The year was 2000. Riding the wave of success that was their recent smash-hit romance visual novel, Memories Off, a company called KID Co., Ltd. asked themselves the question of the century: What if we did this again, but this time with sci-fi?
Okay, so I’m exaggerating a little. But it was a pretty big turning point. Never7 – The End of Infinity, the answer to KID’s self-posed question, turned out to be a proving ground in many respects. This was the first sci-fi-themed visual novel they’d ever developed, the debut of the Infinity series. But it also marked the first time Kotaro Uchikoshi of Zero Escape and AI: The Somnium Files fame ever wrote for a sci-fi story; for Takumi Nakazawa, known for Root Double and the cult classic I/O, Never7 was both a directorial and writing debut. And if you’re a fan of MAGES.’ Science Adventure series, you’d recognize Never7 as a source of heavy inspiration for CHAOS;HEAD, STEINS;GATE, and more.
Fast-forward to 2025—in commemoration of the series’s twenty-fifth anniversary, MAGES., successor to KID, is releasing remasters of both Never7 and Ever17 on March 6, 2025. (Interested in Ever17? Read our review here.)
How does Never7’s new remaster hold up? Without getting ahead of ourselves, unfortunately, it leaves much to be desired. Today, we’ll explore what Never7 gets right and what could have gone better—so without further ado, let’s get right into this review.
A special thanks to Spike Chunsoft, Inc., the Western publisher, for providing review copies of the game and a generous review period. Please note that this provision has not influenced the opinions expressed herein in any way.
Story; Memories and Mysteries
The moment you step outside, it hits you: that strikingly fresh spring breeze, welcoming you into another bright morning of adventure. The birds are chirping, the ocean’s roaring, and the cherry blossoms are in full bloom—they shower you in beautiful pink petals when you walk by.
Take a little journey through that natural bliss, and you’ll find yourself at a small, shoreline corner of civilization. Luna Beach: it isn’t all that much, but the atmosphere is comfortable, homey. The people are cheerful, always happy to see you. Life is slow-going here, but it’s the nice kind of slow—a welcome change from the frenetic rat race you came from.
School? Work? Forget about it. For the next seven days, you’ll have the rare opportunity to bond with new friends, explore exciting new sights, and enjoy a fantastic seaside retreat. By the end, you’ll be wishing you could stay longer.
This is the slice of paradise our slacker college student protagonist, Makoto Ishihara, finds himself in. But it’s not all fun and games; after all, every sunny day eventually gives way to the mysteries of the night. What’s the meaning behind the ominous premonitions Makoto receives—earthquakes, accidents, and little bits of foreknowledge that always seem to come true? What secret turmoils are his companions hiding behind their veneers of cheer? And what in the world was with that ominous nightmare he had on the first day—where one of his friends died right at his side?
I’m probably one of the lucky few individuals in the West who had the chance to read KID’s other big breakout title, Memories Off, before I read Never7—since the former was never localized into English. I feel this actually helped set my expectations for Never7 on the right track. Both games feature a heavy focus on character growth, interpersonal drama, and romance. You follow the protagonist as he meets new friends, falls in love, and helps resolve his chosen heroine’s traumas.
This isn’t to say that Never7 is missing a sci-fi edge, or indeed, that it’s lacking. What I appreciate about the game is that it goes for a dual focus, rarely throwing character growth under the bus in pursuit of roller-coaster plot thrills.
If you are looking for a harder sci-fi edge a la modern SciADV games, I can see why frustration might bud—Never7 takes its time, and for SciADV fans, it’ll lean more ROBOTICS;NOTES than it does CHAOS;CHILD. But if you give it a chance, it’s absolutely worth it. Never7 may have been a first-time attempt at sci-fi for many of its contributors, but it has no shortage of fascinating premises it wants you to ponder. I don’t want to get into too many spoilers, but one route in particular is mind-boggling in how it recontextualizes everything that came before it—it’s almost hard to believe this game came out in 2000, but I suppose in that sense, it’s really cemented itself as a classic and a well-deserved origin point for the many games it inspired.
Translation; The Language Dilemma
The elephant in the room with this remaster (or, well, one of them) is its English localization. This new release marks the first time Never7 has ever been officially localized for the West, but sadly, the translation itself leaves much to be desired.
