Amnesia: Memories (PS Vita) Review

When a spirit named Orion collides with your consciousness, he pushes out all of your memories, leaving you knowing little beyond your own name. Now, the only way to push Orion back out of your head is to work hard at retrieving your memories, about your life, your job, your friends – and your boyfriend. Just who is the man in your life, and how can you find out more about the relationship you had with him prior to your memory loss, without raising his suspicions? Make the wrong choices, and your memories might just remain lost forever.

Visual novels are usually to be found on the PC, but lately, a few have trickled over to the Vita, including Amnesia Memories, a dating game with a difference. Instead of making some early dialogue choices which influence the guy you end up going out with later on, in Amnesia you start off already in a committed relationship with your chosen boyfriend. Since you lack all your memories, however, you have to guess at the exact nature of your relationship, without raising his suspicions or driving him away. If the two of you can earn each other’s trust and affection by the end of an in-game month, you might just be able to enjoy a happy ending together.

With good, normal and bad endings to achieve for each of the game’s five possible suitors, Amnesia certainly gives you plenty of story possibilities to work through – but unfortunately, the quality varies quite a bit throughout. Prior to her memory loss, our heroine’s taste in men seems to have been quite dubious – they might all be good looking, but most of the time they are pretty shallow and insensitive to the heroine. Worse yet, the whole tone of the game seems quite murderous – in various scenarios you find your life under threat from people who wish you harm, and a fair proportion of the bad endings involve your untimely demise. It’s a bit jarring and overly dark from something that, at first glance, looks to be a lighthearted dating sim. Perhaps the best character of all is Orion, the spirit who accompanies you everywhere, and acts as something of a narrator.

When it comes to looks, however, Amnesia is certainly easy on the eye. All of the characters are attractive, and the settings and interface mostly look slick and sharp – the only exception is when the game sometimes zooms in on a fixed resolution image. The background music is atmospheric yet sufficiently unobtrusive that you can play for a while without it getting repetitive, whilst all dialogue except the heroine’s is fully voiced in Japanese.

Final Thoughts

Amnesia Memories certainly looks the part, but its interesting premise is let down by weak characters and scenarios that don’t really engage the reader. It’s a good effort, but ultimately one that just doesn’t really deliver.