I reccomend not having adhd if you wanna read this. I made this mistake and it proved fatal (for my brain to comprehend what was happening)
The core to this game is pretty solid. I found myself quickly intrigued in the mystery, some of the mechanics surrounding it really were interesting. My biggest complaint is in the pacing, as it takes a nosedive in the middle and is overall pretty inconsistent at holding moment to moment interest. The characters also hold very simple roles in the story, solely existing to fill their purposes in the mystery. This concept is novel and could probably create something great but I definitely found myself wishing there was more there for the main two characters at least, it would've helped a lot with some of the pacing issues. Overall The Sekimeiya is a really cool visual novel just held back by a few things keeping it short from great status
Good. Way too fuckjng confusing. But I love my hets. They did so much for each other. Love them so mach <3
Best visual novel i have ever read, would be worst visual novel you have ever read if you care about character writing
the thinkinger man's vn
wish the characters were better
wish the characters were better
Its a mixed bag that, on average, comes out on the better end of the scale.
The core mystery and mechanics behind it are both excellent and the main draw of the entire experience. Unfortunately, the actual way in which the mystery is told and presented is a bit more lacking. Long, dense blocks of text seem to be the main way that the reader is actually caught up to speed which can often make it a bit of a headache to get through everything. While a generous search feature and notes can ease the problem a bit, there is still a lot of information here that will be difficult to keep in your head all at once.
If you have the attention span, memory, and willingness to really sink your teeth into it, I think Sekimeiya definitely offers enough to make that effort worth it. But it really doesn't like making things easy on you.
The core mystery and mechanics behind it are both excellent and the main draw of the entire experience. Unfortunately, the actual way in which the mystery is told and presented is a bit more lacking. Long, dense blocks of text seem to be the main way that the reader is actually caught up to speed which can often make it a bit of a headache to get through everything. While a generous search feature and notes can ease the problem a bit, there is still a lot of information here that will be difficult to keep in your head all at once.
If you have the attention span, memory, and willingness to really sink your teeth into it, I think Sekimeiya definitely offers enough to make that effort worth it. But it really doesn't like making things easy on you.
Sekimeiya: Spun Glass
(Edit: After re-reading it with a friend, nosediving into the tips section and engaging with the extended mechanics I've revised the score because of the amount of complexity Adri tackles)
I’ve been waiting for a trapped in a facility game that would actually have a solid mystery for nearly a decade since I touched Ever17 as a kid, there’s been so many variations on the formula: E17,R11, Root Double, 999, VLR, death-game variants like the Danganronpa-universe, Raging Loop all the way to nukige variants like Room No. 9, DEA, Euphoria. Even though there have been a lot of different mixes with the trapped genre, Sekimeiya blows them all out of the water.
This is singlehandedly THE most complex VN I have ever read, it’s the only VN where the game will spell out the solution and you have to spend a long time in the backlog to just understand how the solution even works. There is an art to misdirection and foreshadowing that shouldn’t feel very cheap and (for the most part) Sekimeiya manages to present sound solutions to the insane clusterfuck it paints with its first route. Before I ramble more about why I like the game, I have to start with some of the negatives:
Cons
(-) Production
Considering how much 3D work/ Hand-painting/ Photography that was done for the backgrounds, I’m surprised at the lack of actual character CGs in the game, most of them featuring Shiroya (which either works for promotional reasons or just because she’s the main pillar for the MC and poster child for the game.) There’s a reason why the CGs are limited which plays into a specific factor of the game but even then I think other moments definitely deserved more CGs.
(-) Character Writing
This is a popular complaint against the game, and I agree and disagree with it. Mainly, I have no problems if the VN puts center-focus on the mystery but sometimes the characters would behave in such a way that felt way so ridiculous in service of the mystery, there’s so many moments of confusion in the game which would have been perfect instances to add dramatic elements, and even though some exist they also feel robotic and too calculated in placement and design.
Often times characters would leave to the bathroom or go on one of the upper floors and would just not get chased because they insisted on not being followed, character “N” can just pull character “K” to a separate room with esper levels of convincing and keep the others upstairs, character “S” can just say “don’t follow me” and run to the attic, there was a funny moment where character “E” asks the time and the MC remarks that she was better off just saying she was guilty.
I have no qualms about the lack of character depth I seriously don’t care that hard about what plagues the minds of Erina etc outside the confines of the building, and if the game wants to use the characters as vessels to deliver an impactful story I can’t fault it really, it’s the way it executes the story that’s the fundamental issue.
