Date A Live: Rio Reincarnation

Date A Live: Rio Reincarnation is a package of three visual novel adventure games (Date A Live: Rinne Utopia, Date A Live: Arusu Install, Date A Live: Rio Reincarnation), which form the Date A Live series, previously released exclusively in Japan on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. We take on the role of an average high school student who, in order to save the world, must fall in love with powerful and threatening mysterious creatures taking the form of young girls. Developers and publishers of the set are Japanese companies Compile Heart and Idea Factory. The games included in the set are based on books from the series Date A Live by Koshi Tachibana, which have been published in Japan since 2011. The Date A Live brand has seen three seasons of television adaptation of anime and one cinema film, as well as countless gadgets.

Plot

Package games are spin-offs of the main book series and anime, but their knowledge is not necessary for fun. The action of all three productions takes place in contemporary Japan. Thirty years before the beginning of history, the world is shaken by a powerful explosion (known in the game as the spacequake), whose victim in one moment falls to more than 150 million people. Since then, such catastrophes on a smaller scale are regularly repeated in various parts of the world, and their causes are mysterious creatures/spirits, which take the form of young girls.

The players take on the role of Shido Itsuka, an usual high school student who one day witnessed one of the explosions. In its centre, it finds a spirit with which he makes contact. He soon learns from his sister, a member of the Ratatoskr organization fighting the threat from the Spirits, that he has a unique ability to neutralize the power of dangerous beings. What's more, if he manages to kiss and fall in love with one of them, there is a chance that he will completely erase her supernormal abilities.

Date A Live: Rio Reincarnation consists of:

1. Date A Live: Rinne Utopia - the game takes place some time after the events presented in several initial book volumes of the series and the first anime season. Shido's entire hometown is surrounded by an impassable barrier in which he is imprisoned along with the other heroines. The matter is complicated by the fact that soon the mysterious Rinne Sonogami appears. An unknown girl claims to be his close childhood friend.
2. Date A Live: Arusu Install - the game takes place some time after the events presented in several initial book volumes of the series, the second anime season, and the game Date A Live: Rinne Utopia. After the end of the autumn festival of Tennou, Shido is asked to try out a new VR game prepared by Ratatoskr. During one of the testing sessions, the hero discovers that he is trapped in the virtual world and cannot leave it in any way. Shortly afterwards, Maria Arusu, an extraordinary girl, appears before his eyes, who wants him to explain the meaning of the word "love". Soon afterwards, he learns about the dark version of Arus, which seems to know more than he understands and enjoys the situation of the protagonist.
3. Date A Live: Rio Reincarnation - closes the game trilogy of the series and takes place immediately after the events presented in its first two parts. Shortly after his adventure in virtual reality, Shido tries to return to normality, but is constantly being haunted by a disturbing feeling. Its source is another mysterious girl, Rio Sonogami, who turns to him using the word "Dad" and claims to have come to him from Eden.

Mechanics

All three games included in the package are typical Japanese visual novel adventures. The game boils down to reading dialogues of characters accompanied by two-dimensional animated silhouettes of characters and illustrations. From time to time, we ask you to select one of several dialogue lines or actions that Shido will take. The story is divided into consecutive days. It happens that we decide about their course by choosing one of several available heroines, which we want to take on a date. The games offer many different endings, encouraging to go through the scripts prepared by the authors many times over.

As a bonus, included in the set Date A Live: Rio Reincarnation also includes three digital books in English - Rinne's Bathtime, Arusu's Quest, and Rio Reunion, which accompanied the original release of the games in Japan.

Technical aspects

The games included in the set offer high quality two-dimensional illustrations prepared by the artist hiding under the pseudonym Tsunako. The illustrator has been cooperating with Compile Heart for years and is responsible for the projects of the characters in the series Hyperdimension Neptune. All dialogues in the game were dubbed by professional and well-known Japanese actors working in the anime industry.