World’s End Club feels a lot like the child of extremely talented parents. Where the Zero Escape and Danganronpa series aggressively delivered their respective themes and elements that hooked players, World’s End Club inherited their genes but not their experience. The framework is there and shines as strongly as ever, but if you’ve already played its predecessors, it feels less like an equal and more like both franchises dialed down in volume. There’s an exact audience for World’s End Club: teenagers who want to experience what Zero Escape and Danganronpa have to offer but aren’t ready for heavy technical reading or the mental anguish of executing classmates. It’s good, it’s sweet, but it’s immature. And honestly? That’s just fine.
World's End Club has a solid start thanks to its interesting premise and characters. However, while I thought the game had the potential to be great, it was eventually weighed down by its clunky platforming sections and overuse of twists during its final hours. I personally loved being an unofficial member of The Go-Getters Club and learning about their group dynamic. Nevertheless, it's a story worth checking out, as long as you can overlook the issues that arise while playing it.
As someone who has played every Danganronpa game and some of the Zero Escape games, I LOVED Worlds End Club. While I agree with people saying the gameplay is the weakest part, I still find it fun especially since it isn't the major part of the game, the story is. The story is AMAZING and has plot twists I didn't expect coming. The story is very sweet and charming and I love the innocnence of it. This is a beautiful gam about friends and friendship and I reccomend it to any light novel fans!
World's End Club has sparks of brilliance, mostly in its settings and plot, but it's weighed down by boring platforming sequences and a very limited budget.
World’s End Club is an excellent story with some abysmal platforming tying it together. While story sections greatly outnumber gameplay sections, these stand out as a sore spot that may put off some players.
World’s End Club is an odd thing. It feels like it’s trying to tell a more family-friendly version of the now-common Death Game tale, but in doing so a lot of the tension and fascinating character work is tossed to the side. I like a good twist in a game, but most of the ones in this game just feel like they came out of nowhere. The platforming bits are somewhere between atrocious and irritating. It’s not without its merits, but if you aren’t completely opposed to playing the game on Apple Arcade that is probably the wisest course of action.
In this game of strong beginnings and - at last - a comprehensive ending, the journey between the two needs more spring in its step. [Issue#360, p.118]
World’s End Club wanted to be like Danganronpa or Zero Escape, but it doesn’t measure up to either. This game has a pretty cool story sandwiched between aggressively average platforming segments that wouldn’t stand up to snuff ten years ago. It has a cool art direction and likeable characters, but the writing itself is not masterful enough to make the unconvincing plot twists work, nor to make up for the boring and repetitive gameplay.
I was not sure what to expect going into this game, but I thought the demo was fun so I gave it a go. This game is advertised as a platformer, but it's more of a visual novel. The game took me over 15 hours, and about three quarters of it was cutscenes. Fortunately the story was extremely well crafted and engaging. The direction the story goes in kept surprising me, and while some of the twists are predictable, the execution makes it feel rewarding. I was constantly asking questions and wondering where the story would go next, and pretty much everything got answered in the end, which shows how well thought out the story was. The story is a little dark, but it has some humor to balance it out, and has a pretty good balance in tone. While there are a lot of characters, pretty much every character gets their moment to shine, and none of them were annoying. I found myself getting attached to them and getting to know their personalities pretty quickly. Overall I have no complaints with the story. It is full of twists, turns, laughs, and even made me tear up more than once. What makes it even better is the superb voice acting, which especially shines during the more dramatic moments. Nearly every line is voice acted, and honestly I don't think I could stomach 15 hours of reading. If there was little to no voice acting, the game would get a significantly lower score, probably only an 8/10. Pretty much everything about the presentation is phenominal. The music is absolutely amazing, it's up there as one of the best I've heard in any game. The graphics are pretty standard for a Switch game, which is not in any way a bad thing, but the overall style is really appealing. The price is also fair, $40 for a 15-20 hour game is the perfect price, and the inclusion of an art book and ost sampler in the physical version is a nice treat, even if it's an extra $10. Now let's talk about the gameplay. This is where I can see some people taking issue with the game, but I wasn't bothered by it. The platforming segments only takes up a few hours of gameplay. While it is a bit slow, the level design has some pretty clever puzzle elements, and there is a lot of variety. One issue I have is that the game likes to spell out what you need to do before even giving you time to figure it out, which was annoying because it took away some of the satisfaction. It doesn't completely ruin it for me, and the boss fights are pretty fun too, especially the final boss. Overall this game has some flaws but when it's good it's absolutely amazing. This was my first visual novel, and I might try getting into some other ones now that this one left such a great first impression. I hope other ones are as creative as this one. If you value story in a game as much or more than the gameplay, then this is the perfect game for you. So far this is my favorite original game of 2021, and I hope it stays that way (Miitopia and Void Terrarium ++ are both ports so they don't really count). I really hope we get more games like this in the future, or maybe even a TV adaptation, that would be pretty much perfect.
