A Bad Moon Rising: A Raging Loop Review

By Manuel

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, XBox One, XBox Series XS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC (Steam)

I have found memories of playing Among Us during those awkward pandemic years, and the game we're going to look at today took me back to the days of calling each other "sus", or accusing my friends of going through the vents. Raging Loop is a visual novel that comes to us from developer Kemco, and publisher PQube. It's been out for quite a while on all major platforms, including mobile devices, and we're going to be looking at it today on the Nintendo Switch. This is a game that's been on my radar since even before the Among Us days, and I'm glad that I finally got a chance to play it. There's going to be a lot to go over in this one, so let's just get straight to the review!

Raging Loop places you into the role of Haruaki Fusaishi, a Tokyo resident who is currently on a trip through the Japanese countryside following a break-up. His carefree jaunt through the backwoods is cut short when he gets into an accident after a creepy conbini visit, and crashes his badly-insured motorcycle. Not sure where to go to get help in such a remote region, he's thankfully rescued by a college student named Chiemi Serizawa. Chiemi is a resident of a nearby mountain village named Yasumizu, and she invites him back to her place to spend the night so that he can hopefully fix his bike in the morning. Despite the setup, nothing happens beyond some heavy drinking, and the night goes off without a hitch. We don't know it yet, but that will be the last "normal" night of the game. The following day Haruaki realizes that he's in a rather sticky situation, as the entire town is suspicious of him, and seems to have customs that are at odds with the modern world outside of the mountain. I use the term "entire town", but the population is barely over a dozen people. More resolved than ever to get out of Yasumizu as quickly as possible, Haruaki begins the process of fixing his bike, and promises to take Chiemi for a ride once he does. That date is not to be though, as a mist settles upon the town, trapping the residents in a supernatural prison. Not believing the local superstitions regarding wolves, Haruaki steps out into the mist and comes face to face with a huge, half-human, half-wolf creature; a werewolf. This werewolf wastes no time ripping Haruaki to shreds, and thus ends the game.

I'm only half kidding as the game has several more hours to throw at you if you're willing to stick through it, but this is indeed the first ending that you'll get. There is no way to avoid this ending, and that's because Raging Loop isn't your standard visual novel. Those familiar with the genre are sure to be familiar with how they usually flow. The story will move in one direction, and you'll occasionally be given a fork in the plot that comes in the form of a dialogue or action choice. Typically this will move the plot in another direction, sometimes putting you onto the road to a particular ending. This makes the entire genre resemble something like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but that's an overdone comparison. Raging Loop does have a couple choices that are totally open to the player from the get go, but many of them will be locked with keys. Keys are exactly what they sound like, but in this case they unlock branching choices that are closed off to the player their first time through. Keys are obtained by clearing certain sections in the main game, or by reaching an ending. The game goes out of its way to tell you that dying is often the best way to get out of being stuck, and it proves its point by making you die within the first hour or so of gameplay.

Even though I'm willing to admit that the key system is unique, I can't help but feel that it adds a linearity to the game that isn't in most other visual novels. There are several endings that you can see, but you're mostly limited to seeing them in a pre-determined order. It sort of feels like the weird ending of Wayne's World where the duo keep changing the way things actually ended. It also doesn't help that the choices you're force to make are very often obviously "wrong". For example, Haruaki gets killed because he decides to go against what he'd been told to do, and venture outside into the fog. Anyone who's ever seen a horror movie before knows that this is the worst possible decision one can make, but you're forced to go through with it. There were several other Bad Ends that caused me to wince and grown when I realized I had no other option open to me besides the absolute worse one. Some choices even have multiple keys needed to unlock them, and it feels like a grind to make it to the actual end of the game. There is an in-game flow chart that helps you see what paths you haven't gone down, but the backtracking does become tedious after a while. I did find it kind of neat that the looping mechanic was integrated into the story, as that wasn't something that I was expecting to find. I don't want to give away too much of the details for fear of spoilers, but it's revealed early on that Haruaki can recall all the previous attempts he made at getting through the game's horrific scenarios. He remembers each time he failed to solve the village's mystery, and he very much remembers that first time the werewolf killed him.