Never7’s English script gets off to a particularly rough start: it’s very literally translated, with swathes upon swathes of poorly worded sentences, typos, English formatting mistakes, and awkward punctuation use. The text feels incredibly stiff and dry—it’s like every line was translated one by one in a vacuum, with little regard for how the lines could work together to create a flowing English narrative. As a result, Never7’s opening hours just feel plain unpleasant to read. There are so many problems, I found myself wondering if an editor or a proofreader was even involved in the process.
Things start to look up as you keep reading. The further you get into the story, the more the script starts to smooth itself out. But it’s hard to say Never7’s English translation ever truly finds its groove—it just ends up wavering between below average and average quality.
When you look at what was accomplished with ANONYMOUS;CODE’s terrific English localization, plus the relative simplicity of Never7’s writing in Japanese, it just feels like a genuine shame. Sure, things get better after the opening hours, but you’re still going to encounter a range of problems—like overuse of scare quotes, nonsensical typos, and awkwardly worded sentences—multiple times per scene. Moments of genuine inspiration in the localization’s writing often feel more like afterthoughts than an active goal.
Giving the team the benefit of the doubt, I wonder if they simply didn’t have enough time to do right by the game. Localization is complicated, and poor deadlines or conditions can be huge factors in how well a translation comes out.
To be clear, I don’t think Never7’s localization is a complete tragedy. It’s just that it isn’t particularly good. Its lows are pretty low, and it doesn’t have many highs to speak of. For many readers, maybe that “mediocre, sometimes bad” level of quality will be worth bearing with. Personally, though, I’m disappointed that MAGES. (the company itself, not the localization team) is seemingly satisfied releasing Never7—the game that served as a proving ground for some of its contemporaries, the game that helped put its predecessor, KID, on the map, and the game that inspired its most popular modern-day series—with a less-than-satisfactory translation.
Presentation; Half-Baked Appearances
Unfortunately, Never7 suffers from more than just a lackluster localization. This remaster is a Frankenstein hodgepodge of low-resolution assets, awkward presentational choices, and compressed voice acting—it isn’t even close to meeting modern standards.
If you have the choice, refrain from playing Never7 in full 1080p. Although it may be harder to see here on the website, it quickly becomes obvious in the game itself that Never7‘s art assets were never meant to be blown up to such a high resolution; the backgrounds constantly seem too blurry for comfort, and the game’s unique CGs are in even worse shape. Never7 probably looked beautiful back in the day on classic displays, but the developer has taken those same age-old assets and stretched them too far beyond their use cases—the resulting cracks and seams are painful to look at.
Out of necessity, the game’s original 4:3 (squarish) presentation has been cropped to 16:9 (widescreen), matching what most modern TVs and monitors display at. This crop was not kind to Never7. The tops and bottoms of character sprites, CGs, and backgrounds are now gone, meaning the player misses out on little details that were originally meant to be seen. To some extent, this needed to happen—if you have to display a rectangle, there’s little more you can do than to crop the original square. But in some cases, I feel MAGES. dropped the ball when it came to accommodating the new way to display the game.
Setting aside instances where character sprites could have been zoomed out a little—because a skinny-dipping Okuhiko is the last thing anyone wants to be jumpscared with—MAGES. has also neglected to offer players any way to view the cropped portions of event CGs, something they have accommodated before.
Previous MAGES. remasters—like Memories Off, funnily—at least allowed you to view the full, 4:3 CGs in the in-game gallery. If you go as far back as Never7’s PlayStation Portable port, you could apparently even scroll CGs up and down as soon as they appeared in the game. But Never7’s 2025 release offers neither option, so you’re never going to get to see some details—like the counter Saki leans over as she chews Izumi out, or half of Kurumi’s crab sumo match.
(Pictured above: Never7’s 2025 remaster compared to the 2000 SEGA Dreamcast release.)
Some new assets were created for this remaster, but not many. The menus are among the new additions—and they would look beautiful, if not for certain problems…
There are issues even if you ignore the visuals. Never7’s voicework is in a bit of trouble, too—many of the cast’s lines were recorded in the late ’90s or early 2000, and maybe their hardware was a little spotty, because it sounds heavily compressed. Although, to be honest, a part of me might actually argue that this adds to Never7’s retro vibe.
