Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos – PC

Platform: PC

Developer: Dischan Media

Publisher: Dischan Media

Release Date: April 4th, 2013

Genre: Visual Novel

Nerd Rating: 4.5/10

I expect many people to see my low rating of this game and immediately think “he’s hating on it because it’s a visual novel and there’s not much gameplay.” Sorry everyone, but that’s not true. I myself happen to enjoy visual novels very much. In Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos, you play as a 14-year old mediator-in-training Winter Harrison. In this game’s universe, there are many planets. This is where the main character, and mediators come in; mediators are sent to solve issues in these planets. Please keep in mind that this is the first in a planned series, and is rather short. Though there are many planets in the universe in which the game takes place, you will only be visiting two, one of which is your home planet.

The first major point I want to talk about in this game is choices. The thing about visual novels and games of this type that I enjoy so much are the choices that affect the end result of the story. While this game has multiple dialog choices throughout the game, they truly don’t effect the story other then a few lines of text. There is only one major story-changing choice in Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos, and the game only has two endings. This is the major thing that pushes me away from this game. I want more choices, and more endings.

Now let’s look at this game for what it is; a novel. I wanted to talk a little about the story and the character progression. There are a few emotional parts in this game, but they are ruined by quick changes in the character as if the said character was bipolar (they aren’t in the story, unless that will be revealed later in the series.) One moment I felt that both the characters had grown up and matured, and I felt like the character progression was actually good, and then bam, the character’s personalities seem to go back in time, and that emotional moment is as if it never happened. This made the story, in my opinion, confusing at times and simply not enjoyable.

Despite the last two flaws, Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos does have one good quality; the soundtrack. The soundtrack of this game is beautiful, and I wouldn’t mind having it in my music library. The music selection also matched the feeling of the story throughout its entirety . When the story’s feeling changed, the music would change to more fitting music. The developers definitely did amazing with the soundtrack.

Soundtrack art

Another good quality of Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos is the art-style. The characters have an anime style to them, and they were drawn very well. The background of the game changed a few times throughout the game, but it always looked nice. I definitely feel the author, Saimon Ma, did an amazing job and I’m curious to see their other work.

Although I gave Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos a rather low rating, I still plan to play the future releases. If you are into visual novel’s, I suggest spending the small amount of money to give this game a chance; however if you are curious if you would like this genre of game, please do not use this game as your first test of the genre and deciding factor. I believe this series has a lot of potential, and I’m curious where it will go; I just hope the developers fix some of the current issues.