5 reviews
Root Double: Before Crime * After Days - Xtend Edition
Rescue squad captain Watase Kasasagi wakes up without his memories in the middle of his most critical mission yet-- a nuclear meltdown at a research facility. In an unfamiliar place and without his years of training, he must rescue the survivors and escape... but could the key to the mystery behind the incident lie in the mind of Natsuhiko Tenkawa,...
Details
- Released
- October 23, 2013
- Genres
- Adventure · Visual Novel
- Publisher
- Sekai Project, Sekai Games
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Root Double: Before Crime * After Days - Xtend Edition Reviews
Professional reviews from gaming critics
Even though Root Double- Before Crime: After Days Xtend Edition is a bit of a mouthful, I don’t think anyone would say that it’s hard to swallow – especially if you’re a fan of anime! The story is really interesting and pulls you in without ever really letting go. When you think it’s over you suddenly realise that you could play through it again to get a different ending. The art and voice acting wraps it up into quite a brilliant package. If you’re looking for a super casual, story-driven game to play when you feel like lazing around, Root Double is highly recommended.
Despite its occasional repetition and odd design choices, Root Double kept me invested from start to finish, and as the story developed, my interest only grew. With a compelling cast, intriguing mysteries, and emotional storytelling, Root Double is a visual novel fans of the genre do not want to miss.
When I first heard about this game, I was initially turned off simply because of the title. I mean, seriously: Root Double -Before Crime * After Days- Xtend Edition. It looks like someone pulled random words out of a dictionary and tried to make a cool phrase with them. However, finding out that Takumi Nakazawa was the director behind the game led me to giving it a second look, and I am very glad that I did. Also, the title does actually get explained through the game, and the BC/AD part of ...
If you’ve got any doubts about visual novels in general, Root Double isn’t the best starting point on Switch. The structure is going to be intimidating at first, and the environment is as oppressive as the design suggests. But if you’ve gone and turned a Switch Lite into a visual novel reader, Root Double will keep you up late at night trying to get to that next ending.
As a rule, I prefer more recent aesthetics with character design in visual novels. The shape and design of the heads in Root Double, in particular, are from a bygone era and I would have enjoyed seeing some effort to do something like Yu-No or Higurashi on PC, where players can flip between more modern sprites and the originals at will. With that being said, decent voice performances, atmospheric music, and intense art helped carry this one, and I was on board with the characters soon enough anyway.