Gehenna's Stigma Review

Gehenna's Stigma:

let me start off by saying that if I had gotten this ending earlier I would have appreciated it a lot more. Since I had knowledge of the route mostly before hand because of VA, this meant that the emotional impact was not up there since it used already existing plot points such as Mayuri and Suzuha time travleing and Amakuri getting deleted. However, does that mean that I dislike this route? That could not be further from the truth.

This route has to have some of the best moments in the VN and I will say the highlight has to be, unsurprisingly, Okabe himself. I am inclined to say that this route is perfect for giving us the absolute worst case scenario for Okabe. All of the work he had put in to save Mayuri had been diminished as the time machine is destroyed along with Suzuha in it. "Am I...not allowed to live a normal life?". At this point we have grown complacent with the amount of work Okabe has done to reach this worldline that another reminder as to the very simple reason he wanted to reach "a normal life". Establishing Okabe's desire to just have a chance of living the life that he just wanted. Before the time machine. Before everything that one summer. It honestly made me when I read it so fustrated that Okabe is just denied his last chance of solace in a world line with the one he loves and this route encapuslates that feeling so well. Okabe's segment within the end of the route was one of the best parts in the VN as a whole and definetly supported the route's themes majorly.

On the topic of Maho, she is also special as she is propped up as a scapegoat used to scrape all the possible information out of her friends. In this case, since I have played through the other routes with more development for Maho in that case, the direction they went with using Maho through the brainwashing thing went well however considering how early this route could have been acheived, I would not have had the same love for it due to the fact that my love for Maho would not have been developed enough to empathize with the entire situation. Weaponizing Maho in this scenario agianst Okabe is both interesting from a story telling prespective and pitiful from an emotional one. Abusing Maho's desire to learn about the fate of her friend and of course the time machine definitely charges the sadistic nature of this route.

More on he actual ending itself, I would say this route is the textbook definiiton of the altenrate ending that the VN's have. I would say that using the premise of Daru introducing the idea to create a time machine at the end would have had a better impact if this route was expanded a lot more to the scale of PR for example. Having this "bad" prespective of the story would have been a lot more interesting to see play out to parallel VA (including the true end as well) although this ending accomplishes what it sets out to do and with that, I have no extreme negatives to introduce other than a few minor nitpicks like how Maho managed to overpower Okabe for some odd reason.

A breath of fresh air from the large amounts of ending that ended on a sort of "good" note. Only major negative has to be that it should have been expanded more then what it was in the original.

8.5/10