Seeing as that pretty much covers all you need to know about gameplay for now, let's go back to that story. You first new task in Raging Loop's second playthrough is to keep yourself from getting killed by the wolf, and then progressing into the game proper. Not getting killed is literally as simple as not going outside, so it's now time to learn what's actually going on in Yasumizu. The full explanation of the village's curse is a bit too much to cover here in this review, but I'll try to give all the key details as I can. Yasumizu resides on a mountain that is believed to have been protected by a group of spirit animals since ancient times. These animals' main task was to protect the humans living on the mountain from the malevolent spirits brought on by the ever-encroaching fog. The animals and humans lived in a perpetual state of peace, but one of the spirits, the wolf, sometimes acted in a way that harmed the humans. Things continued like this until one day the other spirits decided that they would betray their bonds, and kill the wolf. The wolf felt wronged by this turn of events, and took this as a sign to throw in his lot with the demons the spirits were supposed to guard against. From then on the village of Yasumizu was cursed to face to wolf's wrath whenever the mist comes, and somehow this superstition has stayed alive to the modern day. The thing is, this wolf isn't just a creature that comes and goes in the night. It's a spirit, and that means that it possesses one of the residents of the village, and causes them to do the actual killing. No one currently alive in the village knows of a time when the wolf has come, but they've all prepared for it. Ready or not, the mists are back, and so are the wolves. I didn't mess up with that plural just now either, this time around the village has to deal with two of them.

I bet you're asking yourself how the villagers of Yasumizu figure out who the wolf is. Well, they play a game of Werewolf of course! I don't want to go too in-depth regarding the very real game of Werewolf, but I'm sure everyone is familiar with Among Us. Werewolf is basically Among Us, but with werewolves in the place of impostors. Among Us is actually far more recent than Werewolf or Raging Loop, but the comparison fits. In short, the villagers must decide who the possessed one is through their own wits. Once the wolf arrives, the villagers gather in what is known as "The Feast". This isn't a group meal though, it's a solemn gathering where the entire village must make a very serious choice: pick one among them to hang as a potential wolf. Not being an actual resident of Yasumizu, Haruaki does not take part in this gathering, and this is free to get himself killed all on his own. The villagers are only allowed to hang one person a day, and the wolves are only allowed to kill one person a day. This little game of cat and mouse goes on until one side is completely wiped out, though the humans do have some help in the form of the other animal spirits. These spirits help eliminate potential suspects, and also let the humans know if the one they hung that day was really a wolf or not. The problem of course is that no one can really know if the other villagers are lying about their given roles or not. It's a game of trust, and that's in very low supply in this particular village. Even though the spirits give the humans some cool parlor tricks to help fish out the wolf among them, much of The Feast is simply the villagers arguing with each other, calling each other sus, and ultimately voting on who is to die that day. Things obviously get very dark, very quickly, and I'll of course not reveal one single aspect of The Feast itself to keep any potential surprises intact.

I have mixed feeling when it comes to Raging Loop's core concept, as I truly do think that a visual novel that's centered on a real game of Werewolf can be something really amazing. It essentially could be a more countryside take on games like Danganronpa. The problems lie with how this game chooses to handle its own storytelling. Right off the bat is the fact that by the game's very nature, at least two characters will die every day. This is to be expected, but it doesn't change the fact that those two characters, as well as the two the following day, will most likely be given the short end of the stick when it comes to characterization. I don't really have time to get into the thirteen residents of Yasumizu, but each of them are characters I wanted to learn more about, and about half of them aren't given more than a couple scenes of screen time. There is an epilogue that "fixes" some of these issues, but I doubt many players will make it that far. The entire issue of characters dying too early is further compounded by the fact that the game seems determined to shock the player by tossing in all sorts of nonsense that makes the body count go ever higher. I won't go into details, but the wolves don't even have to lift a finger regarding most of the deaths. I will admit that some of the twists really worked, but I couldn't help but wish that the game had a setup that allowed you to get to know the characters more before it began killing them off in seemingly quick ways. I think the rushed pacing is due to the game's mobile origins, though that's little consolation when the most interesting members of the cast are casually killed off-screen in the name of getting things moving. Things oddly slow down once the cast is whittled to almost nothing, but I found it hard to keep my interest steady. I think I'm going to leave my discussion of the plot here, simply because I feel that this review is already getting a bit too long, but suffice it to say that I did enjoy my time with the game, even though I think it could've used some heavy rewrites and plot re-workings.

I'm not sure what it is about Raging Loop's art style that strikes me as odd, but I came to realize that I didn't care for it much after about an hour or so of playing it. The game of course has an anime look and feel, but I'm of the mind that it more closely resembles what a non-Japanese studio would create when trying to emulate the style. That's of course just my opinion, but there's other aspects of the visual design that I found to be lacking. I'm not sure if it's due to the game's mobile roots, but there's very few actual backgrounds and CGs considering how long of a game this is. It didn't take long for me to notice that the Feast scenes only have one CG, and that there's only three or so death CGs as well. That may not sound like a big deal, but there's literal hours of scenes between those handful of images, and it makes for a very boring experience visually. It actually gets worse than that even, as several scenes don't have any imagery to go along with them at all. There are an embarrassing number of drawn-out scenes that are accompanied by single-colored screens. It got to the point where I started to suspect that the game was actually incomplete. It's truly is shocking how little variety there is to the graphics, though I can at least say that the game does have some interesting designs when it comes to the creatures and tutorial scenes. The tutorials were probably my single favorite part of the game, which I know is a weird thing to say. It's sad that seeing them is optional, and equally sad that the game isn't very consistently good in most aspects in general.

