot on its mind regarding identity and the value of life, two topics explored brilliantly with the trolley problem of the death game, and how most of the cast are doctors trying to save lives instead of taking them. It coalesces to a chilling climax, with my favorite ending between the five paths.  

Ministry of Science (Kyohei Oyama, Sei Uryu)

Shout out to Kyohei Oyama for writing the best route in Hundred Line, and now the best route in Shuten Order. I hope you like PowerPoint, because the Ministry of Science’s path is the most visual novel type of visual novel in this visual novel game. It essentially mimics the style of older VNs, emphasizing the “novel” part of the genre by having the dialogue and narration displayed together, with their prose being similar to what you would find from a book. It fits with the setting of Teko Ion’s research institute. 

The main gimmick is how progression through the story is not entirely kinetic, as Shuten Order boasts this route as a “multi-perspective novel”. Essentially you see the same story about a terrorist attack on a research facility through the point of view of Rei, Teko Ion, and other characters you meet down the line. Each person will funnel down their respective flowchart, making decisions that impact both themselves and the rest of the cast. For example, you can have Rei hide from her pursuers, but this puts another character unequipped to handle a dangerous situation only the amnesiac protagonist can settle. 

Utilizing the flowchart is largely an intuitive experience, informing if you have reached a bad ending or made a choice that leaves another participant in danger. Additionally, a helpful hint system will trigger after a bad end, cluing the player into what choice they should have made. When an individual can’t progress any further at a given moment, the system will mark the branch as locked and immediately point to which story to continue next. A minor gripe I have with progression is how circling back to see the bad endings requires you redo entire subsequent sequences, which gets messy fast with the multi-perspectives. Thankfully a skip seen text button makes this a mild inconvenience at worst.

Continuing off my nitpicks with the flowchart, the title touts itself as a branching storyline. In practice it’s a largely linear adventure with extra steps. The perspective shifts make swapping between characters feel akin to a book switching viewpoints between each chapter. Moreover, the small scope of the flowchart diminishes the tension of making the right decision. There is only one correct answer, with the rest leading to bad endings. As someone who adores non-linear stories, the overall linearity gave me initial hesitancy. 

That disappointment didn’t last long when I got deeper into the story’s contents. I found the Ministry of Science route the most thematically enthralling out of the bunch. Things take a while to pick up, but once it does, it is a tender yet tragic tale about empathy and redemption. Even though the binary choices system is simplistic from a gameplay standpoint, those choices build towards the notion of atonement through action.

Switching perspectives allows for an in depth look at the characterization of the cast, both through inner monologues and from the other individuals examining their developments. It is the only route that got me to tear up in the game, and for the most part I had a warm smile on my face despite the chaos and carnage.  

Ministry of Education (Takumi Nakazawa, Yasuyuki Mochida)

The Ministry of Education’s route is not good. Okay, that came out a bit harsh. Investigating Honoka Kokushikan isn’t terrible… but that’s the highest praise I can give for my least favorite out of the five. Kokushikan has a love crisis that later morphs into a sexuality crisis when she meets Rei for the first time. In a romantic(?) gesture, she poisons Rei and drags her to a school with the task of finding the real “Kokushikan” among three girls who share the same last name. Receiving the antidote requires Rei to correctly deduce who the real Honoka is, and sweep her off her feet with a romantic love confession. 

So basically, Rei must girlfail herself through a yuri NTR plotline. I’m glad it’s not as terrible as it sounds, but it’s way too dull for such an insane pitch. In contrast with the other routes using their premises as a method to convey their deeper messages, this route is a by the numbers dating sim first and foremost. A barebones one at that in both gameplay and story. Again, it’s serviceable overall, but that’s what makes the story obnoxiously predictable. 

The premise frames this route as a mystery Rei must solve by correctly identifying Honoka, but the foundation is made rocky by having no interactive way to make these deductions on your own. It’s fully focused on the slice of life dating aspects, which results in the game railroading the player into a specific encounter order for the girls. To make matters worse, the twist is extremely obvious from the get go, with foreshadowing as subtle as a dismembered corpse falling from the sky. Thus, it’s frustrating seeing Rei stumble around making scripted, incorrect conclusions because the gameplay barely contributes to the narrative’s win condition.

As for said gameplay, you are allotted a generous number of turns to unlock a handful of interactions with each love interest. Each turn is spent trying to pursue one of the Kokushikans somewhere on school grounds. Choosing incorrectly will result in a turn being wasted, whereas choosing correctly will initiate a scene improving the bond between Rei and the other character. Once multiple romantic partners get introduced into the mix, Rei must carefully juggle between spending time with the target all while visiting the previous women she’s wooed. 

Once you have seen all of the hangouts, a final confession event will start. The ex-founder and the potential Minister will be deadlocked in a heated conversation, where you must pick the correct dialogue options to win each girl over. All of these systems work as intended, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome thanks to the route being the shortest of the bunch. It’s just the epitome of average.

Much like my thoughts on route, the love interests and Honoka aren’t bad, just painfully mediocre. Each of them have their own plights and insecurities that avoids making them completely two dimensional characters, but it’s like comparing paper to construction paper. Their growth is handled in the most generic way possible, getting the job done in admittedly cute scenes that you’ve seen done to death in other school rom-coms. It feels content with just scratching the surface and patting itself on the back for doing so. At least this path’s cast has a consistent thematic throughline about trying to stay true to oneself when opening up to others. 

