Review: Shuten Order

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Shuten Order aims to offer up five different gameplay styles, tied together by a central cult murder mystery plotline.

Taking place in a reality where humanity is almost at its end, Shuten Order focuses on the exploits of a cult leader recently brought back from the dead, tasked with stopping the end of the world. Lacking memories, they must make their murderer confess as part of “God’s trial”, before killing them to regain their own body.

The opening cinematic and prologue really do a great job at setting the scene. You learn of the titular Shuten, a cult that celebrates the end of humanity, fed info on what must be done by two self-proclaimed angels. It’s through the angels that our amnesiac protagonist Rei also learns of the “Power of God”, which can supposedly help her figure out who killer her.

From here, you pick from one of five routes, one for each suspect. Said suspects are the five ministers of Shuten, all having ties to Rei (ones she’s naturally forgotten) in some way. Shuten Order’s main gimmick is that each route is meant to take on a distinct style, with the in-game reason being that the power of God is changing Rei’s perspective.

With the focus being on distinct routes, I figured it would make sense to structure the middle section of my review around them. Shuten Order doesn’t have much of a recommended route order, so I just went with what I felt like at the time — you are nudged towards some routes after completing others, though you’re not forced onto them.

Note that I wont be going into anything too specific regarding the story of each route.

Ministry of Science Route: Multi-Perspective Novel

I went with the “Multi-Perspective Visual Novel” route first, featuring the genius scientist Teko Ion. The route description is fairly self explanatory, as you follow the perspectives of both Rei and a number of other characters.

This route is one of the longest in the game, in part due to it being almost entirely text over the more active gameplay of most other routes. As I’d learn later, the lack of interaction makes this by far the game’s best (or second best at worst) route, with the attempts to deviate from visual novel gameplay mostly harming the other routes.

You’re given enough time to learn about this route’s main cast, some directly thanks to the route’s main gimmick, and it’s an enjoyable time even if you don’t factor in the rest of the game. Funnily enough, this was also the only route handled by Kyohei Oyama. Considering how much I enjoyed their writing in The Hundred Line, I guess it’s not too surprising that I was a fan of the Ministry of Science route here.

Despite the strong story, it’s isn’t free of Shuten Order’s main (non-route specific) issue: its localisation. For the most part, it’s easy to follow the English dialogue — there’s no English dub, but the game does feature full Japanese voiceover. However, there are a number of scenes that feature grammatical issues, strange translation choices, and the occasional missing line. That’s on top of graphical problems like text boxes partially being cut off at times, or Japanese background text not being translated at times.

It’s mostly serviceable, but there were enough noticeable issues to to take me out of the experience at times. Some of this might be fixed for launch (I played the 1.0.3 build), though I don’t expect much to change.

Ministry of Education Route: Romance Adventure (?)

Moving on from what ended up being the best route, I promptly found myself in one of the worst. The Ministry of Education route features Honoka Kokushikan, a normally emotionless girl who ends up having a strange fascination with Rei.

With the need to have different styles for all five routes, I knew going into this that they wouldn’t manage to pull off a proper dating sim. But what you get instead is so shallow that you could essentially skip this route entirely and miss little in the grand scheme of things.

All you really do is click on various locations and try to complete every event within a set number of turns. Another gimmick is thrown into the mix later, but it does little to add anything of substance.

A “Realtime talking” mechanic is used a few times, where you pick from two options within a timelimit, occasionally having to time your choices with a specific line of dialogue. It’s a novel idea, if underutilised.

This route was where I realised that the game might not be able to properly carry its gimmick across all routes. And as it turned out, the next two routes just drove this point home.

Ministry of Security Route: Stealth Action Horror

This route is an improvement over the previous one only because of some of its reveals towards the overall story. Its main gimmick is a mediocre top down stealth game, where you can see the only enemy coming a mile away.

It felt like the shortest route by far, thanks to just how quickly you speed through the gameplay sections. Manji Fushicho, the Head of Security, is fine as a character, but the story is so short that you don’t get much time to care about her.

At the very least, it didn’t feel like a complete bait and switch, unlike…

Ministry of Health Route: Extreme Escape Adventure

Based on the name of the route’s gameplay style, I was expecting something similar to Zero Escape. You know, exploring rooms and figuring out interesting puzzles. What I instead got was a lifeless maze with the same three puzzle types repeated for most of its playtime.

I still can’t get over just how terrible the gameplay is in this route. Even with some occasionally strong writing, it’s hard to overstate just how lame everything in-between is. There’s a brief glimpse at what could have been right at the end, but it’s not enough to save the route for me.

At least it has enough run-time to learn more about the suspect of this route, Yugen Ushitora, along with a few of the many characters you’re introduced to. I’d argue that Yugen is actually overshadowed by a number of other characters in his own route, though it still works out overall.

Ministry of Justice Route: Mystery Adventure

Thankfully, while the Ministry of Health Route was a complete flop gameplay-wise, this one actually offers up what you’d expect from Mystery Adventure. Accompanying the enigmatic (and often high) Kishiru Inugami, you’re thrust into a fight over a large inheritance that soon turns deadly.

This route is split between exploring each area, as you find clues and question characters, and meetings where you piece together evidence to discover the truth. It’s very much in a similar vein to Ace Attorney, just sped up a lot like most routes are.

It’s an enjoyable time, with the mystery working well despite being crammed into a single route. Kishiru also makes for an entertaining partner to Rei — honestly, I’d be completely fine playing a spin-off game featuring him as the protagonist.

My main gripe here (outside of some localisation issues) is the occasional leap in logic. There’s one specific moment that you’re supposed to figure out something that isn’t alluded to at all, something that is just taken as fact without you presenting any concrete evidence. This could just be something lost in translation, but it does stick out when pretty much everything else in this route is handled well.

Final thoughts

Naturally, I can’t go into too much detail as to how everything ties together. But I can say that Shuten Order really manages to stick the landing on its main mysteries. You’re rewarded for paying attention to certain details during each route, and it doesn’t feel like the big reveals come out of nowhere.

The final chapter really does make the weaker routes worth it, though I wish the quality of the game was overall more consistent. Honestly, it would have been better if they just stuck to the multi-perspective and mystery gameplay styles for all routes. Shuten Order is at its best when you’re not being interrupted by mediocre gameplay, which the finale only drives home further.

Looking back on Shuten Order, it really is an odd game. Despite how mediocre multiple of the routes are, I’d never say I had a bad time with it. The main plot smooths over the weaker narrative aspects, and I came to love many characters during my time in Shuten.

Spike Chunsoft provided us with Nintendo Switch review code for Shuten Order, which we used to capture the screenshots.