Really great start to the Kill the Past series. I kinda thought there'd be more of a puzzle element but its kinda dropped outside of 1 every 'Transmitter' case or so. My only other issue is that the placebo half of the game is pretty slow. Good scenes here -especially towards the end- but its super repetitive just checking emails and wondering if the next scene will have you going to 1 of 4 other locations. Really odd since this half kind of serves to explain the oddities of the transmitter case but honestly I kinda enjoyed the more surreal nature of the transmitter cases, kept me intrigued throughout the first half. Wasn't sure if you were supposed to do the placebo cases after each corresponding 'transmitter' case and looking it up online didn't really give me a good answer to that either. Great music, great presentation and a really good narrative overall, just kinda slows down in the placebo half. Really excited to see what FRS & the 25th ward offer.

Only Suda could write a conversation between 2 serial killers that makes me laugh so hard I cry. That's not to say this game is a comedic masterpiece, but his ability to put charming character moments at just the right place in the midst of the gritty cop conspiracy drama is very strong. Pretty much every character in this game is a horrible monster in one way or another, but they're also all people I'd want to sit down and have a beer with. The rest of the writing is great too of course, but I'm not a powerful enough critic to pick apart all the themes at play here.

The presentation style of The Silver Case is unlike anything I've ever seen before. It's essentially just a visual novel, but the interface, backgrounds, and music have so much flair it pulls you into the world more effectively than any visual novel I've played.

Really the only negative thing I can say about this game is that the investigation segments are repugnant, but it wouldn't be a Suda game without a crippling gameplay flaw so who am I to judge?

One problem I have with VNs is that they always feel me too much like novels, while the visual ascpect always somewhat lacking in my eyes. The silver case fixes that problem with me with cutting a lot of fluf VN dialogue as well as having the coolest visual style imagineable.

But what's a novel without a good story and the silver case brings that in spades with 2 different campaigns that focuses on 2 different views, the authorities within the 24th wards and the civilains within it. Possible one of the best denpa works I've consumed right next something like SEL or the documentary "The New God".

I spent most of the game, as most people will on their first playthrough, utterly confused as to what was going on and desperately wanting an explanation. I mean that in the best way possible, because that desire to know the truth is what kept me so engaged. Slowly but surely you're handed bits and pieces of the puzzle, while being deliberately kept from key pieces that would let you put everything together. Reaching the end and finally being allowed to have those remaining pieces is immensely satisfying, and the picture the puzzle creates is an interesting one to dwell on. The game has a lot to love. It was fun seeing parallels with Killer7, another Kill The Past game and easily a favorite of mine. A good handful of characters in the game are pretty unlikeable people, which ironically made me love them as characters. Masafumi Takada brought his best when composing the soundtrack, which easily tops the still fantastic work he would go on to do for Killer7 and Danganronpa. The gameplay itself is perfectly fine, and nowhere near as bad as some other reviews on here would have you believe. It's largely irrelevant anyway, as what little actual gameplay exists in The Silver Case is just a means to tell its story rather than the selling point of the game. I don't think this game is for everybody, but there's not a lot to lose by checking it out. I'd definitely recommend giving it a go if you haven't.

Playing FSR before this was an interesting choice, I'd even say it enhanced my experience as the Lospass investigation in 2001 cast a dark insight over my understanding of the events of 1999. I found myself recognizing names, faces, events, places, not enough to give me any crucial information on the Kamui case, but instead adding an incredible weight to the characters and events that take place here.
I came into the story knowing some of these characters, or at least thinking I did, and my expectations were fully blown out of the water. Things were left unaddressed that I completely expected to be explained, and other things were explained that added so much depth to things I thought I understood. Now I have one more puzzle piece, time to collect the rest!

não tão surrealista quanto Killer7, mas tão experimental quanto, se não mais. Estaria mentindo se dissesse que estive super entretido 100% do tempo de gameplay, em alguns momentos me peguei me perguntando "tá chato ou é conceito?", a gameplay é praticamente nula, algumas escolhas de design são ruins, mas mesmo assim minha curiosidade em relação a tudo que estava vendo na tela nunca deixou de existir. Esteticamente lindo, ótima trilha sonora, excelentes diálogos e uma história que vou me lembrar e pensar sobre por muito tempo. Meu segundo jogo do Suda51, mais uma mitada

im...im...im... a suda fan and i need my diaper

#incel #blackpill #doomer #depression #suicide #firstworldproblems #bullying #cyberbullying #anxiety #socialanxiety #tfl #foreveralone #loner #redpill #bluepill #manosphere #omegle #onlinedating #tinder #bumble #onlyfans #pua #hikikomori #neet #looksmaxxing #gymmaxxing #gymcel #ricecel #currycel #chad #facerating #touchgrass #jbw #lgbtqi #gay #lesbian #transgender #christian #muslim #christianity #islam #niceguy #supremegentleman #inkwell #mgtow #feminism #monkmode #nofap #semenretention #fds #daygame #nightgame #hypergamy #cuck #alpha #beta #mogged #betabux #golddigger #realnigga #getalife #stopreading #satire

+Super cool aesthetic, this game could be about literally nothing and it would still be one of the most visually memorable experiences in gaming.