Judging the sound of Raging Loop is a bit more difficult, since I think that its two main aspects vary quite a bit in terms of quality. Longtime readers of my reviews (Surely you exist, right?) will know that I often use the term "visual novel music" to describe a type of music that sits in the background inoffensively as one reads said visual novels. It exists for the sake of existing, and countless visual novels have soundtracks solely made up of music that would fall into that category. One can make the argument that since visuals novels involve lots of reading, you don't want intrusive music to distract one from the plot. I would counter that by pointing out that great music is the best partner to any type of scene, but I think you get the point. I've had the pleasure to cover several games in the past that have broken out of the stereotype of visual novel music, but Raging Loop sadly isn't going to be one of them. Its soundtrack is by no means bad, but it doesn't stand out either. If pressed, I'd describe the music as "serviceable", while also admitting that it's a bit generic and bland. It gets the job done, but that's it. The other aspect of sound that I want to talk about is voice acting, something that Raging Loop gets down near perfect. This is a game that keeps its Japanese voice track completely untouched, so those looking for a dubbed release won't find it here. I personally don't care about such things, especially when the performances are as good as the ones found here. Every single voice actor brings their A Game to the table, and they help flesh out the characters in a way that the game itself doesn't. This is especially important for the characters that don't get a lot of screen time, as they are at least memorable at the end of day. It more than makes up for the just okay music, and helps move along the scenes that are just static images of nothing. Taken with the music, it's a mixed bag, but one that leans more towards the positive than the negative.

No matter how you cut it, Raging Loop is a very long game. Getting through all the endings will take most players about 25+ hours, and it will take even more if you want to clear all the optional routes. Those times can vary greatly due to factors like reading speed, but you might as well clear a weekend or two if you're thinking about picking this game up. I admittedly threw in the towel long before the 100% mark, but I plan to get there eventually. The Groundhog Day-esque bit of having to constantly backtrack to fix one's mistakes did get old long before the game was done, but the story kept me interested long enough to get to the final ending. A lot of that was due to me simply wanting closure to the various plot threads left hanging, but sometimes that's all that's needed to get one through a really long game. This is a visual novel that is sure to occupy your time for quite a while, and you can get it right now for just $29.99 on all its platforms. Also, seeing as it's been out for quite a while now, you can most likely get it at a far lower price than that if you're willing to wait for it to go on sale. I truly do think it's worth picking up even at full price, but you can get even more bang for your buck if you're able to get it on the cheap.

Even though parts of the game rubbed me the wrong way, I still think that Raging Loop is a worth playing. It has a great premise, and the full reveals are not what you expect them to be going in. Those twists and turns might have been one of my complaints, but I can't deny that they were effective. This is one of the most shocking visual novels I've played in a long while, and it's upsetting that it fell just shy of being perfect. A bit more work in the writing and presentation departments, and I'd be giving a far more solid recommendation. Visual novel fans are sure to appreciate the key system, even if it does railroad players a bit in the first dozen hours or so. Those able to get past those first dozen hours are in for quite a treat, though I don't know if there are a lot of gamers with that level of patience. I still say give a shot on whatever platform you can, maybe even make a game night out of it with some Among Us too. Anyhow, don't be sus, and be wary of your neighbors turning into werewolves. See you in the next one!

Check Out Raging Loop on Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/raging-loop-switch/

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Story: B-
Gameplay: B
Graphics: B-
Music/Sound: B
Value: A

Overall: B

Pros:
+ A great visual novel with a unique premise.
+ The key system manages to do something nearly impossible: changing up the mechanics of a visual novel.
+ Though I didn't cover them too much in the review itself, the cast of characters are all unique, and you'll want to learn more about them.
+ Twists and turns are to be expected in any game, but the ones here are truly effective.
+ Not only is the voice acting great, but it also helps with some of the weaker characterizations.
+ You get quite a lot of content here for a decent price.

Cons:
- Most aspects of presentation, like the visuals and music, are quite a bit below typical visual novel standards.
- Since the plot involves a high stakes game of Werewolf, many characters die before players will really get to know them. This is a game that could've benefited greatly from a longer prologue section.
- The key system means that most of the "good" options will be closed off to you at first, and also makes it so the game feels surprisingly linear.
- There are a shockingly low number of CGs and images used in the game. There are long stretches of the game where you'll see the same image, or a single-color screen.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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Chiemi is best girl though.

#RagingLoop