(-) Schizoid Protagonist – Deduction Bot (The first 4-5 hours)
The issue of the game is in the first few hours, the MC is a deduction machine, the game doesn’t draw its first breath and he starts printing out theories after theories about stuff that aren’t all the interesting. The writing is dense, but it bleeds everywhere and it feels like its going to hard before the actual mechanics of the plot are introduced. Several reviewers voiced complaints about how everyone turns into theory-crafters, and I don’t align with this issue at all, I like the fact that the game likes showing you all the playing cards before it pulls its sleight-of-hand to fool you and it does this with heavy internal and external dialogue.
This problem however disappears very fast when there’s actually interesting stuff to monologue about.
Pros:
(+) The Mechanics
The trapped genre’s more forgotten priced jewel should always be the solution but I have never been satisfied with an overarching explanation in many of the games the genre is defined by. “I read this in phenomenon in a journal once and turned it as a plot-device for the game” was always Uchikoshi’s vibe and I’ve hated it for so long, another hallmark of his explanations is done by abusing bootstrap paradoxes and I cannot emphasis how much I HATE these explanations, especially in the ZE universe.
Sekimeiya has hands down, the most complex, well-thought out mechanics I have ever seen in a sci-fi mystery. I appreciate the fact that the origin of the mechanics is irrelevant which is another Uchikoshi weakness as he goes into page-length explanations about quantum-mechanics and the like. Sekimeiya only cares enough to have mechanics that works within the internal logic of the story, and its able to conceal the actual mechanics with so many cool misdirections. I was able to make some assumptions that were right on the mark but the way they are executed just completely obliterated me.
Unmatched, just WOW, I am honestly a bit disgusted how do you even write something this technical and then manage to even rationalize it completely with the events of the story?
(+) Sai
When I say character writing is scuffed, I leave Sai out of that equation. He’s one of my favorite versions of the “fucking up the game” characters in the trapped genre. Whenever he was on screen it was always so juicy to the extent that I was disappointed when he didn’t have a dedicated route (I would have loved for Sai to do the explanation part in Chapter 5).
LOVED. THIS. CHARACTER.
(+) Story
(+) Chapter 1:
Starts off too polarizing but then it turns into my favorite “question” arc of any VN I’ve ever played, manages to pile on the most confusing chain of mysteries for a brilliant cluster-fuck in this lengthy chapter.
(+/-) Chapter 2:
I liked the twist, the chapter is quite short and isn’t THAT interesting to me personally and sort of demystifies the story a little bit since it makes one of the mechanics very obvious.
(+) Edit: After going through the tips variant of the events there's so many layers to the protagonist's character, the different endings have so many interesting components to them and reading this chapter after seeing some events in chapter 5 also greatly re-contextualizes the events of this chapter. This is Adri's most risky chapter because of the omissions he does from the narration.
(+/-) Chapter 3:
I saw a reviewer like this chapter and all I’ll say is the first half was so boring I dreaded having to read through it, but then I enjoyed when it picked up on where the story had previously halted. I really liked a lot of the reveals of what actually happened and a huge “wtf” ending reveal.
(+) Edit: The tips variant of this chapter hides an entirely new perspective of the protagonist connected to the final events of Chapter 5, the protagonist also reminisces about how they got a lot of the details wrong and it really paints a picture of how far Adri and the team went to hide the twist
(+/-) Chapter 4:
Just an overview of what went down at the start, barely a chapter.
(+) Chapter 5:
As much as I HATE END-OF-GAME INFODUMPS, the mystery of the game was genuinely so complex and intriguing that I didn’t mind the wizardry by which the MC whisked together all the complex plot-threads. Additionally, this chapter kind of proves the point that the whole game is more centered on the you – the player, figuring out how everything fell into place, with a “MCQ”-esque segment where just before the reveal it will give you the chance to prove that you understood the greater complexities of the game.
Chapter 5 at one point just goes outside the MC POV and straight up you are being directly talked to in order to figure out the greater plot points. This is insanely polarizing but I have to really dock points for just having a 5-6 hour long explanation-to-explanation narration where I didn’t even have a moment to breathe and digest anything.
The explanations are just, fantastic, if someone said it took them a decade to write this game I’d believe them with the effortless-ness of how its able to explain every insane thing. But its done in such an inorganic way that it almost felt like I was being lectured with a powerpoint presentation by the devs themselves.
I like to imagine since this is an indie project they really were strained on developmental resources that might have impacted how they approached to tell the story of this VN, which ultimately I can’t fault them too hard for.
TL;DR: The best explanation for a clusterfuck I have ever read in a VN, very polarizing execution.
