Nichiei Taiyaku Deathtopia Review

Title: Nichiei Taiyaku Deathtopia
Original title: 日英対訳デストピア
Release date: 2001-02-09 (original version) / 2004-03-26 (dual language re-release)
Developer: Gaia & Vega
Publisher: Gaia

Oh, how I love in-house translations of eroge! They manage to invoke such unintentional comedy that I internally dubbed it Uwe Boll effect. "Deathtopia", on the other hand, is not hilarious but simply sad, as it is a fundamentally broken game.

Frankly everything about this visual novel is simply baffling, starting with technical aspects and ending with content. "Deathtopia" was first released in 2001 and re-released by Gaia in 2004 with Engl(r)ish function included and the English text itself being accessible by clicking a right mouse button. Actually, the game plays English out of the box and it's the Japanese text that needs to be accessed. That doesn't make the game better, but rather worse, as all the flaws are more obvious.

Wait, whose crotch is in whose face here?!

Let's get the technical shit upfront so you know why you shouldn't touch this game with a nine inch pole. The very first thing that you will notice about the program is that it actually has two exe files in its main directory. I already imagine you saying: "Well, one of those files is for configuring the VN". Beep. "Then, one file is to play in English and the other is...". Bleep, I already said that languages are accessed with RMB. Well, let me tell you. The main difference betwixt them is that one is unstoppable diarrhea shit and the other one is hard ass-splitting shit. Take your choice.

GPLAY.exe is the primary executable file and is the one you will probably use, unless you are an extreme masochist. It launches the game with shitty pixellated graphics and lets you play it normally. Controls are as counterintuitive as possible: clicking on text box hides the GUI, while clicking on the picture advances the text. Keyboard is not supported, which is a real bummer if you play your nukiges hands-free like I do. ;-) In order to access "Save", "Load", "Album" functions, you have to bring your mouse cursor to the very right of the text box. You can't skip previously read text as it will skip everything if you use that function (That is not as big of a deal though, as you can skip backwards O_o. Actually, more visual novels would benefit from the latter function). Moreover, it took me half an hour to realize how you can enter fullscreen mode (for those wandering, it's a thin line on the very left of the text box). You cannot regulate the text speed and will probably have to constantly click your mouse to advance, if you read faster than a retarded armadillo and the text itself will frequently run out of the box and disappear if there are more than three lines at once.

Finally let's talk Engrish, and Engrish it is. The translation is of a very uneven quality and ranges from almost good to nigh incomprehensible. I don't think it's a machine translation, considering the almost good passages and ridiculous spelling mistakes in the bad ones. Rather I think that many different translators worked on this piece of dung and there was no communication between them, as the same thing is usually translated different ways in different scenes. The quality especially suffers during the sex scenes, so I figure that no one wanted to translate them and the guy who brews the coffee for the company got the job...

Yes, we all love plicks.

But, by this time you must wonder why I called this a fundamentally broken game in the beginning. Well, your wait will end now, for I tell you that after finishing 3/4ths of the game the text box will suddenly start spewing forward only error messages and nothing more. Graphics are still displayed normally, but you cannot read anything at all. On the other hand, that might be a blessing, as you are welcome to imagine your own text that might be more interesting than the real one. If you switch to Japanese at this point, there are no errors and you can play normally. Thus I conjecture, that this was a big "Fuck you gaijins" from Gaia & Vega. "No eroge for you, infidels".

What a meaningful conversation...

Here let's talk some more about the exe you will probably not play - GPLAY2.exe. First of all you will notice that this executable file gives us very nice graphics and not the pixelated shit as the previous one. The second thing you will notice is that the text always cuts off at the end, even if there is only one line and if you try to speed-click to advance the text, it disappears altogether. Finally, you cannot access the options and so can't save the game... oh, and let's not forget that you can only play in windowed mode. To sum up, the second exe is as useful as a condom made of sandpaper. It was probably included just to confuse us gaijins.

Wow, I talked a lot about the technical aspects about this game, but that is because there is not much to talk about the content itself. Ehem, so this is a nukige... that means there is sex. The plot revolves about some evil bastard named Seiji or Akira or someone else, because he always uses different aliases in different situations and blatantly says that none of those aliases is his real name. Seiji insinuates himself into a certain women academy where he wants to get revenge on a teacher named Ruriko. In order to do that he first decides to corrupt and turn into sex slaves the three favourite students of hers. He uses hypnosis and drugs to achieve his dastardly plans, after that he kidnaps Ruriko and... the game ends. Yes, there is only one ending and in order to reach a 100% completion you have to go through the game multiple times as depending on the order in which you corrupt the three girls they get different scenes. That artificially lengthens the game and frustrates the player. Why couldn't the game be a kinetic novel and just include more scenes for the girls? Incomprehensible.

Sadly, there is no real yuri here.

Ruriko herself has no scenes, despite Seiji making such a big deal about his vengeance for... something (I don't even remember if he talked about the reasons for that or not). There are also missing plot threads as Seiji talks about an animosity between him and some other male teacher, but nothing comes out of it.

The most interesting thing about the game is that it has multiple protagonists. While Seiji is the catalyst of all the happenings and the narrator of the wraparound story, every girl narrates her own segment. Even more, depending on the scene, it may even be narrated by one of the family members of the girl in question. Seriously, this was brilliant and in my opinion more VNs should introduce this technique. Sadly, this was the only good thing about the game.

There is one more very important character in the game and that is Ryoji. He is a yakuza and together with his lackeys helps Seiji. Actually, it's Ryoji & co who do most of the rape in the VN, as Seji is more prone to stay behind the curtain and just manipulate the girls mentally. Ryoji is an easy guy to hate as he is a completely unsubtle thug, but even he is more likable than Seiji as the latter has so little actual screen time, that we never really get to be in his shoes.

P.S. Would you believe that Ryoiji's lackeys are named Gorilla and good guy (yes, without capitals even in the beginning of the sentence)?

In the end, "Deathtopia" (or "Dnstopia" as it is written on the cover) is a buggy, incomplete, unsatisfying mess of a game and I wasted my time playing it so that you shouldn't have to do that. Be grateful to me, bow down and throw me your moneys... Mwa-ha-ha-ha...

Links if Interest

Visual Novel Database

Final Verdict: 28%