Game Review: Saya no Uta
After having brain surgery due to the result of a car accident that killed his parents, Fuminori Sakisaka wakes up to find the way he sees the world to be a bit off centre. People no longer resemble people; they are disgusting bubbling monsters who can barely speak. Food he once loved tastes and smells like roadkill. Fearing he will never get better and considering suicide, he meets Saya. The one normal ‘human’ he can see amongst the blood and guts.
Fuminori is fucked up thanks to a controversial brain surgery he needed to save his life. Because of the way he has to view the world now, he pushes away his friends and the girl who ~loves~ him and slowly starts to go insane. Saya comes and ‘saves’ him briefly, until his ex-friends become suspicious and his train to Insane Land heads to it’s final destination. Saya accidentally kills/eats one of Fuminori’s friends, Omi. Fuminori finds her feasting, tries some, and decides that cannibalism is gr8. Yu, a girl with a huge crush on Fuminori, comes to check on Fuminori after he told her off and ends up becoming their rape buddy. You find out Saya was cared for by a crazy scientist who went mad trying to protect her. Fuminori’s physician, Ryoko, carries a badass gun and thinks Fuminori is a crazy son of a bitch, so she enlists the help of Koji.
3 endings are obtainable: “Good” End, “True” End, and “Bad” End. The Good End is stupid and boring. The True End is interesting in the sense that Saya and Fuminori won and got what they wanted: to be together.. kind of. The Bad End is my favourite: Koji manages to kill Saya (with the help of Ryoko), prompting Fuminori to commit suicide. Koji goes crazy. The good, contained kind of crazy though. He is drugged up beyond belief and see’s the dead/decomposing/gross remains of everyone following him around. It ends with Koji telling the reader that if his life becomes too unbearable, he too will suicide.
Saya’s ‘life story’ was decent and probably the only great thing about this game sans the Bad End. It was sad how a foreign being went so far downhill thanks to romance novels and a modern idea of love (sounds like a Sherrilyn Kenyon plot).
A lot of Saya no Uta is mediocre. This is a game I expected to love, since I enjoy gross/gory games like this (ex: Gore Screaming Show). Nothing was really explained and there were a ton of holes; again, maybe it’s a translation issue. There is next to no transition period between how Saya and Fuminori were living happily their own way vs. their “kill/rape everybody to survive Ha Ha” craziness. It also feels very rushed; not much is fully explained and you’re left to your own devices on a lot of the plot. Beginning to credits, getting all 3 endings, only took me a few hours.. though they felt a lot longer. Lovecraftian or not, this game kinda blew. (I’m kind of surprised that it has such a huge amount of loyal fans, now)
At least the music was alright.. and Saya was kinda cute.