Sunday, August 19, 2012

Never 7: The End of Infinity Review

Never 7: The End of Infinity follows Ishihara Makoto, a college student who must attend "Seminar Camp" with three other students from his college.  For the Seminar, Makoto and fellow students Yuka, Haruka, and Okuhiko will take up residence in a lodge on a southern island for one week.
Unfortunately, not all is well.  On April 1st, before the Seminar begins, Makoto has a dream in which he is viewing a the corpse of an unknown female.  While this is initially unsettling but nonthreatening, A series of premonitions during the subsequent days make Makoto begin to wonder if it might be cause to worry: Could it be that his dream is a premonition that will come true on the morning of April 6th?  Can he find a way to prevent this future from occurring?

 Background

A few years ago, I was just getting into Visual Novels.  The fourth that I ever played was an rather interesting one, well known in English-speaking Visual Novel circles, "Ever 17: The Out of Infinity".  Made by Kindle Imagine Developers (KID) in 2002 and translated for English-speaking audiences by Hirameki International a few years later, Ever 17 managed to gain a strong western following, helped by the engaging plot, the lack of adult scenes, and the availability of a translation in a fledgeling fanbase where the pool of works that were in a language that the fans could understand was severely limited.

Though Ever 17 gained a good-sized fanbase, none of the other games in the Infinity series were ever translated, likely due to the collapse of both Hirameki and KID.  In summer 2010, however, a fan-produced translation patch was released for the third game in the series, "Remember 11: The Age of Infinity".  Now, in summer 2012, we of the English-language Visual Novel fanbase may once again experience Infinity with the release of GundamAce's translation for the first game in the series: "Never 7: The End of Infinity".