One-Way Ticket

It is said that there are two sides to every human being, a good side and a dark side, and that human personality is represented by which side dominates the other. If we accept this statement, in Oneway Ticket we will find a group of human characters constantly fluctuating between this and that. When the devil extends his claws, it becomes difficult for a person to retain his humanity… Across seas and dangers, we bring you this review.

Gameplay and Storyline

One-Way Ticket is a visual novel game and does not contain any gameplay. For those who don’t know this type of game, it is a type of game based entirely on storytelling. Characters are displayed against static or animated backgrounds, with dialogue exchanged between these characters. Additionally, music, voice acting (sometimes), and choices are used to make the experience more interactive.

The game’s story is based on true events and revolves around a fishing trip from Japan to the Solomon Islands across the Pacific Ocean. The game’s story begins with a flashback to the difficult life circumstances of “Makino”, the hero of the story, who has an emotional relationship with “Shiori”. Makino has no money and is unable to pay the rent for the apartment he lives in. Makino decides to join a fishing boat to… work, ignoring warnings about the dangers of sailing on the sea.

Narration and Characters

The narrative narration in the game is truly wonderful and gradually paves the way for the dark tragedy on board the ship to which a large number of passengers fall victim when a dispute arises between the captain of the ship and his workers, and the human face appears with its extreme ugliness as a result. The story is full of tragic events, violent and bloody, and we do not recommend it at all for the faint of heart. The narrative is coherent, ranging from introducing the characters to revealing their true faces as well as their stories and past.

The characters are also not based on templates aimed at the otaku audience, but are characterized by realistic storytelling and a human character, and there are many story decisions and reverse scenes that can be achieved based on these decisions, but the story is generally linear and is more like reading your average novel. Comprehensive and does not contain multiple titles as in other works.

Translation and Other Flaws

Unfortunately, we come here to talk about the problem that marred the game’s rating in the first place, namely the poor English translation! This translation is very poor and disastrous and contains not only grammatical errors but also the use of incorrect or inaccurate terms that do not reflect the original meaning of the sentence, which makes us wonder about the identity of the translator of this game and is he really a native speaker the language? English or does he come from East Asia?? The mediocre level of translation has unfortunately destroyed the English version of the game and lost the value and aesthetics of the story, and a major re-translation is required.

There are other flaws, but they are less serious than the poor translation. There is a noticeable slowdown (lag) when transitioning from one dialogue to another, and the game contains no voice acting except in a few limited scenes of the main character. It should also be noted that the game does not support buttons at all and only works in mobile mode. In any case, the novel shines in terms of graphics and beautiful backgrounds, and also has a series of beautiful melodies that evoke the feelings that we are used to in this type of games, but which deserves praise every time.

Conclusion

One Way Ticket is a wonderful human novel that reveals the ugly side of a person when he is under siege, when danger surrounds him, when logic fades and dark thoughts take over. It is unfortunate that this novel is greatly negatively affected by the mediocre translation, otherwise it would have received… a much better review.

We reviewed the Switch version after receiving it from the publisher