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Never 7 ~the end of infinity~ is a romance/mystery novel adventure game released on 21 Dec 00 on the Dreamcast by KID. It is a remake and conclusion to the earlier Playstation game Infinity. There is also a Neo Geo Pocket Color version called INFINITY Cure, with a somewhat different story. This article is a review written after completing all scenarios (on the game disk) in the Dreamcast version.
The player takes the role of Makoto, a university student. You somehow are going on a one-week boarding trip on a tropical island with three other students in your seminar. On the first night (April 1st), you have a dream in which the girl you love will be dying on April 6th. You meet three other girls on the island. You then come across a number of events which indicate that you have the power of precognition. This means, to your horror, that your nightmare may very well become reality. The story then unfolds with your vacation-like time with your friends, and eventually your attempt at defending the one you love from her untimely demise.
The story is a masterpiece. The player is tossed into a whirlpool of unpredictable mysteries, and taken through a ride on an emotional roller-coaster. One moment he thinks that he is approaching the truth, but the next moment he realizes that greater mysteries lie in wait. One moment he is enjoying the warmth of friendship or the heat of love, but the next moment he is thrown into the depths of fear and despair. Although the game program allows the player to conveniently save the game at any spot, there are so many places in the game which leave the player with such a lingering desire to read on, to find out more, sleepless and unable to stop playing ...
Being a romance novel as well as a mystery novel, the appeal of the girls is an indispensible factor. The five target characters in the game look cute (with character design by H manga writer KAGESAKI Yuna), and their personalities are interesting and charming. Instead of having a dozen of girls with each one being a shallow prototype, here each of the five girls is an intricate blend of contrasting facets. The scenario brings out well the depth of the character, and offers a sound explanation of how it came about. The Dreamcast VGA support brings out fully the beauty of the 2D anime-style girls and their lively facial expressions, and the event pictures, though being only still pictures, are breathtaking.
The emotional undulations in the story are powerfully reinforced by the excellent music, while the characters and the plot are brought out to the full by the excellent voice acting. The music consists of a good number of different pieces which are well-matched to different scenes, with several beautiful piano pieces among them. The voice cast includes big names such as INOUE Kikuko, and the script is good enough that the casting is not in vain. (Some games have a big-name voice cast which does next to nothing in the game, but in this game the voices are a major part of the appeal.)
The game interface is well refined, with many convenient features to ensure smooth, pleasant navigation through the story. The "auto-play" mode (moving on automatically at the end of a line of text or speech after a suitable time segment) and the "skip-read" mode (automatically fast-forwarding through text you have already read before) can each be toggled on and off through the press of a button. (Maboroshi Tsukiyo has these features too, but in that game you have to hold down the trigger to use them, and that can be a bit tiring for the hand.) You can also configure the already-read text to be displayed in a different color. Once you have cleared a scenario, you can use the "short cut" mode to start playing at any desired session in the scenario. Event pictures you have seen are collected in the "album" so that you can view them again, and the game music can be appreciated in the "music" mode.
For the player whose Dreamcast has a Japanese modem connection, he can download additional "append stories" from KID's official site. These are fan fiction edited and converted to game scenarios by KID staff. This is an excellent feature which extends the longevity of the game. Unfortunately, this feature is not accessible to players without a Japanese modem connection; but in any case, the scenarios which come on the game disc are of more than enough quality and volume to justify the price of the game. There is also a list of unlock keys which can be downloaded from the site, but most of these are of little significance since the items can (and should) be unlocked normally through playing the game. (The only exception is a key which unlocks two additional text window configurations, but the 13 default ones should be more than enough.)
Never 7 is a romance novel adventure game with excellent story and attractive characters. The story is strong in both the love story and the mystery aspects. The graphics are very good, and the music and the voice acting is top notch. Since this is a novel adventure game, high proficiency in the Japanese language is an absolute prerequisite to the appreciation and enjoyment of this game. (As a rough guideline, I have deliberately written this review using a level of language and vocabulary similar to that in the game; if the reader does not believe that his Japanese language proficiency is on a level which matches the level of English language proficiency needed to comfortably read this article, this game would probably be out of the question for him.) For players who do not have a problem with the language barrier, this game is highly recommended. Being a novel adventure game, the player is merely reading a story most of the time, and the level of player intervention is low. However, quality adventure games on the Dreamcast, such as this game and Maboroshi Tsukiyo, have made me realize that, going through a good "adventure game" could be more satisfying and fulfilling than playing a mediocre 'game of playability' which fails to offer adequately what it is supposed to offer, even taking into acount the obvious limit on the longevity of the former. (While, in the case of Never 7, if you can access the append stories, longevity would even be less of a problem.)
(P.S. To those who are buying this game: notice that one of the girl's scenario is inaccessible until you have cleared the scenarios of the four other girls first.)
Copyright 1 Jan 2001 Alan KWAN Shiu Ho
Alan Kwan / tarot@netvigator.com / created 1 Jan 01