Chrono Clock Review

Player(s): 1
Platform(s): PC (via Steam or Nutaku)
 
What would you do if you had the ability to travel back in time by 5 minutes? Would you use it to get money? Would you do it to figure out the best way to approach conversations with people? Or maybe you’d use it to press your luck in situations where you could save yourself from trouble?

The only other male character you'll meet.

In Chrono Clock, the main character Rei, does all of these things. In a strange turn of events, Rei finds out that a pocket watch he inherited from his grandfather turns back time by 5 minutes when it is broken. To accompany him through the discoveries of this power is the Goddess of Time, Chronos. At first, this story sounds like it has a lot of potential as being a crazy fantasy, but it doesn’t stray far from the core concept of being a romance. 

Chronos being obnoxious, her best trait.

When it boils down to it, this is a visual novel about a guy at school who has never had a girlfriend, and is trying to find love. As I said, it’s a romance, plain and simple. This leads to the two biggest flaws of the visual novel for me. The most prominent issue is that, with the concept of time travel and changing decisions being the underlying theme of the story, there aren’t any points during the story that you are given the opportunity to make branching decisions outside of choosing routes for whichever character you are planning on wooing. In fact, the story is extremely linear once you make your choice of love interest. The other issue is that there are very misplaced perverted lines that seem shoehorned in merely as fan service. Though I read the more ‘family-friendly’ version available on Steam, I can’t imagine having naughty scenes added would add much context to these strangely placed lines. They aren’t funny, they don’t move the story forward and they don’t develop any of the characters. They just feel completely out of place. 

Silly comments like this always made me smile.

Once you get past those flaws with a better understanding of what to expect, you’ll find a fairly enticing story. Each love interest follows a different character archetype, which creates a unique and interesting story scenario that unfolds for each route. I ended up playing through Makoto’s route and about half of D.D.’s route, which both felt pretty different to me. Don’t worry, even though you don’t get to make any cool time travelling decisions, the story theme of time travel is clearly present and utilized.

Time to go back in time!

I was especially happy with the way the dialogue was written. It pulls enough of our own pop-culture into the story to be more relatable, while also retaining the very clear Japanese nuance that will always be present with a Japanese visual novel. The dynamic between Rei and each other character is different, silly and fun. The only character’s dialogue that feels odd is D.D.’s. She’s a foreign exchange student from England, so she mixes English and Japanese. Luckily, I know enough Japanese to understand what’s going on, but others may need to have Google Translate ready to go. The reason for this is that she often uses English words mixed in with her Japanese when she’s speaking. The issue is that the voice actress has a very thick accent, so when she says the English words it can be very difficult to know what she’s saying. The actual written dialogue does the exact opposite of this. Everything she says is translated for us, of course, so it’s in English. The thing is that the words that she says in English while speaking are converted to Japanese in the dialogue text. Hence why you’d need a dictionary if you didn’t know any Japanese vocabulary. For somebody who understands some Japanese, this was particularly hurting my brain when I’m listening to one thing and reading the exact opposite, which means I’m essentially trying to do a double-translation at the same time. For most people, this likely won’t be an issue. In fact, you can even turn off the voice acting if you simply don’t want to deal with listening to it. In the end, it’s not a huge issue, and from an aesthetic perspective it actually fits her personality and style of speech perfectly, it merely feels weird upon execution. Everyone else is perfectly fine, though.

Makoto, the one with the mysterious past.

Speaking of voice acting, I must admit that the voice acting in this visual novel is actually pretty good. As is the case with most visual novels of this type, every character besides the main character has full voice acting. Each character is handled with care and appropriate emotion, which made keeping the voices on very enjoyable for me (I usually keep voices off). The characters are all really well-drawn as well. There aren’t any over-the-top or unique designs since it takes place at a Japanese school, but they are all very gorgeous nonetheless. If you’re jumping into a Japanese visual novel then you probably already expect suggestive scenes, but I want to warn that there is some nudity, in case that bothers you. As is the case with Sekai Project’s visual novels on Steam, all sexual content has been removed, so I was surprised that some nudity was retained. In all fairness, this nudity was actually well-placed and wasn’t meant to be sexual. If you acquire the visual novel from Nutaku, you will have access to the fully uncensored version. Even though I was reading the toned down version, the missing scenes never felt like a gaping hole. In fact, I can’t even imagine how they’d fit without feeling weird. The backdrops are mostly generic, and there aren’t enough of them, though this is a common complaint I have with visual novels in general. Even though they are generic, they are still done well. You have locations like a classroom, the roof of the school, the inside of a train, etc. Nothing crazy. It isn’t exactly a bad thing, but it isn’t exactly a good thing either. The music is well-done though. It is very calming and sets the mood well. The aesthetics fit together quite well.

Somebody has a bit of an attitude problem.

One thing I really appreciated about Chrono Clock is that there are a lot of options for you to play around with. Most of the visual novels I’ve read have had very little customization. Naturally, there are also a lot of save slots to accompany the standard fare of an unlockable gallery.

Playing video games together. That's the main thing to notice...

Despite my complaints, this is one of the better visual novels I’ve had the pleasure of reading lately. I rarely go back to a visual novel to see each character’s route, which is something I definitely plan to do with this one. Being a slow reader, I spent about 12 hours going through the 1.5 routes that I completed. Cute characters, fun story and reasonable length make this a romance visual novel I can easily recommend.

How could anybody say no to cute bunnies?

You can pick up the toned down version from http://store.steampowered.com/app/539660/ or the non-censored version from (NSFW WEBSITE) https://www.nutaku.net/games/download/chronoclock/ (NSFW WEBSITE).
 
- Teepu

Miu, the catalyst of the story and Michiru, Rei's sister.

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Story: AMAZING
Graphics: GREAT
Sound: GREAT
Value: GREAT
 
OVERALL: GREAT

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FULL DISCLOSURE: This game was provided to A-To-J Connections free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of review.
 
Images and video are ©Sekai Project ©Denpasoft ©Purple Software.