Date A Live is a light novel series that has since been adapted into an anime series, video games, and other multimedia. In fact, the anime just aired its fifth season earlier this year. The popular series, written by Kōshi Tachibana and illustrated by Tsunako (who illustrated many Idea Factory games), takes place in a post-apocalyptic future Earth where the emergence of powerful otherworldly entities called Spirits (who take the form of anime girls) cause powerful quakes that decimate the land and its people.
Protagonist Shido Itsuka has a special power where he can neutralize a Spirit’s power if she falls in love with him and they kiss. While Shido attempts to date and kiss all these Spirits, the paramilitary Anti-Spirit Team aims to eliminate them using heavy weaponry. Basically, it’s “kill the girls” versus “kiss the girls” to save the world. Date A Live‘s premise is unabashedly “anime,” and fans love its happy blend of action, drama, comedy, and romance, featuring a delightful cast of characters.
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia is a visual novel that tells a story independent of its source material with a game-exclusive character named Ren. It’s a follow-up to Date A Live: Rio-Reincarnation, another visual novel with unique storylines and original characters. The game drops you somewhere in the middle of the anime’s timeline where the characters are already established, familiar with each other, and should feel like old friends to the audience. Ren Dystopia contains a lore glossary and character dossiers in the main menu, but these alone are not enough to get neophytes fully up to speed.
Familiarity with Date A Live and its characters is required to fully enjoy Ren Dystopia. Date A Live fans will thoroughly enjoy interactive hijinks-filled escapades with favorite characters like Tohka, Natsumi, Origami, and more. If you have no idea who these characters are and why they have fan followings, this game is not for you. Even then, I recommend that fans play Rio-Reincarnation first, since it and Ren Dystopia feel like two parts of a whole.
This game’s story sees Shido having a typical (by Date A Live standards) day, until he goes to bed and has a strange dream about a sinister girl named Ren with bandages over her eyes. Upon waking up, he finds a small snake-emblazoned jewelry box by his pillow. Thinking this is a prank, he asks every girl he knows about it. Unfortunately, opening the box frees Ren to influence that person’s dreams in ways that wreak havoc on their waking lives. Ren is a charismatic antagonist who absolutely relishes being a villain and fits wonderfully into Date A Live‘s madcap world.
Several available character paths explore what happens when different girls open Ren’s sinister box. “Be careful what you wish for” is the common theme among these paths, yet the characters take them to varying levels of absurdity that can only happen in Date A Live. Character paths explore each girl’s desires based on their eccentric personality traits in delightful ways. Ren Dystopia‘s witty dialogue is chock full of charisma and has some laugh-out-loud lines. The banter between the girls is amusing, especially those with contrasting personalities.
Each path lasts one to two hours and features a few crucial choices that lead to good or bad endings. The choices are more subtle than I expected, and it sometimes took me a few tries to get good endings. But since each path only tells part of the story, it’s important to see them all — including those bad endings — to experience the bigger picture and unlock Ren’s two paths to the ultimate ending. I spent a good 16–18 hours 100%ing this game.
Since Ren Dystopia is an Idea Factory game, fan service is to be expected, though it’s pretty tame (at least by my standards). Some girls wear revealing battle armor and one brief comedic scene depicts a lady in her undies, but that’s about it. Pivoting to another kind of fan service, how well does Ren Dystopia represent its source material? The visual novel format beautifully captures Date A Live‘s romantic hijinks, but its bland combat scenes lack the fast-paced flashiness of the anime’s explosive fights.
Synth-driven music befitting an action-comedy anime comprises Ren Dystopia‘s soundtrack. The music accompanying comedic scenes sounds delightfully wacky, and the music in dramatic scenes sounds cartoonishly evil. Despite the music’s noticeable presence, it never gets in the way of the fully voiced (except for Shido) script. All the voice acting is in Japanese, and it’s also cute that little voice clips accompany some menu selections in place of sound effects.
Ren Dystopia‘s visuals consist of fluidly animated character portraits atop static pre-rendered backgrounds. Tsunako’s vibrant character designs are paramount in the expressive and vividly colored portraits and remind me of her art for other Idea Factory games I’ve enjoyed, such as Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force. The CG cutscene stills punctuating key moments best show off Tsunako’s visual style. The unobtrusive and no-frills user interface and menu system get the job done and always allow the art to shine through, while the game plays smoothly whether using keyboard/mouse or a gamepad.
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia is an engaging visual novel that series fans will enjoy. What Date A Live fan wouldn’t want to experience hijinks with their favorite characters and meet a new one who could potentially become a favorite? The game is hollow without prior exposure to the Date A Live light novels, anime, and especially the Rio-Reincarnation visual novel (with all its included extras), so I recommend Ren Dystopia to established fans only.
