Dysfunctional Systems: Orientation

The art is a complete and utter failure. It's too painful to even look at. LtMC was really beautiful, but Orientation is sub-average and doesn't match the established asthetic. Winter looks like a complete moron, grimacing and blushing like an vacuous moeblob reject, the new characters are very poorly designed and don't fit in at all with the themes established in LtMC. I was really pleased to see Dischan return, and especially when they published Jupiter's Knot on Steam, and I got really excited when I saw a new Dysfunctional Systems release, but I am viscerally disgusted by the new art. It's like sticking a Saturday morning kid's anime character in a Rembrandt. Either is fine on its own, but together they're just bad. Additionally, the quality itself is poor. The very first image you see when starting is Winter's face with bizarrely mis-proportioned features, staring cross-eyed at a mouse on her forehead. It's way too much to take in. It just looks bad. Sorry. I feel like going an...

A very short kinetic visual novel (took me 1 hour to finish) and a prequel to [i]Learning to Manage Chaos[/i]. To be honest, I think you really need to get the first game to fully understand (maybe even like?) this prequel. I think that it can be somewhat boring and confusing to new readers so make sure to play the first game. [i]Dysfunctional Systems[/i] was already a “dead project” when I first got into it. The first chapter was good, and I was very sad that the next episodes were cancelled. Time passed and one day I saw that [i]Orientation[/i] was going to be released. From what I read on the developer’s blog it seems that they’ve decided to finish this story. That’s great! Well, back to Orientation. I liked the previous art style better, but this one is good too. BGM was amazing even for such a short title. About the story… It wasn’t that great. I feel like this was made more to “tease” the DS fans for the next chapters. I also found this prequel a bit expensive...

It's... quite good for the price. A bit short, with a few story discrepancies, rushed parts, but good nonetheless. The departure of the main animator from ep1 is the main flaw of this kinetic novel. Still, I would recommend it for people who have been following Dischan for a "long" time and want to see more from the studio. Steam users, if you are not familliar with the works of Dischan, this is not recommended for you. This product is the prologue of an already-existing series that also already had the drawback of being extremely short for the quantity of story it wants to tell. Make sure you play episode 1 and/or see playthrough videos first to see if it floats your boat. Overall this product is 6+/10. The music and the story are excellent, but the art and the format are subpar compared to what we have been "sold" in the last products. The potential is there for a 9/10 episode 2 and I can only hope it will go well.

I'll start off by saying I was a huge fan of episode one of "Dysfunctional Systems" when it first released. I loved the entire presentation, the whole concept of its sci-fi elements and plot, and how the characters are pretty interesting and how they interacted with each other. I should also mention that I was a huge fan of Dischan before the incident and their announced closure in 2015. In short, I think "Dysfunctional Systems: Orientation", or episode zero, is pretty good on its own. Its presentation is just as good as episode one, the art style though new is consistant throughout and easy to get used to, and the writing (which I found to be the weakest part) is pretty consistant across the board. The only strong part about the writing would be how each character interacts and bounces off one another through dialogue. At its weakest, you are forced to sit though info dumps in a classroom lecture setting for a pretty heafty portion of the VN. When brought together with episode 1, it...

First a little background, some time ago Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos was released. The game was short, it wasn't great but it had potential. Then kickstarter happened, they funded the project (next episodes) and ultimately the whole thing crashed. Now, we have another release, this time a prequel. Is it good? It's disappointing. The art is completely different from the Learning to Manage Chaos. It's Inferior. It lacks the Japanese look, futhermore the characters designs look somewhat...lacking. The plot, characters, writing are uninspiring. Some people from Learning to Manage Chaos return, some new ones are introduced. But will you care about them? No. Does this world features finally a solid foundation? No. Yes, we get to know few new bits about this world but it's still not enough. Furthermore similarly to Learning to Manage Chaos the game is short. Sadly the only really good part of the game is the music. CombatPlayer did once again a good job. Then again even t...

As a fan of Dischan since the initial Cradle Song demo, I'm pretty biased here, but I enjoyed Orientation. Another reviewer summarised my main gripe - Dischan has a lot of potential and has sort of written themselves into a corner with a prologue episode that doesn't add much to the main story. I can see where things are being set up for future exploration, however, and I'm interested in seeing where that goes. The main story of Orientation mostly suffers from being a bit detached from the main story of the rest of Dysfunctional Systems, but it's a charming little slice of life that works to explore the setting and characters (particularly their mindset) a little more. The writing is believable, though some characters can be inconsistent, which in a character focused VN is important. The art is a mixed bag. Some of the models look rushed and have odd anatomy, while others are well made and show a lot of attention to detail. Backgrounds, however, are great and show a good understand...

The art in this is cringeworthy. I thought I could read this VN without having an aneurism but this is so far from Doomfest's style for episode 1 that I might as well have bought it as a book. But I can't, and here we are, with a derpy feeling prologue due to the art that overbears everything else, not to mention the story lacks the necessary vibe of a school slice of life. Please, if you ever actually finish episode 2, make sure at least some semblance of the art direction from 1 comes along with it. I have high hopes for Ep2 because Doomfest/Softmode is returning, but as with the refunds that could easily change... The story is well enough, though it feels very much tacked on to Episode 1, like a leaflet or magazine about the world that she's part of, the kind of people they are, and how they see the people of other worlds. There's some minor tie-in to the troubled relationship that Waverly has with Winter (per Waverly's Ep1 internal monologues), and introductions of characters no...

A short but good prequel that goes further into the world Winter is from as well as the character herself. Introduces a handful of new, likeable, well written characters and I'd say the music is as good as the first games. Most of the art was done by Rtil who is an amazing artist but I also really liked the first episodes art, still deciding which art style I like better. Hopefully we'll see more from Dischan.

Was looking forward to this when it first came out but upon seeing it for the first time I was put off. Art is nothing close to the first game and while the soundtrack is good it also doesn't come close the the first game. Sucks that the series was cancelled.

A surprise prologue episode for the Dysfunctional systems series, which seems to have come out of nowhere and is an attempt to give some backstory to Winter Harrison from Episode 1. After a fully funded Kickstarter, the series was cancelled in 2015, so when I saw this on Steam I decided to give it a purchase as I enjoyed the first episode. I don't think disappointment even begins to cover this brief and tedious visual novel. This game was created to attempt world building for the Dysfunctional systems series, however most of the game is sub-par in comparison to the previous release. The plot is joining Winter Harrison for her first week at Mediator school, the classes she attends and the people she meets. It took me 81 minutes to complete this and in all honesty it felt much longer with how dull, monotonous and repetitive the story was. I appreciate the first 3 days of a new school a teen attends might not be the most thrilling on plot starts, however the most interesting thing about ...