+Really interesting period piece about the internet age during it's dawn that still rings true to this day on how we perceive crime and the police in modern times, up there with Serial Experiments Lain with stories about the dawn of the digital era that predicted the future.

= Though I liked a few characters in the cast, remembering their names when all I had was half a second to see a pixelized, opaque lettering of their names made the story a lot harder to follow than it had any right to be for the sake of doing something different, this game is the biggest argument for all text heavy games needing a backlog.

-You could not pay me to give a fuck about this gameplay, I honestly feel like this should have been a visual novel instead because every instance of interactivity feels like an absolute nuisance, something as basic as turning around, walking somewhere or having a scene transition could take as long as 15 seconds. The puzzles having an insta-solving button should tell you how much of an afterthought they are.

-The final chapter in particular is filled with padding thinly disguised as suspense and whoever thought it was a good idea to walk through 10 towers individually to search for a sentence's worth of text can eat the pinkest part of my asshole. And that's not counting the placebo chapters which are just some guy reading emails about the case you just played and spoon-feeding you exposition emails in case you were sucking on your thumb instead of reading the chapter you were playing, all of that culminates in a game with a cool as fuck beginning and ending, but with a very dragged out middle.

While my complains are more wordy than the positives I feel like other reviews have said enough about the positives of the game so it's only fair I highlight the more problematic sides of The Silver Case. I've heard Flower Sun and Rain and The 25th ward get better on that regard so I'm looking forward to finally recognizing Suda51 as the auteur he is.

This was a LOT to swallow honestly, but I do think I really liked this game
we'll circle back around to that after i get most of what I say out in the open
So i've already played killer7 and no more heroes 1 by this point and youd think that would already be enough under my belt to prepare me for the shit that happens in this game, but you would be wrong! and i would be wrong!

And im glad i am! because it just shows again that suda really does just go off with making shit he wants to
thats why all his shit is so Special to the point where even if there's connecting themes and such, each one of these shits has a different feel,vibe and end goal progression while still maintaining this 'Kill The Past' mantle
The music and sound design are so fucking good and the way the UI pops out like computer programs is so tantalizing to my retinas. This game boasts 2d art, 3d ps1 cgi and FMVs of whole ass real people and locations to convey this unique flavor I dont think ive seen done before. On top of this I also really like the dialogue it can be so immensely funny, sometimes it feels on accident with how humorous some things can be in this game because i was overall having that more than a serious gritty story i was sinking my teeth into.. lots of mysteries yeah! but.. ill get to that..

It's just im tapering myself off because for as much as im singing praises right now

I REALLY REALLY wish I could dicksuck this game, I REALLY REALLY DO but.. there's some problems i have

For starters, Im already not too fond of visual novels as a medium for my games
I like when there's interactivity involved.. maybe a puzzle here or there or using the bulk of the dialogue to it's advantage
I feel ALMOST none of that here with this game, it mostly just felt like I was reading an interactive web graphic novel which is so cool but also..
It was on occassion more than once where I was like "do i Really wanna keep playing this game though... do i Really like this that much" and then something interesting happens in the story or a revelation or something that makes me think about it a bit more and what could happen and im snapped out of it.

Though more often than not there's so many moments in this game where I feel like i wouldve benefited from keeping a log
or some kind of journal to quick look and brush up on things thatve happened previously, its a remaster of a PS1 visual novel so its not really like i expected the world of it with quality of life things thatre commonplace now

it's just also I put off writing this review because ive been scrambling to fill in the gaps of my knowledge and bits where i was confused getting cleared up lolol. Which is STRANGE because I feel like I was more palpably confused about THIS than killer7, which by all intents and purposes doesnt make any fucking sense because this has 10 times the dialogue killer7 even has. I think its the fact that my theorizing and such amounted to next to nothing with this game and that knocked the wind out of my sails about it, silly as it sounds. Like I won't really go into spoilers here but there's numerous occassions where i've put two and two together because im insane Or because of my prior expectations from killer7

and then all of a sudden the game just kind of walks stark ass naked in my face with my theory proven right like halfway through the game or even earlier than that
So then im sitting there like.. the fuck? then where is this gonna go? And then in the final couple cases it felt like i was getting the plot dumping of the century like the game had taco tuesday and laxatives ala mode stuffed up it's brain and i was seeing it all bounce forth

This was a double edged sword feeling to me because while I do think the narrative of this game is really good i think its absolutely fair to say that retaining certain things that may or may not be relevant later on to the story is something that not everyone is gonna be able to do, shit i was barely able to but maybe thats because this game didnt hit a very specific stimulant in my brain
And thats not necessarily it's fault in particular
What is its fault is that I think that this doesnt really feel like an adventure game or a puzzle game like the genres slapped onto it imply and its just feels like a cool, stylized visual novel

The puzzles I just could not care about whatsoever and I think its actually kind of funny in retrospect that just tapping a button solves them if you really just only care about the story, which ADMITTEDLY i started to only care about the story!