The real problem lies in the fact that, oddly, some lines actually do sound uncompressed, like they were recorded on much better equipment. This is explained by the fact that new lines were recorded after Never7’s initial PS1 release; these newly recorded lines were used for story content added in the updated Dreamcast version of the game, and if I had to guess, KID was probably using better hardware by then. Whatever the case, it’s jarring when the game suddenly swaps between the different recordings—it’s so noticeably different, your immersion is broken. It’s almost comical to see this problem plaguing Never7 even twenty-four years later.
All these presentational failures point to one conclusion: Never7, in its existing form, was not ready for a remaster. If I might take that one step further, what Never7 needed wasn’t a remaster—it needed a remake. It’s funny to realize that MAGES. solved all of these issues in 2017 when they remade YU-NO, a 1996 game, from the ground up. Rather than force the use of low-resolution assets, they hired a new artist to redraw every asset; CGs were redone to better fit the 16:9 aspect ratio; and the game was entirely revoiced by a brand-new cast. If Never7 had gotten this treatment, maybe it would be in better shape than it is now—but I suppose times are different. Maybe it just wasn’t in the budget anymore. Alas.
Positives; Sprinkled Successes
If there’s at least one point Never7’s remaster has neatly squared away, it’s the soundtrack. This is among Takeshi Abo’s earliest work, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s amateur work; Never7’s music is the perfect reflection of the classic charm embodied by Abo’s older compositions, reminiscent of days long past when many Japanese anime and games had sharper, almost summery vibes. (And thankfully, none of the music suffers from the compression problems the voicework has.)
Although it’s not necessarily extensive, the soundtrack of Never7 is masterful in how it represents a range of emotions and scenes. There’s the upbeat, early-morning-esque “In the sunny spot,” played during high-energy scenes where the cast is deciding their plans for the day or sharing cheerful conversations. The slow, thoughtful “Like real in mist” is often used when Makoto is puzzling through unsolved mysteries about the island, trying his best to put together the pieces. The iconic, tense “Irritation” plays when things begin to take a turn for the worse—someone’s in danger, negotiations are breaking down, or the atmosphere is too strained for comfort. And who can forget the cartoonishly lighthearted “Ouch!” for scenes of hilarious comic relief?
In-game fonts have been a bit of a sore point with many English-translated MAGES. games. If you’re going to spend 90% of your time reading the text, the text ought to look good, right? But for the longest time, MAGES.’ English releases have used fonts that range from middling to plain bad.
This time around, MAGES. seems to have worked with a Japanese company named Fontworks to give Never7 and Ever17 a font that, thankfully, is good. It’s a small consolation given how long this has been a problem for the company, but hey, at least it finally happened. Hopefully, this trend keeps up with future English releases.
Portability; Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck
Portable players can rest assured: Never7 runs like a charm on Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch. In fact, you may even be rewarded for playing on these platforms: lower-resolution handheld play means you’ll have a harder time noticing visual flaws (although they may still be visible at times).
Steam Deck players can expect the standard affair: Never7 runs on MAGES.’ in-house engine, which has never particularly struggled on the platform. Admittedly, the majority of my playtime was on a Windows PC, but I never noticed any performance problems particular to Deck during the time I spent testing there. Moreover, MAGES. has added a “Game Actions” submenu to the Steam controller config screen, which makes it much easier to map in-game controls to new buttons.
Screenshots from the Nintendo Switch version of the game.
Nintendo Switch players, similarly, should be able to enjoy a stable Never7 experience; I didn’t notice any particular issues specific to this version of the game from the few hours I played of it. It’s a great option for those who prefer more flexibility in how and when they play.
In Conclusion; Our Verdict
I wish I had more praise to offer Never7’s new remaster, but unfortunately, it almost seems to have been sent out to die. Between a spotty, unimpressive English translation and the lackluster reuse of ancient visuals and voicework, Never7’s few positives practically fall by the wayside. It’s hard to enjoy the game for its merits when it’s falling apart at the seams.
Should you buy this game? I hesitate to say yes. At $20, it’s affordable—but what you’ll find behind that price tag is a weak representation of a respected, long-loved classic. Frankly, it’s a difficult sell.
5/10
Never7’s positives are hard to appreciate; the game’s lacking English localization and dated, low-quality presentation hurt any other ability it has to impress. It’s clear this new remaster needed far more time in the oven—and far more love from its developer.
Never7 – The End of Infinity launches March 6, 2025 on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4. It will also be made available in a discounted double pack with the remaster of its successor, Ever17 – The Out of Infinity. Readers interested in our thoughts on that game can read our review here.
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