GamerEscape

It’s been wild watching the visual novel genre grow in the west over the past few years. What started as a niche of a niche when I first discovered them has become a genre that, while still not mainstream, has become something that most gamers are at least aware of.

And this growth has led to an explosion of both new creations and localizations of titles you’d never think would get official western releases ten years ago. Key bringing over Kanon and Air along with Yostar giving Heaven Burns Red an English release. The original Fate/stay night getting an official release alongside the Tsukihime remake. Absolutely endless amounts of hentai being poured onto the western audience, if that’s your thing.

And now, coming next week at the time of writing, a new release of one of the biggest visual novels in the western fandom, along with its prequel.

Perhaps due to the popularity of the Zero Escape and AI series, Spike Chunsoft has decided to bring two of writer Kotaro Uchikoshi’s earliest works to western shores. One, Ever 17, actually hit the west twenty years ago via Hirameki International (something I wrote about in one of my first ever features here at Gamer Escape). The other is what we’re looking at today: the prequel to Ever 17, a title that until now had never been officially released in the west.

Developed by MAGES and published by Spike Chunsoft, Never 7 – The End of Infinity is set for release on March 6th, 2025, for Switch, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam. The PC version was played for this review.

A Date With Death

Makoto Ishihara had a dream. A dream of someone dying right in front of him. Someone important to him, but he’s unsure who exactly it was. There’s only two things he does know. This person died on April 6th. And, in their hand, they were holding a small bell.

Waking in a cold sweat, Makoto realized that the nightmare was simply just a dream – he’s actually at a university seminar retreat on a Japanese island. Why he’s there he isn’t really sure, his school just told him he had to attend. But he has to spend an entire week with a few other people from his school, mostly just exploring the island and enjoying some bonding time with his classmates.

But he can’t shake the dream. It seemed too real. And the day he awoke on was April 1st. Surely it was just a terrible nightmare and not some kind of premonition, right? As the days march on and the 6th approaches, events begin happening that call the “dream” into question. Is someone really going to die in five days?

Between the setup of this mystery and the now well-known storytelling stylings of Uchikoshi, it’s easy to dive into Never 7 expecting an enthralling tale. One with twists, turns, and mind-bending moments. Unfortunately, those picking up this game with these expectations are bound to be disappointed. There’s a reason the visual novel community considers Never 7 the weakest of the Infinity series.

Never 7 is, first and foremost, a romance story.

During Makoto’s time on the seminar retreat, he’ll come into contact with five cute girls, and you’ll have to decide which one he falls in love with. Each girl has her own route where they grow closer to Makoto, he helps them solve a problem, they get to kiss, bada-bing bada-boom, you have a standard visual novel. The initial mystery rears its head on occasion, of course, but we’ll talk about that later.

Now, I’m not trying to say that being a romance visual novel is a bad thing. Hell, it’s arguably the main genre of the visual novel medium. And I’m a huge fan of games from Key, who is known for their romance writing mixed with supernatural elements… which is what Never 7 is trying to do, really. Unfortunately, Never 7‘s character and romance writing is… not great.

On my first playthough, I decided to pursue the character Haruka’s route. She’s a shy girl, the odd one out, younger than the rest of her fellow college classmates and with an unusual obsession with water. Throughout my playtime, in both the “common” route and Haruka’s specific route, she grew significantly as a character. She started opening up, becoming closer with not just Makoto but the rest of the cast. By the time her romance resolved, it felt properly earned. I thought, perhaps, that what I’d heard about Never 7 was overexaggerated. Sure, this is an old game loaded with late 90s/early 00s anime tropes, but Haruka’s story left me pretty satisfied.

Unfortunately, I decided to read Kurumi’s and Saki’s routes next.

Kurumi is a high school girl who, for some reason, acts like a hyper-energetic middle schooler. It’s never explained why. She also calls Makoto “onii-chan” or “big bro,” which makes the shift of her story to romance incredibly awkward. Saki is a superfluous character who only exists to cause reality television-tier conflicts amongst the cast. Her route ends up having nothing to do with the overarching mystery, and could truly be cut without affecting the full experience at all.

It was during these two routes that I found myself struggling to continue playing. Unlike Haruka, none of the other characters really get a romantic buildup during the common route. In fact, you’ll find yourself beginning a romantic connection with Haruka in every route before the story diverges. And this leads to the other main issue I had with the writing: Makoto himself.

