| Date A Live: Ren Dystopia | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay & Story | Release Date | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia is a dating sim visual novel introducing a new scenario and character to the series. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia Review Overview
What is Date A Live: Ren Dystopia?
DATE A LIVE is a popular light novel series from Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. It has been adapted into a TV anime series of the same name, the fifth and most recent installment of which—DATE A LIVE V—was broadcast in April 2024.
The story of DATE A LIVE begins thirty years after Earth has been plagued by spacequakes. These calamities are triggered by the emergence of enigmatic entities known as Spirits. One day, an ordinary student named Shido Itsuka encounters a Spirit disillusioned with humanity. Shido’s sister, Kotori, reveals to him that he possesses the unique ability to seal Spirit’s powers away.
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia features:
⚫︎ Over ten returning characters from previous series entries
⚫︎ A new game-exclusive character
⚫︎ Nine routes and over fifteen endings
⚫︎ Traditional visual novel gameplay
⚫︎ Choice-driven scenarios
⚫︎ Animated illustrations from renowned artist Tsunako
⚫︎ An in-game library to introduce characters and terminologies
 Steam |
$39.99 |
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Relatively Short Routes Great Characterizations Easy Route Navigation Joyously Fully-Voiced |
Not Very Entry-Friendly Shallow Writing Style |
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia Overall Score - 82/100
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia continues the Date A Live series with another veritable banger of a visual novel. It features artwork from Idea Factory’s legendary former illustrator and now freelance artist Tsunako, as well as amazing voice work from some of the industry’s finest talents. While the story certainly isn’t friendly to newcomers, despite the game’s claims, it does carry on the spirit of the series very well. In fact, there’s so many routes and endings to go for in this game that you could very well just learn as you go.
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia Story - 8/10
Date A Live could never really boast about its writing style. The narrative isn’t the kind that would (figuratively) blow your socks off or anything. However, the series’ intricacies born from its simplistic storytelling isn’t a joke, and Ren Dystopia isn’t an exception. My only real problem about this game in the long run is that it seems like it’s a dead-end scenario. That is, it doesn’t seem like the events in Ren Dystopia will have as much of an impact on the series as compared to Date A Live’s other entries such as, say, Rio Reincarnation.
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia Gameplay - 7/10
Ren Dystopia features a very vanilla visual novel gameplay involving click-driven progression and dialogue options that influence the ending. And, oh boy, are there so many endings. This installment of Date A Live has over several routes scattered between its many main heroines, as well as over a dozen different endings. Plus, unlike other visual novels that rely on affection meters and the like, Ren Dystopia’s margin of error for getting the "correct" dialogue choices is far, far narrower, adding an unexpected sense of urgency and importance for every selection.
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia Visuals - 9/10
Idea Factory’s iconic artist Tsunako, who famously designed and illustrated the characters and artworks for the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, is back for another set of artistic showpieces for Date A Live. As usual, her character illustrations are very cute and charming enough to make them pop out of the screen. Even their supposed still images are given a bit of animation, such as lip movement to match their dialogue and chest movement to mimic breathing! Really, my only major complaint is that for a game with so many routes and endings, there’s not enough CG (essentially full illustrations) to go around.
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia Audio - 9/10
As I’m writing this review, I have the game open in the background just so I can continue listening to its soundtrack. That should give you an idea of how great they are. Depending on the scenario, it easily influences your mood in order to bring about the best, most engaging results. Almost every dialogue is also fully-voiced by a wonderful and talented cast of voice actors that effortlessly deliver the appropriate emotions they are characterizing.
But, as usual, the main protagonist isn’t voiced at all.
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia Value for Money - 8/10
This visual novel’s value is extremely subjective to the reader, so I opted to average both extremes out. That is, if you’re someone entirely unfamiliar with the series or have only seen a couple of seasons of the anime, then it’s not advisable to pick this game up. However, if you're way too deep into the franchise, then there’s nothing to argue about. Get this game, immediately.
