Shuten Order - Switch 2 Review

Shuten Order by developers Neilo Inc. & Too Kyo Games in collaboration with DMM GAMES and publisher Spike Chunsoft—Switch 2 review written by Jim with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated Reading Time:  4 minutes.  

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Shuten Order is a challenging game for me to review for multiple reasons. First is some of the subject matter. The game focuses a lot on a God, and I was raised and still am a Christian, so some of the talk might be sensitive for some players. When you use "God's power" to accidentally blow up someone's head at the beginning of the game, I didn't like it. Now, I'm usually okay with most things in games, even if they talk about God or gods, because games are fiction, but I really didn't like how it was used in this game, like praying for the end of humanity. Anything that makes this game hard for me to review is that, every time I play it, something bad happens in real life. I'm not superstitious at all, but when something awful happens every time I play the game, it just gets to me. This also brings me to my apologies to the devs, the publisher, and everyone here at CGR. I'm sorry for taking so long in this review, and thanks for being so understanding about the circumstances.

Mainly, Shuten Order is a visual novel game with multiple paths you have to take to solve the murder of the cult leader of Shuten, who also happens to be the character you are playing as. What makes this visual novel so different is that each path or route you take is a different genre. The genres are murder mystery/investigation, much like the Ace Attorney games; an extreme escape game like the Nonary Games series; a dating sim; and a survival-horror escape game where you mostly just run away from a killer. If you enjoy genre-blending games or murder mysteries, this game offers a variety of experiences, though some may find the religious themes less appealing.

I played through three of these, but as I stated above, each time something happened for real that took me away from the game. I played the murder mystery route, and as a fan of Ace Attorney, I enjoyed this path until the end, that is. After you complete a route, you will be taken back to pick another one, so it doesn't matter what order you pick them in; you will always have a chance to come back and play the others. The second route I took was the horror escape route. It was a decent route, but lacking a little, as the killer is easy to get away from just by hiding. Lastly was the dating sim. I liked this one the least out of the three routes I played. It's less serious than the others, but it's basically like all the other dating-sim VNs out there.

I did run into a few issues with the game. The translation is hit-or-miss, with some sentences making no sense, and I had to reread a few times to understand what it was saying. Another issue was that the text sometimes appears off-screen, and there's no way to see it. In some scenes, the text becomes blurry as a way to make the game scarier or something, but it was annoying to read like that. The game is voiced in Japanese. It wasn't an issue for players in Japan, but with no English dub, this effect should have been changed or removed from the text. Lastly, I ran into a problem a few times when the sound, music, and voices all stopped working, and I had to reset the game to get them working again.

The Japanese voices are good. I wish they would get an English dub for these types of games, but most don't. I liked that the main character is a female who everyone thinks is male, and the Japanese voice actor does a good job of sounding like either a male or a female. All the other voices in the game seem to fit their characters very well. The music is decent for the type of game, too. Graphically, the game is decent for a VN. I like the twists and turns in the game, but the overall religious themes are a huge turnoff for me. A few religious things here and there in a game are fine with me, but when the game seems to be mainly about a cult and religion and God, I just couldn't get into that.

Overall, the game is very unique, and I like that, but it doesn't excel in any of the genres it offers beyond being a VN. The story is okay, but I didn't like the game's theme much. If there were less religion and more about solving a murder, I probably would have enjoyed it more. I won't take points away for it because these are just personal opinions. So, the game is decent but not my cup of tea.

Score: 7 / 10

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GotY 2025 - Most Memorable

One of our team's favorite things about video games is not just playing them in the moment, but the lasting memories they make. We talk about these traits in several of our recurring articles such as Memorable Music in Gaming or Retro Reflections. What makes a game memorable? It comes down to the person and their experience. It can be a catchy song, a particularly poignant moment in the story or just the fan had experiencing the game with a friend or family member who was along the ride. It's not a binary criteria, but we know it when we see it and there were plenty of games in 2025 that might not have been true contenders for Game of the Year in our minds, but still became memorable in our hearts. 

Nick: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

What I found most interesting about this title when I reviewed it, was how this title was an all-new story and a brand-new game, and yet somehow almost immediately familiar and comfortable to me at the same time. Kudos to the audio in particular, with Troy Baker’s take on Indian Jones having been fantastic and music that knew the right moments to swell or to take a back seat to more subtle sound effects. There were times this felt a bit like an older first-person Fallout game, while having newer mechanics like the whip adding agility and platforming to the well-established formula. As someone who grew up on the Indiana Jones movies, this video game felt like a better successor than some of the more recent movies. 