(-) Ending
There is none, when the game wraps up all the knots the game doesn’t really care to tell you what awaits the fates of people outside the building, and since the center-focus of the game WAS the mystery, at the very most it manages to clean-house on that front. It does feel disappointing that there is no ENDING-ENDING.
(+) UI
The fact that an indie team managed to make such an interactive and helpful UI where VNs in the genre can’t even bother to add this level of accessibility just proves how much love was put into the game. Hats off to the team for going above and beyond, I love the added chart that’s probably gonna be super helpful when I might dive into the game again in the future.
(+) Soundtrack
I was iffy on the soundtrack at first, to the extent that I almost thought it was a bit funny and its very evident that these are not tracks that belong to the same album, but once my ears got used to all the tracks playing I actually ended up REALLY really enjoying them. A lot of ear worms that I’m not gonna manage to shake out any time soon despite these being licensed pieces.
(+) Conclusion
If I haven’t exhausted my compliments for the mystery of this game, absolutely jaw-dropping game with the most insane “question” and “answer” arcs. Starts off too wordy but once the mechanics come into play the game transforms into an unforgettable experience. I wish Trinitite keep working on newer titles so they can just polish up the character writing since they’ve already edged out every other VN in the trapped genre.
Shockingly impressively and an extremely memorable game, but with a botched execution in the writing department and a lack of an ending.
(Edit: After re-reading it with a friend, nosediving into the tips section and engaging with the extended mechanics I've revised the score because of the amount of complexity Adri tackles)
I’ve been waiting for a trapped in a facility game that would actually have a solid mystery for nearly a decade since I touched Ever17 as a kid, there’s been so many variations on the formula: E17,R11, Root Double, 999, VLR, death-game variants like the Danganronpa-universe, Raging Loop all the way to nukige variants like Room No. 9, DEA, Euphoria. Even though there have been a lot of different mixes with the trapped genre, Sekimeiya blows them all out of the water.
This is singlehandedly THE most complex VN I have ever read, it’s the only VN where the game will spell out the solution and you have to spend a long time in the backlog to just understand how the solution even works. There is an art to misdirection and foreshadowing that shouldn’t feel very cheap and (for the most part) Sekimeiya manages to present sound solutions to the insane clusterfuck it paints with its first route. Before I ramble more about why I like the game, I have to start with some of the negatives:
Cons
(-) Production
Considering how much 3D work/ Hand-painting/ Photography that was done for the backgrounds, I’m surprised at the lack of actual character CGs in the game, most of them featuring Shiroya (which either works for promotional reasons or just because she’s the main pillar for the MC and poster child for the game.) There’s a reason why the CGs are limited which plays into a specific factor of the game but even then I think other moments definitely deserved more CGs.
(-) Character Writing
This is a popular complaint against the game, and I agree and disagree with it. Mainly, I have no problems if the VN puts center-focus on the mystery but sometimes the characters would behave in such a way that felt way so ridiculous in service of the mystery, there’s so many moments of confusion in the game which would have been perfect instances to add dramatic elements, and even though some exist they also feel robotic and too calculated in placement and design.
Often times characters would leave to the bathroom or go on one of the upper floors and would just not get chased because they insisted on not being followed, character “N” can just pull character “K” to a separate room with esper levels of convincing and keep the others upstairs, character “S” can just say “don’t follow me” and run to the attic, there was a funny moment where character “E” asks the time and the MC remarks that she was better off just saying she was guilty.
I have no qualms about the lack of character depth I seriously don’t care that hard about what plagues the minds of Erina etc outside the confines of the building, and if the game wants to use the characters as vessels to deliver an impactful story I can’t fault it really, it’s the way it executes the story that’s the fundamental issue.
(-) Schizoid Protagonist – Deduction Bot (The first 4-5 hours)
The issue of the game is in the first few hours, the MC is a deduction machine, the game doesn’t draw its first breath and he starts printing out theories after theories about stuff that aren’t all the interesting. The writing is dense, but it bleeds everywhere and it feels like its going to hard before the actual mechanics of the plot are introduced. Several reviewers voiced complaints about how everyone turns into theory-crafters, and I don’t align with this issue at all, I like the fact that the game likes showing you all the playing cards before it pulls its sleight-of-hand to fool you and it does this with heavy internal and external dialogue.
This problem however disappears very fast when there’s actually interesting stuff to monologue about.
