Punch Line from PQube is a game with some very specific fan service, but it does offer a weirdly interesting story twist. Learn more in our Punch Line review!

 

In Punch Line, you take control of Yuta Iridatsu, a high school student who finds himself in a very serious predicament after he is booted out of his body! After waking up in Korai House, the apartment building where he resides, he finds himself face to face with Chiranosuke, a cat spirit, who informs him that if he wants to recover his body (yes, he’s now lost his body since he’s pretty much dead!), he must find a specific holy book that has been hidden somewhere in Korai House. The big plot twist is that if Yuta ends up seeing one of the female residents’ panties, then the world will end! You must therefore carefully search Korai House as you uncover its secrets and try to find the book without dooming planet earth.

The game starts with an action-packed cut-scene during which Yuta is riding on a bus that has been hijacked by a group of men. A female hero arrives to try and save the day. Her name is Strange Juice, and she does a pretty good job of defeating all of her opponents… except for one guy who was hiding in the bus passing himself for one of its many passengers. The girl that Yuta was sitting next to had taken the wheel but realized the breaks were out, so when the bus crashes after a colleague of Strange Juice uses the security spikes of a tollbooth to blow up its tires, she tries to approach the evil boss who hits her and sends to the ground.

 

What happens next is a bit weird, since Yuta ends up seeing Rabura’s panties, which makes him explode with a shock of energy that changes the color of his hair and grants him superhuman powers. He tries to take out the criminal’s boss but they both fall into the water, and it is there that Yuta almost drowns. When he wakes up, he realizes he’s been saved by Strange Juice, but after a gust of wind blows her skirt up, he sees her panties faints, ending up close to being dead, which is why his spirit floats out of his body. Oh, and somebody ends up stealing his body.

This is a visual novel/point and click style release, so you will be moving your cursor with the left analog stick or the D-Pad. You will perform “tricks” as you play, which can be activated with the X button. You have a Boom gauge that lets you know how close things are to going, well, boom, which is a bad, bad thing! If you want to lower it, be sure to quickly press the Circle button over and over again. You can open the map with the Triangle button so that you can select where you want to go to next. The camera can be changed with the L1 and R1 button so that you can change your perspective and what you are looking for – this is important in case you end up looking at something that you shouldn’t since it would trigger the end of the world.

 

By using the aforementioned tricks on different objects, Yuta will be able to surprise or scare the female characters in the game, thus gaining Soul Fragments, which act sort of like experience points so that Yuta can level up. As you activate some tricks, you should make sure that you do not look at that character’s panties, or else you will risk the Boom gauge going up and getting a game over that will end humanity once and for all! At some points, you can also link several tricks at once to perform a trick chain.

Along with Yuya, who is the main character in the game (even if he technically doesn’t have a body anymore, you will also meet Mikatan Narugino, an idol who lives in room 101 and who is actually superheroine Strange Juice; Ito Hikiotani who lives in room 102 and has a heavy addiction to online gaming; Meika Daihatsu, the genius inventor who is roommates with Ito and a computer whiz with a penchant for hacking; and Rabura Chichibu lives in room 202 and is a fake spirit medium – her relatives have been doing the medium thing for generations, but she doesn’t believe in that stuff.

The game includes a Platinum trophy, and the great news is that since Punch Line includes chapter select, none of the trophies are missable! There are story based trophies that will unlock as you complete objectives during the extended tutorial of sorts, and there are also trophies for destroying the planet because you didn’t look away quickly enough when panties got in the way, as well as for clearing specific trick sections in the game while doing this or that in particular.

Punch Line is a quirky and fun visual novel adventure that does crank up the fan service, but with the twist that if you do see some panties, then the world as you know it is certainly going to come to an end. You’ll take around 12-14 hours to finish this one, so you’re in for a long adventure if you want to 100% it see all the stuff the game has to offer.

Disclaimer
This Punch Line review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by PQube.