PY: Cronos: The New Dawn

The Bloober Team’s Cronos: The New Dawn has pretty much lived in my head rent free beside Clair Obscur. The treatment of the landscapes and the small bits of information in this dystopian post apocalyptic hell that you find yourself in was damned near flawless.

The general vibe was tension making me grip my controller tighter than I should have just to be ready when the music, or lack of music, shifted. With the only complaint being that monsters took too much ammo to take out at times, the rest of this horror-like adventure has me planning on coming back to it as I would love to play against knowing what I know now.

Susan: Escape Simulator 2

My significant other and I had a chance to play Escape Simulator 2 recently and it was a blast. We went through many of the levels together and it was fun to see how each level changes based on if the game is a solo one or a multiplayer one. We played this together because we played through the entirety of the first one and we had a blast with it. 

What makes Escape Simulator 2 the most memorable of the games I played this year is the fact that the solutions to a few of the puzzles were much harder to solve. One puzzle in the crypt of Dracula's Castle took me for a ride and while I knew roughly what needed to be done, I struggled so much on it. Another thing that made the game memorable is the delivery of the hints - if you use them. The game doesn't give you the answer, it gives you a cute little picture with a nudge in the right direction. And you can't get all of the hints right off the bat, you have to wait time before you can request for another.

I'm impressed by how much of a step up Escape Simulator 2 is from the original version. Though it only has three main level sets to begin with, players can try escape rooms that others in the community have designed. The graphics in this game have improved but it's difficult to explain how or why. There's something about being able to walk around a space but looking like you're in an augmented reality that stunned me. Some of the levels were incredibly fascinating and some of the puzzles were visually spectacular. And with the fact that Escape Simulator 1 has come a long way from where it started, I expect that Escape Simulator 2 will do the same and expand over time. Besides, this game also has several puzzles that can be completed in the main lobby area which is quite fun. Just be careful, some of the hardmode puzzles are brutal. Trust me.

Valerie: Blue Prince

Ah Blue Prince. From the first opening cinematic, to all the rooms one moves into, you have me in your clutches. This game reminds me of Botany Manor, but with oh so much more to it! A mystery to solve, many puzzles to complete, lots of nooks and crannies to discover, Blue Prince has it all. 

 

The music added that final touch to the experience and had me smiling when I would discover something new.  

Richard: Shuten Order

Good god the plot bombs were more tactical plot nukes. While the gameplay felt a little incomplete, I’m gonna remember the plot reveals for a long time to come.

 

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Shuten Order - Nintendo Switch Review

Shuten Order by developer DMM Games and publisher Spike Chunsoft—Nintendo Switch review written by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher.

 
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

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Do you believe in God? Or do you pray for the end of humanity? Are you part of the Shuten Order, or one of those violent heretics? Well, those aren’t important right now. What is important is finding the murderer of the Founder of the Order and saving humanity!

Shuten Order is an interesting game that slaps five different genres together and actually does it pretty decently. The main premise of Shuten Order is that you awaken in a strange hotel room and are told by two self professed angels you must investigate the death of the founder of the local cult: Shuten. Well, more of a sort of city-state really, and as far as cults go they aren’t that bad. The religious doctrines include no violence and no murder, so crime is surprisingly low. Unfortunately, the founder of Shuten has been brutally dismembered. It is up to you to discover who the murderer is!

Shuten Order is a bit of a quirky game, but not necessarily in a bad way. You get told at the beginning of the game by two characters calling themselves angels that you, despite your recent memory loss, are in fact the dismembered founder. Not only that, but God has issued you a trial to find your own murderer. Luckily for you, you can use the power of God to help. Despite Shuten being an anti-religious religious cult. Hmmm, well, hopefully you can figure out what’s up with that as things progress. You will be given a directive to use the power of God to determine who the murderer is, and then investigate them and force them to confess to their crimes.

It is at this point that the genre of Shuten Order is tossed in a salad spinner. Whoever you select as the culprit will determine what the gameplay style is like. So, when investigating the five ministers who are the most likely culprits behind your death, you must also think of what kind of gameplay you prefer. You do go through all five routes for the full experience, so don’t worry about restarting to choose another route. They do all interrelate to varying degrees as well.

