The official "Science Lab order" thread

[rancher]

I have only ever seen S;G. However, my time here has inspired me to play through all the games in order.

That being said, what is the suggested order to play them in?

I found this order on reddit:

• Chaos;Head NoAH
• Steins;Gate
• Robotics;Notes Elite
• Chaos;Child
• Steins;Gate 0
• Robotics;Notes DaSH

The Science Adventure series (with CoZ patch pre-applied) is easily found in "the usual places". I am seeing titles that are not present in this list such as Steins;Gate Elite, S;G My Darling's Embrace, S;G Variant Space Octet, and Anonymous;Code; should they be inserted into the list as ordered by "the usual place" or would you consider them less essential? (Usual place hint: 2111306)

Is this list still the best order to experience the Science Adventures or do people here have their 2 cents on the matter?

[Blond]

I have only ever seen S;G. However, my time here has inspired me to play through all the games in order.

That being said, what is the suggested order to play them in?

Release Order.

Chaos;Head NoAH
Steins;Gate
Chaos;Head Love Chu Chu!
Steins;Gate: My Darling's Embrace
Steins;Gate: Variant Space Octet
Robotics;Notes Elite
Steins;Gate: Linear Bounded Phenogram
Chaos;Child
Steins;Gate 0, both the anime and the VN
Chaos;Child Love Chu Chu!
Robotics;Notes DaSH
Anonymous;Code

Technically, Occultic;Nine is also part of the Science Adv universe, but even the creator said the connection is force. Good anime tho.

[Maypews]

I have only ever seen S;G. However, my time here has inspired me to play through all the games in order.

That being said, what is the suggested order to play them in?

I found this order on reddit:

• Chaos;Head NoAH
• Steins;Gate
• Robotics;Notes Elite
• Chaos;Child
• Steins;Gate 0
• Robotics;Notes DaSH

The Science Adventure series (with CoZ patch pre-applied) is easily found in "the usual places". I am seeing titles that are not present in this list such as Steins;Gate Elite, S;G My Darling's Embrace, S;G Variant Space Octet, and Anonymous;Code; should they be inserted into the list as ordered by "the usual place" or would you consider them less essential? (Usual place hint: 2111306)

Is this list still the best order to experience the Science Adventures or do people here have their 2 cents on the matter?

R;N Dash is generally not considered a mainline entry, while Anonymous;Code is. Most consider Darlings Embrace, Variant Space Octet, and the Love Chu Chu games as optional side material. I'm not sure if some consider DaSH mainline or not, but it was not very well-received critically and I am unaware of any big important reveals it has with respect to the larger series as a whole.

Steins;Gate Elite is just the original Steins;Gate visual novel with it's script greatly condensed (much to it's detriment) and with animated cutscenes that resemble the anime adaptation. The anime has art that diverges a good deal from the original visual novel's, which IMO is quite a loss given how beautiful Huke's look is.

Steins-Gate-My-Darlings-Embrace-Screenshot-006.jpg (521.07 KiB) Viewed 263 times

With that being said, your order is mostly correct except swap DaSH with Anonymous;Code. You could theoretically read Steins;Gate first since it has probably the least to do with the overarching series of any of the mainlines (a lot of people start with S;G due to it's popularity), but it's best to start with C;H anyway since you need it for the rest and there are some callbacks to it in S;G.

[TheEvilShadoo]

I was beaten to the punch, but I’ll still share my thoughts here. I was introduced to SciADV with the S;G and S;G 0 anime right after the release of the 0 anime in 2018. After thoroughly enjoying those, here's what I did for the main and significant side entries:

• Chaos;Head NoAH
• Steins;Gate
• Steins;Gate My Darling's Embrace (Side entry)
• Steins;Gate Variant Space Octet
• Robotics;Notes Elite
• Steins;Gate Linear Bounded Phenogram (Side entry)
• Chaos;Child
• Steins;Gate 0 (VN -> Anime)
• Robotics;Notes DaSH
• Occultic;Nine* (LN -> Anime)**
• Anonymous;Code

* With O;N, release order is technically after S;G 0 and before R;ND, but lore-wise it absolutely makes no difference whether you read it before or after R;ND. I personally read it after R;ND because I already owned R;ND on Steam but hadn't purchased the LNs yet.

