Dead Days (Adult Content)

When I learned that I'd be reviewing a visual novel game called Dead Days, I admit that I had a certain level of trepidation. I had never reviewed an eroge before and it seemed like the title was going to be a bit more hardcore than I was expecting. Still, I was curious. I had recently made a resolution to myself to be more willing to step outside of my comfort zone and reviewing this game certainly fell into that category. However, I was willing to give it a chance with the expectation that I might be pleasantly surprised.

Dead Days opens with the main character, Teru Kuresaka, waking up in a small space along with three other people, Aira Mitsumine, Manami Mera and Soukichi Tengan. As it turns out, each of them are supposed to be dead but have been resurrected by a mysterious organisation in order to hunt down beings called Specters. Running on electricity, they receive payment upon completing their assignment by having their battery charged to max, extending their lifespan for approximately 7-10 days. However, a side effect of the process is that their bodies become extremely aroused afterwards and will not settle down until the exchange of reproductive fluids.

I'll admit that the premise intrigued me initially and brought to mind some of my favourite visual novels such as the Zero Escape and Danganronpa games where characters wake up in an unknown situation and are forced to work together to preserve their lives. However, this is where we get to the first problem with the game. The pacing is terrible! What starts out so promising quickly begins to drag its heels, taking an excruciatingly long time for the greater plot to unfold. Instead, we're subjected to overly repetitive hunts for the Specters and sex scenes that slow the game down to a crawl. There were several times where I had just finished watching one sex scene only to have it immediately followed by another, and I REALLY mean immediately, and I started wishing that it would just go back to the story and make progress.

However, the rest of the plot ends up being a big disappointment. Many of the mysteries are answered in ways that feel shallow and contrived and, while there are one or two twists near the end that genuinely caught me off-guard in a clever manner, I thought the true ending was absolutely laughable for a multitude of reasons from awkward character interactions, undeserved character development and how poorly everything was wrapped up. I wish I could be more positive as there are some genuinely cool ideas here and some interactions can, at times, feel charming but I can't possibly look at the plot as anything other than a net negative experience.

While there are times in the game where we briefly switch over to another character to get their view and see how their storyline is developing, the vast majority of the game is played through the perspective of Teru Kuresaka, a character that I feel is going to be troubling and perhaps even aggravating for a lot of people. A high school student, we quickly learn that he is a dishonest individual who only sees other people as exploitable for his own gain. While we don't see it within the story itself, we learn very early on that he's been using his friendship with another student, a popular student who is ultimately irrelevant to the story, to exploit girls into performing sexual acts with him so that he will introduce them to his friend. The idea of this seems absolutely insane to me and I can't possibly imagine why they would do this rather than simply, you know, introducing themselves to the popular student but, as you can imagine, this doesn't leave a very good first impression of Teru Kuresaka. His character development is easily the worst out of all of the characters simply because of how unnatural it feels. Some of the other characters have better introductions but none of them stood out to me as being memorable or interesting in the long-term.

However, I feel it would be remiss of me if I didn't mention some of the content, some of which is highly disturbing, that is present in this game. Dead Days features plenty of gore and, while there is an option to disable it, I decided to go with the full experience to better understand the game's style and subject matter. There is some pretty standard depictions of gore such as blood sprays and severed body parts along with some vivid descriptions within the dialog text for off-screen violence. However, it's when this violence mixes with the sexual content of the game that I become deeply uncomfortable. Beyond the fact that their bodies are forcing them to engage in sexual acts that they may not want to do, there's also plenty of non-consensual instances where someone expressly wishes for a particular act not to be done or even to have sex in the first place but it happens anyway. However, there are a few instances in particular that proved incredibly upsetting to me when I realised that a sexual participant was going to die. For anyone who has seen A Serbian Film, there were a few scenes in Dead Days that reminded me of some of its most notorious moments such as suffocating someone to death with a blowjob and using an eye socket as a hole for sex. As uncomfortable as all of these made me, however, none of them compared to a particular character who is introduced partway through the game. A disclaimer when you first load up the game explicitly tells you that all characters who engage in sexual acts are eighteen years or above and the reason for this seems obvious, to protect themselves from breaking any laws. However, this character has numerous aspects that strongly imply that this is not the case for them. For one, they are a junior idol which, as far as I can tell, implies that they are underage. Not only that but the two high school characters react to her like she's significantly younger than them. Finally, there is a line where she is looking for sex and mentions that when she posted her real age that the pedos came running.

I haven't discussed gameplay so far and that's because there's hardly any of it. There are several choices made throughout the game which unlock different routes. Some of these are relatively simple where simply picking the wrong choice will instantly send you down a divergent path from the main story while others were more convoluted, requiring you to make very specific decisions throughout the game. I'll be honest and say that I had to look up a walkthrough in order to unlock three specific paths as even getting one choice wrong will prevent you from proceeding. The rest of the game consists of clicking through text and the game took me approximately twenty hours to complete. Of course, if you decide to figure out the correct choices yourself, you could probably expect a few hours added to that.

An area of the game that I was more impressed with was the artwork. While the background art and the standard character portraits are a little lacklustre, they still do their job but it's the numerous CGs throughout the game that steal the spotlight, being rendered in a lot of detail, perhaps too much at times, and featuring impressive character proportions and angles. The gallery boasts a count of 1162 CGs but many of these are variations where character expressions change or bodily fluids intensify. Still, it's quite a bit of artwork that's quite impressive for what it is.

The main cast of the game are all voiced in Japanese and I would say that they generally give good performances. There were a few times where I thought they seemed a little stiff but I was generally impressed at how much emotion they managed to convey during some particularly heated sequences. The music was a mixed bag where the theme music was catchy and some genuinely unnerving scores that enhanced the atmosphere but there was also a lot of very typical pieces, particularly the one commonly used for the sex scenes, that irritated me with how typical and cliche it sounded. I would also argue that the soundtrack is a little too limited and that a few extra tracks would've helped to reduce the repetitiveness over the course of the game.

The technical aspect of the game is something I've wanted to discuss ever since the first time I started playing. By far and away the biggest issue I have is the resolution which, as far as I can tell, cannot be changed. It seems to rendered at 800p and if you use the option to make the game full-screen, the artwork and UI will becoming stretched and blurry. This is a shame because I was actually impressed with almost everything else. Looking at the settings, I was surprised to see how much customisability there was when it came to things like the functions of the skip command, visuals, how the game responds to the ESC key, confirmation dialogs and even individual characters voices! The save screen allows you to protect, move, copy and even comment your save while also showing overall playtime, individual playtime and how much of the game you've completed as well as an option to hide that information. The gallery is also quite impressive with the ability to look at any of the CGs again, replay any of the sex scenes, save voice clips to listen to later and even a staff comment section which unlocks once you've beaten the game! As you can probably tell, I'm quite impressed with these options so it's a shame that the restricted resolution is the most glaring issue in this regard.

To conclude, Dead Days is a tough experience for numerous reasons and I may've been more forgiving of some, and I really mean only some, of its flaws if there was quality behind it but, excluding the technical aspects, the game is sorely lacking in that regard. It starts out intriguing but quickly devolves from there and ultimately grew unpleasant as more and more questionable aspects were introduced, the pacing slowed and what answers we got are unsatisfying. I'm sure there might be some people out there that might get something out of Dead Days but I think most will be happier never having to experience it in the first place.