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia Review: Lives Rent-Free
As someone who primarily seeks dark, gritty, or horror-themed visual novels, Date A Live is one of the guilty (dis)pleasures I’ve had the honor of getting my Steam Library and many dozens of hours of my life involved with. It started with an innocent, younger version of myself giving the first season of the series’ anime a try, getting captivated by Tohka’s design (she’s the best girl and I will not be convinced otherwise), and then subsequently falling into the rabbit hole. Hence, getting to read Ren Dystopia four years after its initial Japanese release got me quite excited.
I’m not going to admit that to anybody I know personally, of course.
Anyway, for those who have no idea what the series is about, Date A Live is set in a world where Spirits, which are essentially beings from other dimensions, exist. Due to their immense powers, humanity must deal with them in some way in order to survive. Enter the protagonist, Shido Itsuka, who was gifted with the ability to "seal" the powers of these Spirits if certain, laughably convenient conditions are fulfilled.
That is, he can do so if he is able to form a bond with them (romantically, or something similar, essentially) and plant a kiss on their lips afterward.
Mighty convenient for a dating sim-type series, right? That’s also why the entire series is a long string of dating sims aimed at "sealing" the new heroines that are introduced for every new entry.
Ren Dystopia’s new character, Ren, follows much of the same style of progression as the other heroines did in the previous installments. However, depending on how you look at it, the results are somewhat different and may come as a surprise to those who are used to the more common formula dating sims tend to adapt.
Just like most visual novels, Ren Dystopia is a click-driven game where its only real "gameplay" involves making dialogue choices that shape the scenario. While the choices are designed such that the correct answers are quite obvious with the proper context, it doesn’t go as far as labeling every option the way some of the more recent visual novels have.
While it is accordingly quite easy to stay in the route and ending you’re trying to achieve, Ren Dystopia has a far narrower margin of error than dating sims that rely on things such as affection meters. In fact, you’re expected to make perfect decisions in order to achieve certain endings, which, while relatively common back then, has become a relative rarity nowadays with developers trying to make their works more accessible.
Thankfully, the scenarios are engaging enough that you could easily absorb the information thrown at you. This is all due to the great efforts of the artworks by the great Tsunako, who also designed and illustrated the characters in Idea Factory’s Hyperdimension Neptunia series, its wonderful cast of voice actors, and ironically enough, its simplistic writing style that could make Western novel readers scoff at.
Date A Live as a series isn’t designed to grip your thoughts throughout the experience. That comes later, after you have read through everything the game has to offer. Hence, its nondescript writing style actually helps to keep the pace moving at a speed appropriate for its genre. You only really realize the implications long after you’ve finished most of the scenarios, giving it a weight that comes at you similar to a "Eureka!" moment.
Overall, Date A Live: Ren Dystopia is a great addition to the Date A Live series. Not only does it serve to add more content to the long-running franchise, but it also justifies its rather demanding asking price with a new character and new scenarios that involve the ten-plus returning ones. However, you might not be able to enjoy it properly if you’re new to the series. In that case, you should really start with the anime or light novels first.
Pros of Date A Live: Ren Dystopia
| Things Date A Live: Ren Dystopia Got Right |
|---|
|
Relatively Short Routes Great Characterizations Easy Route Navigation Joyously Fully-Voiced |
Relatively Short Routes
Normally, having short routes on such an expensive and popular visual novel series would count as a con. But in Ren Dystopia’s case, each route is just long enough to read on a particularly open Saturday afternoon with an iced drink on one hand and your mouse on the other. That is, depending on your reading speed, a route can go anywhere from three to four hours long or so; much longer if you listen through every dialogue’s voice acting.
It’s also worth noting there are almost as many routes as there are fingers on your two hands; the number of endings easily exceeds that number, too. So, the total number of hours you’ll spend reading through the entirety of Date A Live: Ren Dystopia’s scenarios makes it worth every cent you spent getting the game.
Great Characterizations
Simply saying that Date A Live "has a lot of characters" is like saying that a dog has a lot hair. While true, it’s not enough to accurately provide the right estimations from regular folk unfamiliar with the series. Due to having so many characters all pining for screen time, it’s easy for them to lose their characters or their niche during the process, inevitably forcing two or more characters to occupy the same role. This is especially true for a series that has run for such a long time over so many different medias and adaptations as Date A Live.
