Quests

Four dates decide all six of this game's endings, and the earliest one is in April. That is the one most players fail, months before they know an ending is at stake.

So this page is ordered by the calendar rather than by outcome. Each section answers what the game asks you on a given date and which endings are still reachable once you have answered. The six endings are summarised at the bottom as a lookup, because by then you will already know which gate you are standing at. One spoiler warning before you continue: the culprit is named on this page.

The gates that decide your ending

4/18: the Golden ending is decided in April

Marie is exclusive to Golden and her Aeon Social Link is the single prerequisite for the game's best ending, but nothing in April tells you that. Visit the Velvet Room any time after 18 April, choose Check on Dwellers, then Listen to Marie's Request. She appears outside the room and the link is live.

If the event does not fire, that is a known bug rather than a missed requirement. Leave the room and go back in and it usually triggers.

From there she is only available on days you are otherwise free: holidays, Wednesdays and weekends. Her link has to be at rank 10 by 22 December, and one of its ranks does not unlock until 7/24 no matter how fast you go, so this is a bond you have to work at across the whole calendar rather than cram at the end. Our Marie social link guide has the dialogue tables, including the rank 9 choices that split romance from friendship.

What rank 10 actually buys is access to the Hollow Forest, the bonus dungeon that only exists in Golden, and there is no other route into it.

3 December: the Namatame confrontation

By this point the story has established that Taro Namatame threw people into the television world, believing it was a safe place, and has him confessing to the kidnappings. What it has also established is that he did not kill Mayumi Yamano or Saki Konishi. The game then puts a furious, exhausted party in a room with him and asks you six questions.

The answers that keep every ending open are, in order: any choice, then Wait a second here, We're missing something, Their true feelings, Something's been bothering me, and Calm the hell down!

If you took them, time fast-forwards to 5 December and your objective updates, which is your confirmation that you branched correctly.

The alternative is the only choice in the entire game that ends your run on the spot. Picking Push the bastard in, then Do it already, kills Namatame and rolls the first bad ending immediately. There is no recovery and no later correction.

3 to 5 December: naming the culprit

Between the confrontation and the accusation, there are four conversations to run, and running them is what makes the answer obvious rather than a guess. Start with the shopping woman up in the North Shopping District. Then the student at Junes, who you ask whether anyone suspicious comes to mind. Then a second student, standing by the bookstore at the front of the South Shopping District. Then the neighbours.

The clue that actually narrows it is the letters Yu Narukami receives, because whoever sent them had a private way into the house. That leaves five people.

With the conversations done, the party gathers at Aiya's Chinese restaurant that evening and the game asks who the most likely culprit is. The answer is Adachi, and he admits it. Naming anyone else sends the story into the second bad ending. Our killer information guide walks the whole investigation.

There is one more way to lose it here, and it is subtler. Doing everything correctly and then declining to reveal the killer's identity produces the third bad ending, which is a genuinely easy mistake to make if you are being cautious with a question you have not seen before.

20 March: the last real question

The game skips to 20 March and asks whether you should return home to prepare for tomorrow. Yes ends the game on the normal ending. No continues.

Choosing no puts you on the true ending path, and what follows is a route rather than a decision. Go and find everyone whose Social Link you maxed and interact with them. Head to the Junes food court and get in the elevator, where the options are No, then I'm not finished yet, then Yes, then There's something missing.

From there, go to the riverbank and speak with Dojima, then to the Velvet Room to interact with Igor and take the Orb of Clarity. Last, go to the shopping district and talk to the gas station attendant. That conversation has several options and none of them affect your ending, which is worth knowing so you do not agonise over it. Then there is one final dungeon and one final boss.

After 20 March: the epilogue

The Golden ending is the true ending plus Marie, and its epilogue is a chain of dates rather than a single choice. Wishing Margaret a happy birthday in the Velvet Room on 2 January is when you learn Marie is missing. From 11 February, Margaret calls on Wednesday mornings with updates, and that continues until the winter ski trip.

On the trip, the cabin television pulls you and your friends in, which Margaret arranged deliberately. After that, the Hollow Forest is a daily run back through that same cabin TV after school. One practical note our dungeon guide makes: the entrance is the last place you can change party members, so set your team before you go down.

Our own endings page carries a warning that is easy to skim past and should not be: some epilogue choices can still cost you the Golden ending, this far in. That is the reason for the save advice below.

All six endings, side by side

Read that table upward and the shape of the game becomes clear. Three of the six endings are failures at a single question, one is the game simply stopping when it offers to, and only the last two require you to have been planning since April.

Where to keep your saves

Three saves cover every gate on this page, and they are considerably cheaper than a second playthrough. Keep one before 3 December, so a mis-click at the Namatame confrontation is not fatal. Keep one before the 5 December accusation. And keep one before you answer the question on 20 March.

Do the same through the epilogue, because that is the one stretch where the Golden ending can still slip away without any obvious warning that a choice mattered.

Where to go next

Our endings guide has every choice written out, and the killer information guide covers the investigation in full. For the two links that decide the Golden path, see Marie and Margaret, and for how Social Links work generally, our social links guide.

The two dungeons this story runs through at the end are the Secret Laboratory and the Hollow Forest, and the rest of the TV world is in our dungeons guide.