One genre that hasn’t been explored much in VR is the visual novel genre. Games that are more like reading a story, but with visuals. There has been only one visual novel PSVR game, which was the recently released Project Lux. I personally didn’t enjoy Project Lux, but when Tokyo Chronos was announced I was interested. It was a game that released on other VR platforms first and got great reviews. And now it’s out on the playstation VR! So, is Tokyo Chronos any good?
Tokyo Chronos is a PSVR visual novel that has you waking up in a city in Japan called Shibuya, but to your surprise there isn’t a single person in sight. You must figure out why everyone disappeared and what these strange symbols you keep seeing mean. The story itself takes quite a while to build up, but once it gets going it’s really good! There’s a whole lot more to the story, but I wanted to keep this review as spoiler free as possible!
If you don’t know how visual novels work, it’s a big story or novel presented with visuals. Some visual novels are interactive where you get to make decisions, and some are just there for you to read and enjoy without making decisions. Tokyo Chronos is a visual novel that has choices, but it takes a few hours before you get to make those choices. And after playing through the game once, if you replay the game you unlock even more choices.
Like the majority of visual novels, the game is in an anime style and introduces a lot of unique characters. The environments and character models look great and the game doesn’t look blurry. The soundtrack also fits the game very well.
One of my favorite features is the auto play feature, you can hold X for the text and voice acting to automatically play. You will need to keep the text on though, because all of the voice acting is in Japanese. But the text isn’t distracting and works great, it’s not attached to your face, it’s actually positioned in the world. The auto play feature really helps make the game an enjoyable and relaxing experience. Sometimes it’s really nice to play a VR game where you can just sit down and enjoy the story, instead of having to destroy things, interact with stuff, or anything related to moving.
So overall, Tokyo Chronos is a great game! I really have to commend the creators and developers for taking a genre you wouldn’t think would work that well in VR and making it work perfectly. The story is well written, the graphics are great, the soundtrack fits, the voice acting is good, and the game will last you a while. I’ve only played through the first few chapters, but apparently the game is 15-20 hours long! If you didn’t mind playing a game that is solely about the story, then Tokyo Chronos is a great option!