Fortunately, Date A Live itself never really fell into that kind of slump. Ren Dystopia isn’t an exception, either. While every character has developed in a rather singular direction due to the main protagonist’s interactions with them, they have also maintained the tropes that made them distinct. For example, Tohka is still a naive glutton, Kotori still likes her foster brother, and Kaguya is still cringe.
Easy Route Navigation
I remember the time when trying to get to a character’s route involved a lot of experimentation. For example, it was easy to get lost in Tsukihime’s dialogue choices and get a bad ending, particularly during that scene where Arcueid was facing off against Nrvnqsr where choosing to wait for too long would give you a game over. Nowadays, certain visual novels have taken the liberty of making routes far easier to enter. In fact, some of them have done so to such an extent that it would actually be trickier to fail, such as the recent My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance-
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia isn’t as blatant about it as the aforementioned visual novel is. But it’s also very easy to navigate the dialogue choices. For one, you have the classic save system that provides an ungodly amount of slots (99!) to bookmark your progress. The dialogue choices themselves don’t take too many brain cells to process which is the correct choice to continue with the route, too. All in all, Date A Live: Ren Dystopia teeters the line between being a braindead visual novel gameplay and having to actually work in order to keep yourself in the ending you’re trying to achieve.
Joyously Fully-Voiced
It’s impossible to understate how important voice acting is to certain visual novels, particularly for a series with such a large cast like Date A Live. Imagination can only get you so far, after all. And even those familiar with the anime would have difficulty managing the mental delivery if left to their own devices. Hence, the voice acting not only serves to breathe life into each character just like how it works in most cases, but they also do wonders in creating distinctions between each of them in ways outside of just their unique personalities.
Okay, maybe not for all of them. The main character, Shido, isn’t voiced, just like the vast majority of unfortunate main protagonists in this genre of games.
Cons of Date A Live: Ren Dystopia
| Things That Date A Live: Ren Dystopia Can Improve |
|---|
|
Not Very Entry-Friendly Shallow Writing Style |
Not Very Entry-Friendly
Despite what the promotional material implies in its list of key features, nothing can really prepare you for Ren Dystopia’s scenario aside from prior familiarity with the series’ many novels, animations, and games. It’s so-called "library" is ill-equipped with the necessary tools to bring you up to speed appropriately. If anything, it’s even an injustice to the amount of character development the main heroines have experienced over Date A Live’s many, many installments.
Although, to be fair, it does work wonderfully as a refresher for those already familiar with the series.
Shallow Writing Style
Having a shallow writing style isn’t strictly a con for visual novels. It depends on the setting and the themes at the end of the day. Like, would you want to read a romantic comedy about two childhood friends passing high school together written in Agatha Christie’s temperate, dialogue-heavy style? Probably not, right? Most romantic comedies require a decently fast pacing in order to maintain the proper level of energy, after all.
However, it can definitely a downer for some who are looking for a more novel-esque experience in a visual novel where the narrative dictates everything.
Is Date A Live: Ren Dystopia Worth It?
Definitely. For the fans, at least.
If you’re already a fan or are familiar with the previous releases, then Date A Live: Ren Dystopia is definitely a great purchase. It expands on the world with more lore, more characters, and most importantly, more developments that could potentially heavily influence the next installment of the series. However, it’s not really a good place to kick off from, as most of the characters have already developed way past the point where a short introduction from an in-game glossary would be enough to properly introduce them. In that case, you’re better off watching the anime or reading the previous visual or light novels in order to get started.
| Steam |
$39.99 |
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia FAQ
Is Date A Live: Ren Dystopia canon?
Yes, Date A Live: Ren Dystopia is canon. However, it does feature certain game or even movie-exclusive characters, some of which come from JP-exclusive releases, which might mess with your perception of continuity if you haven’t read the other games.
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Date A Live: Ren Dystopia Product Information
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| Title | DATE A LIVE: REN DYSTOPIA |
|---|---|
| Release Date | September 5, 2024 |
| Developer | Idea Factory, Compile Heart, Sting |
| Publisher | Idea Factory |
| Supported Platforms | PC, PS5 (JP Only), PS4 (JP Only) |
| Genre | Visual Novel, Dating Sim, Adventure |
| Number of Players | Single Player |
| ESRB Rating | TBA |
| Official Website | Date A Live: Ren Dystopia Website |
