OK, I'm gonna give some impressions. Keep in mind that my japanese isn't the greatest, so the usual suspects can correct me later.
In the world of Net High, "Neo Communication" means that a person's worth is measured by their "appeal" online. Having a huge number of followers on twitaar (a twitter clone) increase your rank, and makes them special, more than ordinary, "faceless" people. Zero followers means that you is the scum of the society (and so, the most scary thing is lose all your followers), and most people would do anything to attract more followers. In this Mega Nexus, ENJ battles (ENJ is for Enjoy) pits two persons against each other for followers, and usually ends with one of them with zero followers.
The demo starts asking the main character (at the time only called Otoko) questions about ordinary and totally subjective things in life. Your response will poll how many followers you will start with. Then Shiru, the navigation AI, will come to you aid to help you in your ENJ battle against Mr. Elite, a F ranked, handsome, snob, filthy rich guy. Shiru quicky realizes that you are a spineless nerd and have no chance against Mr. Elite. So she urges that Otoko uses the PAS (Personal Active System), a sunglass that can make people more extroverted. So Otoko turns into something else, lol. When Mr. Elite ask what the hell he is, Otoko answers "Ore wa ore da" (I am myself). So Otoko real name appears "Oreda". Fucking hilarious.
ENJ battles are like Ace Attorney. The opponent will banter about how cool, popular, rich, etc they are, and you have to work to destroy their argument. You can "trash talk" (a witty one-liner that trolls your opponent), "gossip" (post an anonymous commentary in the ENJ battle chat trying to spread FUD to the opponent and change the spectators comments about yourself) and "owned" (that you will provide factual evidence that your opponent is lying). If your troll isn't effective you will lose followers. There is an investigation part as well, when you will check the opponent twitaar posts, followers and pictures. You can also go to the places that are mentioned on the twitaar to check for evidence. Pictures can be analyzed if they were shopped.
My impressions are pretty positive. The game is very funny, with an endless flurry of absurd, nonsense and sarcastic jokes, just like a good Tekkyu chapter. The characters are full of personality, even the sidekicks. Bonus points of using all the ingredients of the internet celebrity drama in a clever way. The scene that shows the highest ranked persons, a bunch of a stereotyped "only popular on internet" guys, I was thinking to myself "Man, crush thoses bozos will be sooooo good". Also, you can feel that there is a social critic of our current society in there as well, of getting "internet cred" at any cost.
The two main problems are: loading times are longer and more frequent that I'd like to and the chances that the game will come over are very slim. Just like Bakumatsu Rock, text insertion in the most weird ways and many jokes could be lost in translation will make this game a hard choice to bring it over. Hopefully I'm in the wrong here, because is one of the best, most original themes in a while and the execution of the demo surpassed my expectations.
