Review: Live All The Best Anime Tropes In ALTDEUS: BEYOND CHRONOS
VR games often rely on silly gimmicks or subpar gameplay with cool flashy images and interesting locations to be sold. AltdeUs: Beyond Chronos does those exact things, but does them fairly well and delivers a surprisingly engaging story.
The first thing to know about this game is that it is about as anime as anime can get. With giant robots, crazy dream sequences, familiar character archetypes, and insane story beats, it feels like a wild blend of every trope ever produced in anime. As bad as all that sounds, the game feels like it is celebrating and embracing these tropes instead of being lazy and uncreative. But let’s break down the game’s gameplay, story, and reasons for being in VR.
The story here is the main dish. With numerous characters, intriguing mysteries, and well-voiced dialogue (most of the time), it’s almost hard to put the game down solely for the curiosity of what will happen next in the story. I do wish that some of the English actors didn’t take their robotic personas so literally (some really stiff performances), but overall, the voice acting is energetic and sincere enough to keep players engaged. Even though the story and ideas will feel familiar, the immersion in VR and direct conversations make the story fresh and fun. And as I said, even though there are many similar tropes that you would find in most anime, the plot and characters never become boring. All in all, if you’re a big fan of anime, then watching the story unfold could easily be reason enough to play. It isn’t Attack on Titan, Fullmetal Alchemist, Death Note, or Cowboy Bebop, but it still stands as a mostly great story.
Being in virtual reality allows for some unique interactions. And being able to pilot a giant robot to fight aliens makes the most sense if you’re going to make an anime VR game. While the interactions inside of the giant mechs are simple and a little dull, their impact on the visual spectacle causes those scenes to be interesting. I would just be well aware that this game isn’t going to be a challenging, skill-based VR game. It’s mostly a series of points and clicks and simple gestures to progress the story.
The last thing to consider is the choice system in play, primarily with the conversations. I was impressed with how the game implemented a conversation system into the lore, I hadn’t seen that before. While none of the conversations and choices seemed to deeply change or drastically alter the story or character relationships. Characters' reactions to my choices felt very appropriate and finely designed.
Overall this is a really fun game, but I think it would be more appropriately labeled as an interactive novel visual novel instead of a fully fleshed-out VR game. But for those who enjoy lots of story and want to live through an anime in the shoes of one of the characters, it’s worth checking out.
