YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world. Day One Edition - PlayStation 4

YU-NO was originally released in 1996 in Japan as an adults-only adventure game for the PC-98 home computer. The original game included nudity and sex scenes, but the sci-fi mystery story the game is built around was so compelling that a less explicit port of the game was released in 1997 for the SEGA Saturn and Windows PC that added voice acting, upgraded the graphics and removed most of the nudity. That cleaned-up version is closer to the one that's been ported to the PS4, although this new version has completely revamped artwork for HD screens and even less sexual content than the 1997 versions. But be warned, this is still not a game for kids.For a 23-year-old game, YU-NO still holds up surprisingly well. It contains plenty of dated references (the protagonist fantasizes about Elizabeth Taylor, who was already in her 50s in 1996) and there are no cell phones to be found anywhere, but the sci-fi elements, romance, humor and characters don't feel overly dated or out of place. The story is the real highlight here: Your father, a researcher, goes missing after a freak explosion. A few months later you receive a mysterious package in the mail with a letter, signed by your father, and a strange device that the letter claims will allow you to jump freely to alternate versions of the past and present. You are surrounded by other characters, mostly women, who are acting strangely and may know something of relevance to your father's fate. It's a great melding of story and game play, and it works.This is not a typical visual novel where you just push a button to advance the text and occasionally choose between a few dialog options. It's a fully interactive point-and-click adventure where you have to find and use items, solve puzzles, etc. You might get to a place where an item is needed to advance, but you don't have the item. No problem. Use your "Reflector" device to travel to an alternate timeline, find the item you need and then warp back to the place where you need to use it. It's a cool mechanic that challenges you because you can only maintain a limited number of save points to return to, so you have to think strategically.The PS4 version has added quality-of-life improvements to the UI to make the game less frustrating than the original version. It now shows you exactly which areas of the screen you can look at or interact with, and the corresponding icon for each goes dark when you've exhausted all the dialog options for interacting with it. That makes the game much more straightforward and harder to get stuck, but there are times when you'll still find yourself wandering around aimlessly, not knowing what to do. Thankfully, the new version also has implemented an optional hint system to point you in the right direction when you get stuck.I don't love the character portraits in the new version and I find them inferior to the original art style, but aside from that this is unquestionably the best version of YU-NO ever released. The music is fantastic, and you can switch on the fly between original and arranged versions of the soundtrack. Both sound great. The artwork is still excellent despite the character portraits feeling a little "off." The game is long and complex -- expect to play at least 40 hours before getting to the true ending. This is the one of the most ambitious games of its kind ever made.Despite all that, avoid this game at all costs if you are creeped out by what I will politely refer to as "inappropriate" romantic relationships. Student and teacher, stepson and stepmother, etc. - because those are a big focus of the story. But if you can accept that it's just a fantasy game and not real life, there is definitely a worthwhile story being told in YU-NO that will stick with you for a long time.

Good game so far. Removed a star due to translation. The translation was well done but it feels a bit off. Still it is better than other games that have been translated officially.

This bad review has nothing to do with Amazon, delivery was on time and no issues.. just a crappy game that’s all

RPG cool game

Spike Chunsoft is very well known for making excellent visual novel games and YU-NO is what you'd expect from a company of their standing. I haven't finished the game yet but it's been a delight playing so far. This is a point-and-click sort of game where the whole purpose is to make the girls around you fall in love with you. There are several different endings depending on the girl you choose, so you have a lot of freedom in deciding which girls you want to speak to and which that you don't. According to online sources, it will take 40+ hours to reach the TRUE ending of this game.Some things I don't like is that a lot of the characters are pretty stereotypical/cliche anime characters. Also, the western release of this game has been censored compared to the Japanese version of the game. HOWEVER, apparently the Steam version is exactly the same as the Japanese so that's an option if you don't want the physical copy of this game. As far as I know, there is only one part of the game that's censored and it's a panty shot of one of the female characters. Take that with a grain of salt though, my source is what I've found through Google. And no, you won't find any nudity in either of the two versions.I might also like to add that this game is an anime which I haven't watched, but according to myanimelist, has a 6.9/10 rating and 26 episodes.

my friend cassy love this got as gift