Experience a classic visual novel with a clever sci-fi story in the new remaster of Ever 17: The Out of Infinity.
Ever 17 – The Out of Infinity
Developer: MAGES
Price: $30
Platform: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PlayStation 4, Steam
MonsterVine was supplied with a Switch code for review.
Ever 17 – The Out of Infinity is a visual novel I’d always wanted to play, not only because of its status as a classic but also due to its legacy – it’s one of the games Kotaro Uchikoshi worked on before the Zero Escape series. Originally released in 2002, it later received a remake in 2011 that used 3D graphics instead of sprites, although the remake was never released outside of Japan. This new remaster is based on the remake’s script and additions, but returns to 2D sprites with great success; it’s a beautiful visual novel. Ever 17 is the second game in the Infinity series, but it can be enjoyed without any knowledge of the others.
The story begins with a young man named Takeshi visiting an underwater theme park called LeMU. Other parts follow the perspective of a boy with amnesia instead. An accident at the park leaves a small group trapped there, searching for a means of escape before the park collapses.
Despite this tense setup, the early parts of the story are surprisingly relaxed and laid back. There are significant stretches of time that focus on slice-of-life scenes, character relationships, and humor. For characters in a life-or-death situation, they spend a lot of time enjoying themselves. The pacing during these early parts is so slow that I started to feel impatient despite having a high tolerance for slow-paced visual novels. References to legends and paradoxes can only go so far to build intrigue on their own. However, the story really picks up after a while.
Choices you make during the early parts of the game determine which character’s route you’ll end up on and whether you’ll get a good or bad ending. The first two routes I played felt quite straightforward, but by my third route I was noticing so many hints of something deeper that I began to question everything. That alone helped with the pacing, because even the slower parts had me trying to piece things together to figure out the true mystery. The payoff was excellent when it finally came, especially when I realized that something I’d dismissed as an incidental aspect of the genre was actually a major part of the plot.
Unfortunately, the presentation isn’t free of flaws. I encountered occasional typos, one line that appeared to be an editing note left in by mistake, and a couple of mismatched lines where the wrong name was given with the dialogue or the narration was listed as the character’s dialogue instead. While none of these are major problems, they’re more frustrating in a story like this where oddities in the dialogue often are intentional hints. It’s also one of those visual novels where you might encounter scenes that are nearly identical between routes but don’t count as already-read text, which means the skip read text feature won’t skip them.
Ultimately, it was all worth it to see how the story came together at the end. The characters are likeable, the romances are decent, and the humor has its ups and downs, but the real star here is the narrative and how its different parts fit together. While the story isn’t flawless, it employs a lot of smart ideas to pull off its twists. Ever 17 is a visual novel that demands patience, but if you can stick with it through the slow start, it’s a worthwhile experience.
The Final Word
Despite a very slow start and some repetition across its routes, Ever 17 deserves its status as a classic. The occasional typos are unfortunate, but overall this remaster is a great opportunity to experience a clever and inventive visual novel.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