Makoto is a faceless visual novel protagonist who suddenly falls head-over-heels in love with your chosen girl and will give his life to protect them. A woman who he’s know for maybe five days becomes his entire life, and he will destroy his budding friendships with the rest of the cast in a heartbeat to “protect” them. The featured girl of each route becomes his entire meaning of existence, his entire personality, and it’s just annoying to read.

Deciding to suffer through these two routes after Haruka’s, though, ended up being the ideal way to play through the game, in my opinion. The final two characters, Yuka and Izumi, have stories that revolve around the game’s initial mystery. You know, the reason you probably picked up Never 7 in the first place? In fact, you can’t access Izumi’s story until completing the other four, with hers acting as kind of the “true route” for the game overall.

While you still have to deal with Makoto suddenly making his entire life revolve around Yuka or Izumi, the rest of the writing takes a significant step up in these routes. You get to see Uchikoshi finally stretch his weird-pseudoscience-mind-bender muscles here, though in a bit more limited way than his later games. Never 7 is Uchikoshi’s second writing credit ever (the first being Memories Off, which appears to be an even more traditional romance visual novel), and it seems he’s just dabbling with the themes that’d go on to define his career here.

Upon reaching the end of the game, I was left with a resounding feeling of “well that was OK I guess.” Despite a strong beginning and ending, the lull I had in the middle during Saki’s and Kurumi’s routes was hard to ignore, and kind of stained the overall experience for me.

Cut And Crop

Unfortunately, the issues I had with Never 7 don’t end with the storytelling. But here, the problems are a bit more egregious. I wasn’t expecting this release to change the plot of the original 25-year-old story, but if there’s somewhere a modern rerelease could improve the game, it’s in the graphical presentation.

Much of the time, Never 7 is an ugly game. Upscaling the game to modern resolutions seems to have been a slapdash job. The background art is fuzzy with occasionally odd coloring choices. The character sprites are hit-or-miss. Especially notable are the character Okuhiko, who seems out-of-place compared to the other characters in his design, and Kurumi, whose left eye randomly decides to grow in size when in certain poses.

Which is odd, because some of the CG scenes are surprisingly beautiful. They can be, again, hit-or-miss, but the character designs in these scenes are leagues better than their standard sprites. Strangely, I found Saki’s art in her CGs a particular standout… despite her character being the most superfluous.

Bringing the game to modern resolutions also means changing the original 4:3 art to modern 16:9 standards, which ends up clipping off the top and bottom of the original art on every screen. I didn’t find this incredibly frustrating most of the time, though knowing the art has been cut off is an annoyance. Though, thanks to this, scenes where Okuhiko is supposed to be in a swimsuit have his lower body cut off, making him appear to be fully in the nude instead. Certainly a choice.

The audio here, again, is a hit-or-miss scenario. While the soundtrack feels a bit short and empty, a few tracks here and there stand out, particularly Haruka’s theme (probably due to the fact that she was my favorite character). The voice acting, though, sounds like it’s being performed through a paper tower roll. The game is taking the performances directly from earlier releases, but it doesn’t seem like there was any work put in to better the vocal fidelity… aside from a handful of lines that are suddenly much clearer for some reason.

Ain’t No Cure

Ever 17 was my first introduction to Uchikoshi and one of the first visual novels I ever played, so I do have a fondness for it. I also managed to read through some of its sequel, Remember 11, via a fan translation. Until now, I had never had the opportunity to read Never 7 despite it also having a fan translation. So getting the opportunity to experience it through a modern remaster was exciting.

I did keep my expectations in check, but I find myself coming out the other side still somewhat disappointed. There is some gold in here, but you have to dig through a lot of rough writing, typos and grammatical errors, and questionable visual presentation to get to it.

For fans of Uchikoshi’s works, picking up Never 7 is an interesting experience to see where he got his start, so long as you’re prepared for a twenty-year-old game with some questionable design choices. If this would be your first visual novel, though, I would recommend passing on this one for now. Pick up Ever 17 instead.

~ Final Score: 6/10 ~

Review copy provided by Spike Chunsoft for PC. Screenshots taken by reviewer.