Ministry of Security (Kuzutaka Kodaka, Takekuni Kitayama) 

While the other Ministers have an ensemble they share screentime with alongside Rei, a majority of this route either has Rei alone, or interacting solely with the Minister of security, Manji. The red head’s blunt hot headedness means she’s raring to throw down with heretics, always primed to make an over the top entrance. For instance, her introduction scene radiates so much “it should have been me” energy; she shows up late to a meeting by crashing her motorcycle through a ten floor high window, decking one of the other Ministers in the process.

Conversely, this brashness results in her being the most open in sharing her struggles to Rei, as you gain perspective from someone who is willing to discard her life to her nation. This mentality gets put to the test when victims start piling up from an urban legend serial killer known as Nephilim.  

These portions contain the most gameplay of this video game, leaning towards isometric horror. Rei is forced to explore an environment she’s trapped in, all while evading a prowling Nephilim. Each stage has a growing list of clear conditions to complete, whether it’s simply finding the exit or activating various machinery across the environments. There is some repetitive backtracking, but the environments are small enough to where I didn’t find these to be an issue. At the very least, new gimmicks are introduced on each map to add a little zest beyond just the environment change. 

Meanwhile, Rei will be stalked by the serial killer. The ex-Founder has no method of fighting back against the Nephilim, meaning flight is her only option. Luckily, there are two correlated mechanics she can use to aid in evading her stalker. Each locale has doors to shut in the face of her pursuer, using that window of time to find a hiding spot before the door gets broken down. It’s a maneuver that’s a bit too effective. As a consequence, I rarely felt any danger whenever being spotted, since it doesn’t take long for Nephilim to wander off after opening the door. Moreover, I found avoiding detection to be way too easy; the masked killer possessing easily circumventable patrol patterns. The horror is heavily diminished as a consequence. 

Those looking for more in depth stealth and exploration mechanics will likely leave disappointed. As for me, I enjoyed them for what they are: bite sized gameplay diversions that make sense within the context of the story. Not really complex, but competently made and never frustrating. 

Everything learned from the various routes culminates to a messy, but thoughtfully bonkers finale. Almost every bit of information and characterization learned builds towards some sort of pay off, making the events and lore dumps during the climax feel earned. For this reason, it’s a shame that this final stretch is the sloppiest written part of the package. Solving the murder squeaks by unscathed. Outside one aspect that requires a massive suspension of disbelief, the final deduction offers a lengthy, but gripping thrill ride when piecing together the truth.

In contrast, the narrative wrapping up the national conflict is the least polished facet. While never as diabolical as Root Double’s pacing, the script feels like it needed a few more passes to make its nonstop exposition feel more succinct. Even when all the cards are laid out, there are multiple times where the story feels like it’s reaching a natural stopping point, only to fake you and have the characters spout out the same things they’ve been saying for the past few hours. Running in circles with no new ground being broken. Nonetheless, the clunkiness doesn’t ruin what’s otherwise an introspective finale. There are still numerous sections of thematically satisfying pay offs in between the moments of bloat.

As for the actual ending post climax, it’s one I’m going to have to sit on, as I still don’t have a full grasp of how I feel about it. However, I struggle to outright say this is a bad thing. I wasn’t jazzed how certain aspects wrapped up, but I love how eerily existential it made me feel.

A densely reflexive climax not meant to shock, but one meant to make you sit and ponder about the journey long after the credits roll. The choices the characters made along the way. Overall, even if Shuten Order’s story doesn’t quite reach the peaks of either creator’s works, avoiding their aforementioned pitfalls makes it their most consistently pleasant experience. 

Visually, Shuten Order’s art direction exudes overwhelming confidence. Simadoriru takes the reins from Rui Komatsuzaki as the main illustrator for a Kodaka game, going for a comic book-esque art style with its bold colors and shading mimicking Ben-Day dots from the pages of a comic. Even the text boxes are speech and thought bubbles. Although on that front, there are some rare occasions where the text itself goes off the screen. What I found the most impressive was the number of unique images beyond the character sprites depicting the various actions of the cast.

These aren’t fullscreen art spreads akin to other visual novels; they’re closer to insert panels you’d find in a comic, but these are utilized more liberally as a result. You can’t go a few minutes without seeing a brand new piece of art, it’s awesome. It dynamically brings to life Shuten Order’s writing beyond the visually static medium. Each route has its own unique visual elements, from the escape game’s VTuber stream elements to the blood soaked darkness when escaping Nephilim. These add extra zest in crafting their unique atmospheres. Unfortunately, a drawback to the Switch version is the lack of anti-aliasing on the gorgeous sprites.

Unsurprisingly, Masafumi Takada’s soundtrack is a bop. Particularly I love the implementation of ominous chants in a few tracks, combined with an unnerving and repetitive use of strings, drums, piano, and other instruments that convey the cultish feel of the narrative. One slight bummer however, is the lack of a dub. Unless it’s an emotionally driven moment, I tend to speedread the dialogue without letting the full audio for the lines play out. For those who typically play without dubs, almost every line is fully voiced, so there’s plenty of opportunities to hear the actors shine. 

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