NIGHTRUTH -Explanation of the paranormal- 闇の扉

It's never good to go into a game over hyped. When I bought NIGHTRUTH, it was after a quick Google search revealing it as a shit game of legendary proportions (aka 伝説のクソゲー, JP search of course). I thought it was worth checking out for a few bucks with my expectations set way, way low. I mean look at the title. Is it NIGHT RUTH or NIGH TRUTH? The latter barely might make a tiny bit of sense as in it's "nigh (almost) true". But based on the way the words come together in the OP, I'm guessing it's the former. (WTF is a ruth?) Either way, unfortunately, perhaps my expectations for this game were not set low enough.

PS opening is almost identical to Saturn sans the naughty frames
As soon as the crazy ass intro video ends, I was assaulted by the shitty audio and shitty graphics. But then, I noticed the weird green line at the top of the screen.

Before I get into the shitty graphics, WTF is up with dat green line???

Was it some kind of bug? Would it go away if I restarted? Nope, it's just a fucking green bar that stays there the entire game. What the fuck is it for? Is it some weird aesthetic decoration? Otherwise, how could the devs not see nor care to fix it?

That was just the tip of the iceberg as the Titanic lunged forward at full speed. Not surprisingly, this game is a bit lacking in the features department. BGM and dialogue audio balance options? Dialogue backlog? Option to skip read lines? AHAHAHAHA. No, pansy, you don't even get a freaking option to SAVE! It auto-saves at certain points with absolutely no indication so if you want to stop playing, just hope you're near an auto-save point and prepare to replay from there. Fuck that, time to burn this disc and load it in an emulator.

No save feature? Man, so spoiled. GIT GUD.

Speaking of (the lack of) options. The BGM is terrible and the dialogue is barely audible through the poorly balanced BGM. What is audible sounds like it was recorded on a cheapo mic, then streamed via RealAudio (yeah, I'm old), and then rerecorded 10 feet away. From the packaging and the second CD of voice actor interviews, it's obvious that the VA was a major selling point of this game. If you're paying top dollar to hire the likes of Ogata Megumi (Shinji from Evangelion, etc.), why would you throw all that in the toilet with god awful audio recording quality?

Not the best screenshot of Ogata. Sorry, Megumi-chan!

I know it was before the days of cheap, high quality audio equipment so maybe they ran out of money to use a real, professional recording studio? Right away, you can tell when a line of dialogue was recorded at a different time when the same person sounds totally different from one line to the next. If you ever tried to create a single video with audio of your voice recorded on different days, you know what I'm talking about. At the very least, it made me appreciate just how difficult voice recording and editing must be in a good game. So... good job NIGHTRUTH??

Well, maybe, just MAYBE the story is good? It starts with you waking up to an all too realistically annoying alarm clock. As you get ready for school, you talk to your ring and out of the blue, it starts talking back. WTF?!

Man, this game would be so cool if the main character was clinically insane

The story is full of these WTF moments and to be perfectly honest, I laughed more than a few times because it was just sooooo STUPID. It really does read like something a middle school kid would write up during his recess complete with numerous spelling errors and terrible grammatical phrasing.

Little known fact: he wrote the plot for this game right after the Liger
To give you some more hints of the wonderful plot, I was able to get 4 different endings. The first route I ended up was the one where you find the dog when you arrive at school. The remaining routes depends on whether your ogle your English teacher's legs/butt or her hair. This is truly Shakespearean stuff at work here...

Your fate hangs in the balance, fool!!!

For some reason, on the dog scenario, the voiced dialogue switched off at a random spot in the game. Perhaps this is the additional scenario added to the PS version which would explain the lack of voice recording. If it is, well, it's not fucking worth it as the dog story was pointless and anti-climatic, much like the rest of the endings. I don't want to give away any of the wonderfully stupid story but honestly, it was so bad, I almost want to recommend everybody (Jhipsters only ofc) to play this game. It even has some great art even though the main visuals look like they were drawn in MS Paint.

Um... wha? WTF? Did they hire a real artist late in the game???

Score: 1.5 Graphics, story, music, features, and audio were absolute shit but you should totally play it! out of 5.

Overall, yes, I agree that this game does deserve the title of legendary shit game. It was so bad that it was almost... well it's still pretty goddamn bad. But hey, I got a few good laughs and I did make it through 4 endings (albeit with save states). I don't know if there are any more routes because nobody cared enough to write up a full guide online, which is surprising because even Prismaticallization has a full website dedicated to it. Frankly, I have to wonder if I'm not just wasting away my precious limited time on this mortal coil by playing this shit but if I don't do it, what Jhipster will?

To give the game credit, it does have some good art and even some rare snippets of good music phrases hidden in all the diarrhea. They did manage to poop out 3 more games of the planned 5-part NIGHTRUTH series (oh god) but who knows if I'll ever decide to buy a copy of the sequels. Honestly, the first one was more than enough for a looooooong time and I've already purged it from my shrinking closet of shame™.

Come to think of it, I almost want to get the next entry Maria, just for the making of disc to see what shitty tools they used.

Additional screenshots for the legendary shit archives.

In 96', you could play Biohazard but fuck that shit. NIGHTRUTH!

My favorite character. She looks cute. Good enough for me!

LOL Sonnet, way to go with product placement

If only I could tell you how Shiori shows up. It's hilarious! (Sorry non-Jhipsters)

Another WTF moment, busts out shades to cry (ie glasses are hard to draw)

One of the infamous(?) lines from this Shakespearean masterpiece

I'm not a Japanese expert but even I could spot this obvious typo.

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely