In a strange society awaiting the end of the world, investigate your own death by navigating five different routes, each with its own genre of gameplay.
Shuten Order
Developer: Too Kyo Games, Neilo
Price: $50
Platforms: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a Switch code for review.
I was excited for Shuten Order from the moment it was announced, not only because of its developer but also because of its multi-genre approach. Set in the city of the mysterious Shuten Order, a cult awaiting the end of humanity, the story begins when the cult’s Founder is murdered. Brought back to life without her memories, she meets two angels who tell her God has granted her a temporary resurrection so she can investigate her own death. If she finds the culprit before time runs out, she’ll be fully revived. Using the fake name Rei Shimobe, she begins her investigation into each of the five ministers who worked alongside the Founder.
How Shuten Order Shifts Genres With Each Minister
The world of Shuten Order is surreal, with many things that feel off right away. From the beginning, it makes you question just what is really going on with both the world and the murder mystery. Its overall presentation is that of a visual novel, with some adventure game elements. As you learn details about the murder, they’ll be added to your list of evidence, known here as Keywords. However, while it might sound like a standard murder mystery on the surface, the real hook of the gameplay is that the genre changes depending on which minister you choose to investigate.
I started with the Minister of Justice, Kishiru Inugami, whose route is a detective adventure game. He makes a deal with Rei that he’ll divulge what he knows about the Founder’s death in exchange for help with a job. He’s been tasked with reading the will of a wealthy man who recently died, and Rei accompanies him to serve as a witness. However, a member of the family is found murdered before the will can be read, and their simple task turns into a mystery. In this section, not only do you investigate areas using point-and-click adventure game mechanics, but you also have the ability to question characters’ statements and present contradicting evidence. Doing this at the wrong time, however, will deplete your trust meter.
After each investigation segment concludes, the characters gather to discuss the murder and try to deduce the culprit’s identity. At this point, you’ll need to present evidence to make your case and connect events to piece together what happened. It’s a fun bit of detective gameplay brought down by occasional bits of unclear phrasing that make it hard to tell what the game is asking. Nevertheless, it’s an enjoyable murder mystery with an ending that left me excited to do the other routes.
My second route was that of the Minister of Health, Teko Ion. His route is described as a multi-perspective visual novel, and once you get into it, the entire visual style changes to use novel (NVL) presentation. Instead of exclusively following Rei like the other parts of the game, this route switches between multiple viewpoints, and the choices you make as different characters influence the others’ paths. If you’ve ever played 428: Shibuya Scramble, it’s similar to that. For example, you might be locked into a bad end on Rei’s path until you switch to a different character and make a choice that will save her. It even has a flowchart, although if you backtrack in the flowchart to see a bad ending, you can’t jump ahead to where you were until you make the correct choice again. While it’s fairly straightforward to see how the paths affect each other, it’s a great style of storytelling.
In this route, Rei heads underground to investigate Teko’s facility and gets trapped there when heretics attack. This forces her into an uneasy alliance with the seemingly coldhearted Teko. The story is filled with interesting lore and great character moments, and it blew me away with how much I enjoyed it. This was by far my favorite route. By the time I finished Teko’s route, I was fully invested in Shuten Order to the point that I wish the other routes were as good. That’s not a criticism of the other routes, however, just praise for how great Teko’s is.
The Minister of Security, Manji Fushicho, has a stealth horror game for her route. While it still uses the visual novel presentation for storytelling, it frequently switches to gameplay segments where you must explore 3D environments from a top-down perspective. A legendary murderer is stalking you, and you must run and hide from this implacable foe while searching for items to unlock doors and get past obstacles. There are some simple puzzles to solve, as well. Searching for the items you need while avoiding the patrolling killer can be tense, and the environments are beautifully disturbing.
If this were a full horror game, I would criticize its simplicity, since its horror game mechanics aren’t especially fleshed out. It’s a shame, because it has wonderful environments for a horror game. I would have loved to see this part play out with more meaningful puzzles and item management. However, since it’s only one route of the game, it’s enjoyable for what it is. I found it to be one of the weaker routes, but it still had some good character moments with Manji.
Yugen Ushitora, the Minister of Health, has a route described as an “extreme escape adventure.” While Rei is questioning him, they’re abducted and forced to play a death game being streamed live to an audience. This time, gameplay segments are conducted in first person, where you must navigate a maze-like environment while seeking out the other participants. Despite how that sounds, it’s fairly straightforward. You need to solve puzzles to unlock doors, but otherwise it’s a matter of moving through the area until you hit a story scene and occasionally making a choice that determines whether you live or die. It can be tense when you’re solving puzzles on a timer, but it’s not complicated.
There is an escape room part late in the route, with item-based puzzles and riddles to solve, and I wish that aspect had been given a bigger focus throughout the rest of the route. It was a fun change of pace. I was also a little disappointed that the story didn’t have branching paths to explore, only bad ends if you made the wrong choices. Nevertheless, the story is pretty interesting, with some unexpected twists.
Finally, the last route I did was that of the Minister of Education, Honoka Kokushikan, and it’s a romantic adventure game. Honoka longs to fall in love because she believes an all-consuming romance will give her the passion she needs to start a coup and change the entire country. With that as her goal, she poisons Rei and orders her to win her heart in an academy setting if she wants the antidote. However, Rei soon discovers that the school has three students all named Kokushikan, and she needs to find the real Honoka if she wants to survive. You have a set number of actions you can perform each day, and you’ll need to use them to interact with the girls and increase your bond with them.
At first, I was disappointed that you can’t actually pick the order to pursue the three girls, but the route’s structure works well. Once you have a bond with one girl, she becomes intensely jealous as you try to pursue the others, which adds an extra layer of time management, as you must continue to visit her to keep her calm. The gameplay did get slightly repetitive after a while, so I wish there was more variation in the events. While the interactions with the girls don’t feel as deep as in a true romance game–it’s more playing around with yandere tropes than anything else–the story has some good moments and feels like a great route to do last.
Throughout Shuten Order, I encountered a few minor problems, such as occasional lag when the camera pans across a background and a glitch in the horror route that forced me to reload. There are also a handful of typos and errors, although not too many. A small number of errors normally wouldn’t bother me, except that some of them relate to an important detail. It’s a plot point that Rei’s androgynous appearance makes it difficult to judge her gender at a glance, so it would be nice to be certain that if a character calls her “he” versus “she,” that’s actually what the line is meant to say. Unfortunately, sometimes the text got it wrong. Again, this sort of mistake wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t a story where a character’s knowledge of Rei’s gender might be a clue. This is a minor issue in an otherwise great game, so I hope the text errors will be patched.
Each route takes roughly 6-7 hours to complete, so they feel like short games all bound together by the overarching mystery. With the mystery of the Founder’s death on top of that, it ends up being a decently lengthy experience. There is some great foreshadowing present from the start, with a lot of little details that fall into place after later revelations. Add in a dash of humor and some excellent dramatic moments, and Shuten Order ends up being a fantastic game.
The Final Word
Dividing a game into five separate genres could be a recipe for disaster, but Shuten Order turns it into something brilliant instead. While some routes are stronger than others, each is enjoyable in its own way, with different gameplay mechanics and structures. Despite some flaws and typos, everything came together in a satisfying way that made Shuten Order a great experience overall.
MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
