Punchline

Punchline is a hard game to rate. It's barely a game at all. It's closer to a visual novel with a small number of semi-interactive 3D scenes (I won't call them puzzles, see below). Punchline ties in to an anime that I (full disclosure) haven't seen. The online reviews for the game vary a lot, which made it difficult to research. I took a chance and bought it, in no small part because of the involvement of some of the staff that worked on Virtue's Last Reward. And if I could get a do-over, I wouldn't buy this game. Also, a quick note for parents who might be reading this, the "M" rating on the box is there for good reason. Between the sexual themes, violence and some emotional intensity, you don't want your kids near this one.Punchline is about a boy who lives in an apartment building with four female tenants. This boy gets very excited by the sight of women's underwear, to the point where he briefly turns into a superhero/passes out from over stimulation. This protagonist (who you play as) isn't painted as a pervert, or a bad person, but the premise is definitely questionable. After an incident, the boy's soul leaves his body, someone else's soul steals his body, and the boy, in ghost form, needs to find a way to get his body back. To do so, he's guided by the soul of a spirit cat. The banter between the protagonist and the cat is generally pretty good, and the highlight of the game for me.How do you get your soul back? Well, as a ghost, you get to, in very small ways, influence the items in your apartment-mates' rooms. Making items fall, interacting with electronics, stuff like that. Generally, the mission structure in the first half of the game is: move stuff to scare the girl in the room (this improves your ghost powers), get a mission from ghost cat, and then go around the rooms moving items to try and complete the mission (like, say, sending a message to a roommate or getting an item from one room to the other). The game calls these "puzzles", but I'm not sure that's a fair way to describe these segments. They're more akin to randomly moving items and hoping that, through the butterfly effect, it'll lead to the outcome ghost cat seeks. There's very little logic, though thankfully there aren't too many items, so your paths to failure are limited.As you go around the roommates' rooms in ghost form, the roommates are usually going about their daily lives. Often in positions where a pervy ghost ends up gawking at their underwear. If you look too long at their underwear, then the end of the world instantly occurs and humanity is wiped out. By a giant asteroid. Yes really. Thankfully, this is easy to avoid too. The game "rewards" players with trophies and a cringe-inducing photo gallery of panty shots for bringing about the end of the world in this way at every opportunity, though, which is some really weird mixed messaging.Eventually, you learn more about the other characters, secrets are revealed/shared, things get ridiculous, then more ridiculous, then "full anime cliche crazy". The game itself is presented like an anime show, complete with an intro and outro for every "episode". If you're going to play this one, holding the "x" button skips cut scenes. You'll be wanting to do that a lot. About halfway through, Punchline actually stops trying to be a game. It's jarring, and actually felt like the developers just... stopped trying. No more missions or "puzzles". The second half of the game is a long story segment and cut scenes where, once in a while, you get to make a decision.So there it is. The story is weird and forgettable, the puzzles more closely resemble trial-and-error guessing games, and it's on the pervy side. On the plus side, audio/graphics are competent, the game never crashed on me, and the dialogue with ghost cat gets some laughs, but it's not nearly enough to justify a purchase.

Punchline is a visual novel with a smidge of panties and puzzle solving thrown in. The game is broken up into 21 chapters and the epilogue. Each chapter is treated like an episode of an anime - meaning that EVERY chapter plays the intro song, the break screen animation and the outro song. You cannot skip these. Each episode lasts about an hour long. Like I said before, this is a visual novel. So, this is a reading game. A good grasp of English is recommended. However, there were three things you can be involved with.One – for most episodes, there was one “trick”. In this section, Yuta has to scare someone on order to raise his spirit level. Second – following the “trick,” there will be a “trick chain”. You are given an end goal, and you have to figure out the correct steps to get to that goal. If you run out of time or did not complete the chain, the world will end. Third – there will be decisions you have to make during the second half of the game. Your decisions will decide what ending you will get. (It was not complicated. If you chose incorrectly, you will know right away.) This is pretty much the main interactions you really have in the game.The story is so good. For me, I didn’t know what is going to happen next. All the twists and turns were woven to a nice bow in the end. Great character development. There is drama, humor, sadness, sci-fi and supernatural elements. It had me at the edge of my seat. The beginning can be a drag with all the tutorials, but once you get passed that, the game was really addictive.There is voice acting for everything. The language is Japanese with English subtitles. The translation is very well done. I did not catch any spelling errors. The graphics are on par with the Vita. There weren’t any annoying load times. The music is a high point. I love all the silly songs in the game. Extras were unlocked once you achieve the good ending. There is a chapter selection section and a music gallery. There is an animated short and a panties gallery. Yes. A panties gallery.My only complaint would be the repetitiveness of you destroying Earth, the animated scenes and the songs. You can’t skip these and it is so annoying when you have seen the same scene at least 50 times. Especially if you are trying to rush.I do not regret my purchase. I was vastly entertained and was very invested in the characters. However, for the price of $40 and only 20-25 hours of game play (for me to achieve platinum), I would recommend waiting for a price drop of $30 and under. There is a decent amount of fan service. It didn’t bother me but just be aware. In the end, I highly recommend Punchline. A great visual novel worth adding to your game collection.

Firstly, I'd like to say that I'm a fan of the "Punchline" anime and that the only real reason that I even purchased this game was because of the anime and secondly, this was my first actual "visual novel" game and I cant say I'm a fan of these style of "games".So here's some of the cons:- If you've watched the anime of the same name than this game is basically a "second round" its almost entirely the same, even going so far as to use the same animations in the game that was used in the anime.- Some of the translations are off, but there really just small mistakes which doesn't necessarily destroy any of the readability or thought in any of the sentences.- In a 30 hour long game the game play is only half - if not lower.and here's some pros:- I enjoyed the "ghost trick"-like gameplay- Rabura- While I had issues with the ending I did enjoy the story- The soundtrack is actually really nice, although at times its hardly noticeable.- Panties.

It's a visual novel so expect to read alot. I managed to get the platinum trophy as it wasn't really hard to do. Overall, i liked the game. Just get ready to look at some anime girl panties. Lol