** Also on O;N, if you want the full experience, read the LNs then watch the anime. This one is the weirdest entry because the source material is the LNs, it originally wasn't even going to be part of SciADV but its own thing called SVN (Science Visual Novel), and the LNs were never even finished. The LNs are the most complete, but the anime provides an ending. The downside of the anime is it has notoriously fast pacing, but I still enjoyed it. The VN and the manga are both untranslated and are considered inferior to the LN and anime anyways. There was talk of the VN getting an overhaul some years ago, but that never happened and Chiyomaru seemingly chose to move away from working on O;N altogether.

Technically, Occultic;Nine is also part of the Science Adv universe, but even the creator said the connection is force.

^^^

Some last notes:
This list is a really good resource for finding all the various side entries. At this point I’ve now gotten through them all, but doing so might take a while.
NS2C has some additional side material and ebooks to download.
Chaos;Head/Chaos;Child Love Chu Chu haven’t been translated/patched yet, but they should be coming out pretty soon.
Also, yeah, R;ND is basically a side entry. A lot of the game is pretty fillery, but the true ending is still worth seeing.

TL;DR: See Blond’s post for release order or my first link for a full ordering.

[NonoEnjoyer]

I've gotten hate for this before but I'm gonna say that if you complete chaos;head and are more interested in going to child than robotics;notes, it's not worth it to put yourself through robotics;notes JUST to get to child. chaos;child takes place chronologically before robotics;notes so the connections between the two are fairly superfluous. Some people have told me that's not true but I've played both and I just don't see it.

basically what i'm saying is, don't play robotics;notes just so you can go play chaos;child. if you're hyped for child (you should be) then just go it and come back to robono later. robotics;notes is low on the scale for me but it wouldn't be fair to it to just slog through it so you can get to another entry. of course, if you aren't interested in deviating from play order then just disregard this entirely.

[Maypews]

I've gotten hate for this before but I'm gonna say that if you complete chaos;head and are more interested in going to child than robotics;notes, it's not worth it to put yourself through robotics;notes JUST to get to child. chaos;child takes place chronologically before robotics;notes so the connections between the two are fairly superfluous. Some people have told me that's not true but I've played both and I just don't see it.

basically what i'm saying is, don't play robotics;notes just so you can go play chaos;child. if you're hyped for child (you should be) then just go it and come back to robono later. robotics;notes is low on the scale for me but it wouldn't be fair to it to just slog through it so you can get to another entry. of course, if you aren't interested in deviating from play order then just disregard this entirely.

I'm not the biggest fan of Chaos;Child as some here know but I also played it before Robotics;Notes and I pretty much agree yeah. The main game that you really "need" for most of the entries is Chaos;Head, though I get the sense that it's smart to leave A;C for last

[NonoEnjoyer]

Rare Maypews W. Seriously, he is right. Chaos;Head is totally unskippable.

[capstasher]

Rare Maypews W. Seriously, he is right. Chaos;Head is totally unskippable.

>Rare Maypews W
>Posted on forum dot deluoode dot org

[capstasher]

>Rare Maypews W
>Posted on forum dot deluoode dot org

Oh interesting, maybe you are right NonoEnj. I meant to do the Okabe "what" but May set up both of the Mio and Okabe what emotes as : what :
Common Maypews L.

[NonoEnjoyer]

Rare Maypews W. Seriously, he is right. Chaos;Head is totally unskippable.

>Rare Maypews W
>Posted on forum dot deluoode dot org

Friend, there's more in heaven and earth... wait, no. There's more between heaven and earth than... oh, forget it!