While the first episode of World End Economica is up on MangaGamer, Sekaiproject has decided to raise a Kickstarter for a ‘Complete’ version of the game, which will include all three episodes. The game is a visual novel about Stock Trading, and the first episode doesn’t do much to make that concept seem too exciting.
The game’s plot is about a sixteen year old kid named “Haru” or “Hal” has a dream to make a lot of money to achieve his goals, which are revealed later in the story. To this end he has made money by becoming a whiz at stock trading. However, after a series of events, he ends up living at a church and continuing his trading his stock, while entering a mock trading contest. Along the way, his relationships with the residents of the church develop as they continue until the end of the contest. However, the actual development of the characters and their relationship to one another doesn’t grow all that much. It’s more like we learn about each character’s background. The plot mostly drags it feet through a great deal of the game’s about 14 hour run-time. Only near the conclusion of the episode does it begin to become interesting.
You do get a good feel for the game’s setting though. It takes place far in the future, where people now have colonized the moon and built an entire city on it. The situation on Earth sounds like a dark premonition of what could happen to our own reality if oligarchy and hegemony were to overtake the global economy. This ties into the reason for the moon’s colonization in the game. There aren’t any spelling errors, but there are a few grammatical errors, or mismanagement of prose. Although the game is still in Early Access phase on steam, so that could change in an update. The game lacks any kind of voice acting, so you have to read the whole thing. Although it would have likely have been in Japaneses audio if the game had it though. Still, it’s a sorely missing feature. The conclusion ends on a cliffhanger that only makes you want to play the others, which kind of feels like a dirty tactic, seeing how weak the narrative of episode one is. Still, the game’s story does have potential, and hopefully the next two episodes will deliver. It’s just kind of a steep price at 13 bucks an episode. But backers can act quickly and only pay $25 for the set instead of getting them individually at a total of $40 USD.
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