Proton Experimental updated with fixes for STEINS;GATE RE:BOOT, EA App, Borderlands 4

i havent played steins;gate yet, but it made enough success to become an anime, and one quite good, so the novel probably is quite good as well.

Quoting: elmapuli havent played steins;gate yet, but it made enough success to become an anime, and one quite good, so the novel probably is quite good as well.

I played it after watching the first season. It's still worth it, and the visual novel is (naturally) better than the anime in my opinion. There's a certain meta mechanic that really stood out to me while playing, I recommend it.

I haven't watched part 0 so playing the visual novel blind will be sick, it's on the list.

Last edited by Pyrate on 12 Sep 2026 at 1:16 pm UTC

Quoting: elmapuli havent played steins;gate yet, but it made enough success to become an anime, and one quite good, so the novel probably is quite good as well.

The original STEINS;GATE ported to Steam in 2016 is an absolute masterpiece and a masterclass in Sci-Fi. It is the single greatest story every told and it is not even close, a 60-70 hour epic full of reference that are brain candy and a peak storyline.

The anime cuts all of this, and is to put it bluntly, a bastardization of the Visual Novel. Simply you cannot adapt a 60-70 hour game into 25 episodes of an anime, especially one that relies so heavily on you reading the terms glossary which is a book in and of itself.

As a result of the success of the anime, which strips all of the tens of hours of exposition and in-depth time travel mechanics, anime, and manga references, the developer of the series Mages released a version of the Visual Novel based on the anime called "STEINS;GATE ELITE." It's much shorter and makes significant story alterations to appeal to the people who like the anime. Generally, people who like the anime didn't like the Visual Novel and vice versa, but most people saw the anime first because the anime was released in 2011. It also contains mistranslations various things (the main character says a phrase "El Psy Kongroo" but the anime mistranslates it as "El Psy Congroo", one of the characters "Lukako" is incorrectly translated as "Rukako", although there is a "fan patch" for the subs to fix these, it cannot fix the other story issues).

Side note: The English release on Steam is heavily based on an unofficial English translation of the 2009 Japanese PC release by a guy called "Steiner", who got confirmation from Mages specifically on how to translate various things.

STEINS;GATE RE:BOOT is unfortunately based on that STEINS;GATE ELITE release.

All this to say I recommend buying the original STEINS;GATE, and playing with the Committee of Zero patch (they are a fan-group that fix issues with all of the SciADV Visual Novels, SciAdv is the series that STEINS;GATE is a part of), and avoiding the absolutely sickeningly abysmal anime "adaptation".

If you do like it though, STEINS;GATE 0 is worth a watch as it's a companion watch and not an adaptation on the STEINS;GATE 0 Visual Novel which is a story told across the Visual Novel, extras in an Audio Drama CD, and alternative perspectives of the same story in the anime and 3-volume manga.

I highly recommend playing the original steins gate, not the elite version or the reboot. I’m really into horror games and I really enjoyed reading through the humor, horror, science fiction, and numerous pop culture references. I found the art style and music of the original game to be both calm and intriguing, but also ominous and scary at the same time. It was my first visual novel and is still my favorite one to this day.

I don’t really enjoy anime, manga, or JRPGs that much. I’m not a fan of the other games in the series or the anime adaptation, but I highly enjoyed steins gate. It took a few hours of playtime for it to finally start clicking for me and it’s not for a game for everyone, but I hope others have a good experience with it.

Quoting: sonic2kk

Quoting: elmapuli havent played steins;gate yet, but it made enough success to become an anime, and one quite good, so the novel probably is quite good as well.

The original STEINS;GATE ported to Steam in 2016 is an absolute masterpiece and a masterclass in Sci-Fi. It is the single greatest story every told and it is not even close, a 60-70 hour epic full of reference that are brain candy and a peak storyline.

The anime cuts all of this, and is to put it bluntly, a bastardization of the Visual Novel. Simply you cannot adapt a 60-70 hour game into 25 episodes of an anime, especially one that relies so heavily on you reading the terms glossary which is a book in and of itself.

As a result of the success of the anime, which strips all of the tens of hours of exposition and in-depth time travel mechanics, anime, and manga references, the developer of the series Mages released a version of the Visual Novel based on the anime called "STEINS;GATE ELITE." It's much shorter and makes significant story alterations to appeal to the people who like the anime. Generally, people who like the anime didn't like the Visual Novel and vice versa, but most people saw the anime first because the anime was released in 2011. It also contains mistranslations various things (the main character says a phrase "El Psy Kongroo" but the anime mistranslates it as "El Psy Congroo", one of the characters "Lukako" is incorrectly translated as "Rukako", although there is a "fan patch" for the subs to fix these, it cannot fix the other story issues).

Side note: The English release on Steam is heavily based on an unofficial English translation of the 2009 Japanese PC release by a guy called "Steiner", who got confirmation from Mages specifically on how to translate various things.