Graphics: 8/10 Music: 10/10 Sound Effects: 10/10 Content: 8/10 Controls: 7/10
Fun: 9/10 Characters: 10/10 Gameplay: 8/10 Story: 20/20
TOTAL: 90/100 (MUST PLAY!)
I usually have 10 areas worth 10 points each, but I had to give the story the credit it deserves. The game is nothing without the amazing story.
I had a great time with The World's End Club despite its gameplay issues. Being a huge fan of the Danganronpa series is what got me interested in WEC but I knew to temper my expectations that this game was going to be another Danganronpa (and so should you). Of course, that is not to say that there aren't shades of Danganronpa in WEC specifically in the unique character personalities as well as the twists and turns of the story. Notably, the story and characters are what really drew me into WEC. The story is more lighthearted than Danganronpa but that doesn't mean its less interesting. The game has a branching path narrative and you will have to experience all paths in order to get the true ending. Normally, this would frustrate me but WEC is a short enough experience and the story was intriguing and enjoyable enough for me to want to see all of it. Of course what helps to fuel the story is the assortment of unique personalities that makes up the Go-Getters Club. Each of them gets their moment to shine in the story although it is noticeable that some get more time than others.
Now the real trouble with WEC is with its gameplay. The gameplay is mostly guiding each of the characters through levels by platforming and using the different abilities of each character to solve puzzles and get past obstacles. The platforming is a bit of a joke. It is one of those games where your character feels like they weigh 300+ pounds so when you tell them to jump it is sluggish. Also the puzzles are pretty simplistic which is not a huge complaint for me personally but it might be an issue for others.
Finally, the game looks and plays good on the Switch. I played the entire game docked and only had minor framerate issues. As for visuals, the art style is great. My husband said the characters reminded him of Pokémon characters which I can see.
All and all, I recommend WEC. It has a fun story and interesting characters despite the dated and lackluster gameplay.
(Spoilers for some game mechanics)
I'm someone who has played the entire Danganronpa Series and played through the first Zero Escape game. I went into this thinking I was going to get more of the same, the trailers implied some kind of death game and I thought that's what the game was going to be revolved around. I was wrong and was actually pretty excited to see where they would take the story. But unfortunately because of the decisions made to appeal to a larger audience and some of the worst platforming I've ever seen I think the game falls short of greatness.
I'll start with something positive, I liked the music in the game the boss music was pretty cool. I just wish there was a bit more variety throughout the game instead of playing the same 5-7 BGMs the whole game.
From a gameplay perspective this game was horrible, extremely clunky controls, unfun game mechanics and just in generally the "act" sections of the game were simply a means to move the story forward rather than being fun in their own right. It's interesting to note the company that actually did a lot of the development Grounding Inc. They have plenty of experience in games, but almost none have been received well, this is my experience playing a game made by them and unless something changes in that studio it's going to be the last.
Though I did enjoy the narrative it wasn't exact what I was expecting, and I think I know why. This game directed towards children but along presented a pretty complex narrative. Because it was intended for children a lot of beats especially near the end of the game fell into troupes which was a bit disappointing.