This is all why I said i think I like The Silver Case rather than I think i LOVE the silver case or that i LOVE the silver case, I think characters like Tokio, Sumio, Kusabi, Morikawa and Hachisuka are interesting characters but I think i walked away from this game with specifically Tokio and Kusabi as favorites overall. i think there's something that just wasnt.. igniting in me like i wanted to happen with this game and my expectations were loud while this is very much an inside voice game so to speak, in the fact of the matter that it's gameplay is subtle.. its nuance with its writing.. is subtle
It's very open and upfront about the thinkpieces on crime, cops, and how changing shit from the inside doesnt work out and how often times government will manufacture something to keep higher power regardless of the intent..

but, yeah. btw I was so confused at some points infact that Im embarrassed to admit I didnt connect two and two that Tokio in Transmitter and Tokio in Placebo were the same guy. like. probably my dumbest moment ever when i realized that by Parade LMFAO

final thoughts: if youre keen on visual novels as one of your favorite mediums of games then you have absolutely no reason to skip out on this but if youre lukewarm or neutral on the genre this may not hit the same as some of suda's other stuff. i fully understand why this was one of his breakout magnum opus, but go into this expecting a nearly completely narratively driven experience and Please
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!!!! REMEMBER YOU CAN SCROLL UP AND DOWN WITH YOUR MOUSE, THERE WAS SO MANY TIMES WHEN I WAS WALKING UP AND AROUND AND I FORGOT YOU COULD DO THAT IN THE GAME AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

rawness: 5/5
goatness: 4/5
beautifulness: 3/5

final score: 4/5

unbelievably dense and actually schizophrenic. maybe the worst controls in any game I've ever played paired with some of the best style and dialogue. the back and forth between Transmission and Placebo is incredible as well, especially with how they intertwine later on. you can kind of tell the two paths are written by different people, but I actually think it benefits the game a lot, especially since Akira and Tokio's narratives are so different. very much so looking forward to the next games, beyond kino

edit 3/14
actually goated 5/5

KILL THE PAST

quitando el hecho de que el "interpretador" se paso por los huevos el tono y la manera de actuar de los personajes e hizo fanfics autoincertandose en los personajes a la hora de traducir (confirmado por el mismo...), en si the Silver Case es una obra que me genera diferentes sentimientos, pero el principal es nostalgia... su ost es hermoso y sumado a la ambientación hace que me traigan recuerdos y sentimientos de una época pasada, de una época hace 15 años atrás la cual me atormento y fue el inicio de la peor etapa que he tenido en mi vida, pero que, por otra parte, fue responsable de que terminara siendo la persona que soy ahora mismo...

tampoco es que me persiga al día de hoy, pude superar y dejar de prestarle atencion hace ya casi 1 década las cosas que sucedieron en ese tiempo, y tampoco me mal interpretes, no hice la estupuidez de "Perdonar" mis sentimientos por las cosas que sucedieron y las personas responsables de que todo eso sucederían siguen iguales, no perdone ni justifique a esos pedazos de mierda, pero pude "Matar el pasado" y empezar una nueva vida dejando ese pasado, mi pasado atrás... y si, nunca antes me había sentido tan identificado con esta frase a pesar de que he jugado a otras obras de Suda51, pero no fue hasta ahora que he sabido entender el mensaje de "Kill the past" y el cual estoy seguro de que aparte de mí, muchas otras personas al leer esta obra lograron sentirse identificado, no en sí con la trama sino con el mensaje que este ofrece.

If you thought Killer7 was wild, here's a PS1 detective/horror visual novel presenting the concept of crime as a transmittable virus, literally and figuratively. But it is also a metanarrative about choice, determinism and individuality with social commentary about nascent radicalized internet culture and capitalism just sucking ass in general.

It's rather dated in terms of controls and puzzles, and it does test your patience a lot (especially in the last couple of hours), but it is an unforgettable experience. Probably one of the most stylish 90s titles with its slick dynamic UI and fantastic music by Masafumi Takada, it is a masterfully written story that serves as a thematic foundation and a skeleton key to the rest of Suda51's body of work.