STEINS;GATE RE:BOOT is unfortunately based on that STEINS;GATE ELITE release.

All this to say I recommend buying the original STEINS;GATE, and playing with the Committee of Zero patch (they are a fan-group that fix issues with all of the SciADV Visual Novels, SciAdv is the series that STEINS;GATE is a part of), and avoiding the absolutely sickeningly abysmal anime "adaptation".

If you do like it though, STEINS;GATE 0 is worth a watch as it's a companion watch and not an adaptation on the STEINS;GATE 0 Visual Novel which is a story told across the Visual Novel, extras in an Audio Drama CD, and alternative perspectives of the same story in the anime and 3-volume manga.

Honestly those mentioned mistranslations aren't mistranslations at all. It's just things which you can't perfectly translate into another language as it's just how Japanese works. So when playing a translation you simply have to live with stuff not being able to perfectly represent the original. Even the company saying that this is the "correct" way to translate it doesn't change how language works.

It can be both Rukako or Lukako in a translation, because in the original it is neither. The original sound of the first mora of that name simply does not exist in English. So you try to get as close as possible. The correct Hepburn-Transliteration - which is the official System even the japanese government uses - would be "Rukako".

The "Kongroo" or "Congroo" makes no difference at all. Because you still spell both with a hard "k" sound at the beginning in English.

In general I wouldn't critizise the anime too much. I liked it. It's way better paced than the VN. Especially the beginning works way better in the anime.

This does not make the VN worse though. The VN is way more in-depth with more references as you said. And the background story about the Commitee of 300, which is kinda what the entire Sci;Adv-series is about, is way more prevelant and important there.

The problem with the Reboot is that it's based on Elite. And Elite cut way too much stuff out. But I think its fair to assume that the Reboot will be considered Canon for Steins;???.

0 is another thing. The anime is actually a sequel to the VN, as it shows the final iteration to reach Steins;Gate. While the VN shows an earlier attempt and is therefor missing a climax, with the true ending actually taking place in its own iteration seperate from the actual game.

It seems that in general for Steins;Gate you need to experience several adaptations to get the full picture and story. And then play Anonymous;Code, which clears a lot of things up.

Last edited by Savor592 on 13 Sep 2026 at 12:13 am UTC

What the heck, guys? You made me want to play STEINS;GATE.

Quoting: LinasWhat the heck, guys? You made me want to play STEINS;GATE.

Do make sure you play the original and not one of the bafflingly worse re-releases, including this new one in the article.

I bought the original Steins;Gate (and really the complete set of Science Adventure games) on Steam when they were on sale recently... with the plan to play them in the original Japanese

Trying that has been a bit sobering. I'm still too far off, with a passed JLPT N5 and registered for the N4 test this December. I'm currently reading the Yotsuba volumes and I can get through them with only some lookups, but really, having the Furigana there helps massively. No such luck for Steins;Gate. I need to either get better or be more stubborn in wanting to play it in the original. Or both.

From a comfort standpoint, it's kinda annoying you can't switch languages on-the-fly. No, you need to quit the game, change the language settings through Steam (right click options on the game), which then triggers a redownload of the changed files. Every time.

I kinda missed that the reboot is actually out. For anybody who has bought it on Steam, is that language changing different for the reboot? Or exactly the same?

Quoting: DrMcCoyI bought the original Steins;Gate (and really the complete set of Science Adventure games) on Steam when they were on sale recently... with the plan to play them in the original Japanese

Trying that has been a bit sobering. I'm still too far off, with a passed JLPT N5 and registered for the N4 test this December. I'm currently reading the Yotsuba volumes and I can get through them with only some lookups, but really, having the Furigana there helps massively. No such luck for Steins;Gate. I need to either get better or be more stubborn in wanting to play it in the original. Or both.

From a comfort standpoint, it's kinda annoying you can't switch languages on-the-fly. No, you need to quit the game, change the language settings through Steam (right click options on the game), which then triggers a redownload of the changed files. Every time.

I kinda missed that the reboot is actually out. For anybody who has bought it on Steam, is that language changing different for the reboot? Or exactly the same?

Word of advice: Furigana don't help. It's like a electro bicycle helping you to win a 100m sprint: You will win, but you won't get better at sprinting. Because when you have Furigana you don't try to read the Kanji.

It's really better to have Kanji only and then look them up every time instead of having the solution handed to you on a platter.

Neither are the naturalized translations too helpful. Because most of the time the natural translation and words used in Japanese have nothing in common. It helps as a last step when you understood all Japanese words but not the meaning of the entire sentence.

Best way to approach it is to just use meikipop for quick lookups and then work through it. That's still handmade (even though the dev tested - but not implemented - a minor new feature with AI. Implementation as per his words would need to be done without AI) Because god knows that no course, textbook or JLPT will ever prepare you for normal Japanese. I would recommend GameSentenceMiner ... but unfortunately they went all in on AI Slop some time back.

Last edited by Savor592 on 8 Oct 2026 at 4:05 am UTC