Amnesia: Crowd
Choices are back, baby! As the second fandisk game, Crowd expands exponentially on both Memories and Later, providing stories set both during, and after, those two games respectively, while also offering a completely separate third route dedicated to working at Meido no Hitsuji. There are three story choices: Suspense, Working, and Love. Suspense is a self-contained adventure set during Memories, where the love interest has to save the heroine from yet another possible string of Bad Endings. The choices you make determine whether she makes it out alive, and like it says on the tin, each story has an element of mystery and suspense. Working sees the heroine attempting to navigate returning to her part-time job, and contains silly vignettes and several mini-games. Love has two options: After Story and Communication. After Story takes the routes from Later and runs with them, while Communication is set up as a date with your guy where you can just chat. In addition to the story modes, you can play cards against your love interests or visit Orion’s corner, where you can chat with our favorite spirit, buy special mini-events to read during the Working route, and quiz your knowledge of all things Amnesia.
Suspense is the meat and potatoes of Crowd, bringing back the mystery element that made Memories so good in the first place. It also adds new gameplay elements, including point-and-click exploration sequences and Connections, which lets you swap between the heroine and love interests’ points of view. Shin’s route finds the heroine trapped in a collapsed building with a dying cellphone, and she has to piece together her memories to help navigate Shin to where she is before it’s too late. Ikki’s route sets up a silly math competition against Kent in the basement of Seichi University that goes awry when the heroine gets locked behind fire doors following an explosion, and Ikki must find a way to break her out before the fire spreads. Kent’s route involves a supposed ghost that’s haunting the heroine, but could just as well be a very real human stalker out to kill her. Toma’s route finds Ikki’s fan club locking the heroine inside an abandoned restaurant, unable to communicate with the outside world or escape, and Toma has to find her. And Ukyo’s route finds the heroine kidnapped by a murderous stranger intent on punishing her for her misdeeds, even though she doesn’t know what those misdeeds are. I honestly liked all of the Suspense routes, though once again, Shin and Toma’s felt the weakest, while Ukyo’s stood out as the strongest and not only because it introduced us to Rika’s older brother, Luka, who is a mite too obsessed with his younger sister. He’s fantastic. Like with Memories, I played through each Suspense route twice, once blind and once guided, but I was able to navigate to the proper ending without much hassle with any of them. I ended up using the guide to see the various Bad Endings, instead.
Working is purely comedic and set during some undefined period of time where everyone is employed at Meido no Hitsuji. The art style here is all super-deformed chibis, and we get the appearance of an entirely new Waka personality. This time around, he’s a psychic, and his fortune-telling skills keep the café afloat. Still with amnesia, the heroine is doing her best to help out in a support role, which means doing a variety of chores around the café, all of which are expressed in the form of mini-games. These are surprisingly competent, and thematically relevant, to the love interest teaching her said skill. Shin needs help washing dishes; Ikki asks for assistance making parfaits; Kent needs a chef’s assistant to order ingredients; and Toma’s taking care of customer checks. Only Ukyo’s mini-game involves working the floor, and has the heroine rotating between seating guests and taking their orders before they grow impatient. I enjoyed all of these, with Ikki’s parfait making and Ukyo’s floor management mini-games being the most engaging. After every mini-game, you can take a break and chat with the guy of your choice, and after five chats, you can see the ending of each love interest’s Working story. They’re all silly, fun, and a nice bit of levity after the Suspense routes. You can also view the mini-events in the Working route, and these are more serious vignettes between the heroine and the rest of the cast. My favorite was (unsurprisingly) Kent’s, where he talks about the constellation Orion, but they run the gamut from lighthearted to serious, and were a nice addition to the rest of the café stories.
After Story takes Later’s wish fulfillment stories and actually makes them good. Whereas I felt like character actions didn’t quite match up during Later’s routes, here, all those issues are rectified. Motivations make way more sense, the emotional through-line feels complete, and each ending is actually incredibly satisfactory. Two of them made me cry with how well they were done. Shin’s route is about making new memories at Shinanoji to finally move on from the events of August. Ikki’s story explores whether or not the power of his eyes will ever negatively effect his and the heroine’s relationship. Kent’s route navigates long-distance relationships, and how to make sure each partner can make their own dreams come true without sacrificing being together. Toma’s route actually addresses his actions during Memories and how to come to terms with, and move beyond, horrific actions done with good intentions. And Ukyo’s route grapples with the repercussions of his split personality, and the guilt he feels over the multiple times he killed the heroine during his endless August. If Suspense was all about bringing back the fun mystery aspect of Memories, After Story is the emotional core of the game, and it was handled so, so well.
Like in Later, the art and music in Crowd are fantastic, with multiple updated outfits for the characters and a great selection of returning tunes. There’s no music player, but it’s easy enough to access by just going back to the main menu and jumping into Later, so it’s not the biggest loss. Touch controls also return for certain CGs. The sound issues that plagued Later are also gone. And while the vast majority of Crowd is well-done, the After Story route is once again plagued by typos, as well as untranslated text. I’m not sure if the same team that worked on Later handled this route, but it was a disappointing mark in an otherwise polished presentation.
Amnesia: Later x Crowd is an honestly baffling product. For all of Later’s faults, Crowd makes up for them two-fold, providing one of the most fun and emotionally rewarding gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time. Memories may be the overall better story, but Crowd is the overall better game, and this package is held back only by the lackluster Later. Even with that, though, Crowd was legitimately so good – in spite of the typos and untranslated text in After Story – that I can’t help but recommend it. It’s worth the $49.99 price tag.
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