I read in an interview (can be found here ****/games/527/G052776/20210526037/ )that they were looking to find a way to appeal the game to as wide of an audience as possible (most importantly to be China approved), so they made the story about children and tried to dilute the dark themes that you can find in the writers' previous work so it would be more palatable. The result in my opinion is a story that has a lot of really good ideas, but is ultimately empty.
They also tried to do something similar to what was done in the Zero Escape series forcing the player to use a time travel mechanic to be able to unlock the "true" ending which in theory I like, in Zero escape it was a fun gimmick that let you revisit old scenarios now with the knowledge of a different timeline. However, in World's end club the way that the time travel is utilized is much less interesting in my opinion, you just have various branch points that split off into 2 paths and always go back to a single point before branching back into 2 paths. So you essentially had to play the game twice to finish it but that was it.
Overall I think the game had a lot of talent behind the writing and had a lot of good ideas, but was ultimately bogged down by a lack luster implementation **** and some dilution of the narrative to the point where it felt emptier than I'd have liked to.
Side note: The crashed 3 times during my play through at random points in the game (both in conversation and during the act portions of the game).
World's End Club feels so sad to play. There's so much potential. The art-style is amazing and the lack of a Danganronpa game in a while means that a game like this would fit well on the market. World's End Club was marketed as a Danganronpa style killing game. While it's nothing like that. The game's demo cleverly only has you play the portion that is a killing game. For that amount of time the game is kind of interesting but still not good. This part feels like a rapid fire killing game where characters we don't know at all "die". The killing game lasts about an hour but once you finish that you start the actual game which is a puzzle platformer that focuses on character interactions and story. I relatively enjoyed the characters. Some where annoying and others felt like they served no purpose but a fey were actually cool. These characters would get powers and develop through the game but it didn't feel satisfying because honestly I barely knew any of these characters. There's one character who has a sister who passes away but I'm not sad or invested in his character because the writing makes it seem like he didn't really care for his sister. The writing is at its best when it's not trying to be serious. Just characters talking to each other, that's where the writing shines. The moment the writers try to create lore for these characters I lose a lot of interest. The story and gameplay is the worst part of World's End Club. For most of the game you're exploring a post-apocalyptic world. You meet new characters and encounter simplistic conflicts. After playing ever single Danganronpa game I realized that almost every big plot element is taken from one of the games and they found a way to make the moments worse. Everything that's original is weirdly complicated and when I try to explain the story to someone it makes it sound like I'm insane. The story doesn't have to be good if there's good gameplay but they didn't even do that. The controls feel so floaty. You get to play as different characters using their unique special ability but its really nothing to write home about its just a basic ability that's supposed to have something to do with their personality. The puzzles are super simplistic and sometimes just end up being move the box. There is another positive element. I actually enjoyed the Monokuma like character in the game. They actual made me chuckle a few times but that might have been influenced by how absurd the plot is but nevertheless I still liked the Monokuma style robot they had. In conclusion there's not much to say about World's End Club. I could see it as a babies first Danganronpa but it still has major gameplay issues. The game is nothing horrible but its not good. The confusing plot, nothing gameplay, and mostly boring characters brings this game down and is why its gathered a mostly negative reception.
Overall, predictable story, disappointing platformer, uninteresting characters. Only plus it really has is the way the characters look and are designed. Not one I would ever recommend and one I’m disappointed I bought day one. Also, if you played the demo and expect the game to be like that the whole time, DO NOT BE DECEIVED. This is literally the only part of the game like this and is used (in my opinion) as a hook to pull fans of Danganronpa/Zero Escape in.
SummaryRenowned game writers Kotaro Uchikoshi and Kazutaka Kodaka return with a brand-new game that’s easy to dive into and full of twists and turns. This charming and vivid story of friendship and mystery will captivate new and experienced players alike. The “Go-Getters Club,” a group of misfit students from all over Japan, find themselves tra...