The different gameplay types, from left to right in the options, are: murder mystery/investigation, “extreme escape game”, multi-perspective, romantic (?), and survival escape. Let’s break each of these down a little so you have an idea what’s what with each genre type. In the murder mystery option you will be following the Minister of Justice to a rich family’s private island in order to read a will. Once there, you discover a murder has taken place. You are tasked with investigating the murder. Gameplay is a lot of interacting with objects and asking people questions. You can do a fancy finger snap to try and draw connections to important topics, but too much snapping makes you look dumb and you’ll lose trust. There are also debate segments where you must prove your suspicions. Kind of similar to Phoenix Wright in style, just less courthouse.

Next up we have the “extreme escape game”. Notice the quotation marks. While this is generally marketed as an escape game style route while investigating the Minister of Health, it’s largely walking around an empty area doing the occasional puzzle minigame until the end when you get an actual escape room. Just wanted to let you know so you aren’t as disappointed as I was in the gameplay. The story and world building reveals were outstanding, but the gameplay was a bit of a slog.

Multi-perspective is pretty much traditional visual novel fare. You make choices which will change outcomes, which will then open up new paths for different characters. The game doesn’t really tell you this, but after your first dead end you can open the flowchart for the routes yourself instead of at the end of a route to go back and make other choices. Honestly I thought this was going to be the most boring route when I started, but I was pleasantly mistaken.

For the investigation into the ministry of Education you have a romantic (?) adventure. Basically think traditional dating sim, where you need to raise affection with different characters to unlock their ending route. Yes that question mark is there for a reason, no I won’t say why, yes it’s actually in the game itself too. Once again I thought this route would be sort of boring, and if you rush through it it kind of is, but there is SO MUCH in this route that isn’t laid out for you that makes it really great. Over the course of this route, you can learn a bunch of interesting facts about the other routes and characters as they’re progressing. There are allusions to a lot of other interesting details that were really neat to learn. A plus for the subtle world building.

The final entry is survival escape with the Minister of Security. Short story is it’s very much like Corpse Party. Long story, you have to escape from a serial killer by dropping shutters to slow them down, hiding in safety lockers, and solving puzzles while you’re getting chased in a 3D isometric perspective. It isn’t super complicated, but it was a lot more active than any of the other routes.

At the end you can put your knowledge of all the routes together for one final shot at salvation. All routes feature a checkpoint system where you can retry if you get a game over from the nearest “checkpoint”, so you don’t really need to worry about making twenty seven different save files, unless you want to see the differences between different options. Each route has it’s own focus for delving into the world. One route may explain what the power of God actually is, another gives insight into the relationship between God, the heretics, and Shuten, and another sets up some important background about the murder of the Founder as well as how Shuten functions as a whole. Also, at least three of the routes will drop a tactical nuke equivalent of a reveal on you by the end that may have you sitting there gaping for at least five minutes if you haven’t played other routes that hint towards it.

As a whole I’d say Shuten Order is a pretty artistic game in a lot of ways. It divests from the standard genre typing, has a weird introspective on society and religion while lamp-shading a lot of common tropes, and flips a few overused concepts. The art style used is a bit of a mash-up as well, with both 3D and 2D segments, standard visual novel style talking and scenes, but with interactable characters showing as sort of paper cut-outs to interact with before dialogue starts. The music is also kind of all over the place, from tense tones in the extreme escape game and survival segments, to more laidback in the multi-perspective and romantic (?) routes. Really, Shuten Order is a wonky stained-glass style of everything that it does. Gotta give them props for sticking to an overarching theme.

Shuten Order certainly isn’t without it’s faults. There are some text wrapping issues, one soft-lock I found in the Minister of Justice route, and some misplaced text options, but nothing wildly egregious, most of which I’m sure will be patched out on release. Shuten Order also suffers from the same thing most multi-genre style games do: the gameplay isn’t really fully fleshed out. It feels like Shuten Order tried to do too many things at once and couldn’t adequately make all of them feel “full”, for lack of a better word. Does the gameplay work fine? Well, yeah, but it doesn’t feel complete either. Like it could be better but it wasn’t fully fleshed out, or the route ended before it could really take off. Nothing is “incomplete”, but it does all mostly feel like if there was the leeway to afford more effort in certain gameplay areas it would be appreciated.

Shuten Order is a really interesting title. It blends a variety of different genres with some really interesting world building in a high stakes murder mystery. While the individual genre routes may have benefitted from a more single genre focused approach, it is a very unique way of bridging together the overarching storyline. Shuten Order is definitely a title I’d suggest taking an interest in, although it is a very niche title. 

Score: 8 / 10 

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