Pros:
(+) The Mechanics
The trapped genre’s more forgotten priced jewel should always be the solution but I have never been satisfied with an overarching explanation in many of the games the genre is defined by. “I read this in phenomenon in a journal once and turned it as a plot-device for the game” was always Uchikoshi’s vibe and I’ve hated it for so long, another hallmark of his explanations is done by abusing bootstrap paradoxes and I cannot emphasis how much I HATE these explanations, especially in the ZE universe.
Sekimeiya has hands down, the most complex, well-thought out mechanics I have ever seen in a sci-fi mystery. I appreciate the fact that the origin of the mechanics is irrelevant which is another Uchikoshi weakness as he goes into page-length explanations about quantum-mechanics and the like. Sekimeiya only cares enough to have mechanics that works within the internal logic of the story, and its able to conceal the actual mechanics with so many cool misdirections. I was able to make some assumptions that were right on the mark but the way they are executed just completely obliterated me.
Unmatched, just WOW, I am honestly a bit disgusted how do you even write something this technical and then manage to even rationalize it completely with the events of the story?
(+) Sai
When I say character writing is scuffed, I leave Sai out of that equation. He’s one of my favorite versions of the “fucking up the game” characters in the trapped genre. Whenever he was on screen it was always so juicy to the extent that I was disappointed when he didn’t have a dedicated route (I would have loved for Sai to do the explanation part in Chapter 5).
LOVED. THIS. CHARACTER.
(+) Story
(+) Chapter 1:
Starts off too polarizing but then it turns into my favorite “question” arc of any VN I’ve ever played, manages to pile on the most confusing chain of mysteries for a brilliant cluster-fuck in this lengthy chapter.
(+/-) Chapter 2:
I liked the twist, the chapter is quite short and isn’t THAT interesting to me personally and sort of demystifies the story a little bit since it makes one of the mechanics very obvious.
(+) Edit: After going through the tips variant of the events there's so many layers to the protagonist's character, the different endings have so many interesting components to them and reading this chapter after seeing some events in chapter 5 also greatly re-contextualizes the events of this chapter. This is Adri's most risky chapter because of the omissions he does from the narration.
(+/-) Chapter 3:
I saw a reviewer like this chapter and all I’ll say is the first half was so boring I dreaded having to read through it, but then I enjoyed when it picked up on where the story had previously halted. I really liked a lot of the reveals of what actually happened and a huge “wtf” ending reveal.
(+) Edit: The tips variant of this chapter hides an entirely new perspective of the protagonist connected to the final events of Chapter 5, the protagonist also reminisces about how they got a lot of the details wrong and it really paints a picture of how far Adri and the team went to hide the twist
(+/-) Chapter 4:
Just an overview of what went down at the start, barely a chapter.
(+) Chapter 5:
As much as I HATE END-OF-GAME INFODUMPS, the mystery of the game was genuinely so complex and intriguing that I didn’t mind the wizardry by which the MC whisked together all the complex plot-threads. Additionally, this chapter kind of proves the point that the whole game is more centered on the you – the player, figuring out how everything fell into place, with a “MCQ”-esque segment where just before the reveal it will give you the chance to prove that you understood the greater complexities of the game.
Chapter 5 at one point just goes outside the MC POV and straight up you are being directly talked to in order to figure out the greater plot points. This is insanely polarizing but I have to really dock points for just having a 5-6 hour long explanation-to-explanation narration where I didn’t even have a moment to breathe and digest anything.
The explanations are just, fantastic, if someone said it took them a decade to write this game I’d believe them with the effortless-ness of how its able to explain every insane thing. But its done in such an inorganic way that it almost felt like I was being lectured with a powerpoint presentation by the devs themselves.
I like to imagine since this is an indie project they really were strained on developmental resources that might have impacted how they approached to tell the story of this VN, which ultimately I can’t fault them too hard for.
TL;DR: The best explanation for a clusterfuck I have ever read in a VN, very polarizing execution.
(-) Ending
There is none, when the game wraps up all the knots the game doesn’t really care to tell you what awaits the fates of people outside the building, and since the center-focus of the game WAS the mystery, at the very most it manages to clean-house on that front. It does feel disappointing that there is no ENDING-ENDING.
(+) UI
The fact that an indie team managed to make such an interactive and helpful UI where VNs in the genre can’t even bother to add this level of accessibility just proves how much love was put into the game. Hats off to the team for going above and beyond, I love the added chart that’s probably gonna be super helpful when I might dive into the game again in the future.
(+) Soundtrack
I was iffy on the soundtrack at first, to the extent that I almost thought it was a bit funny and its very evident that these are not tracks that belong to the same album, but once my ears got used to all the tracks playing I actually ended up REALLY really enjoying them. A lot of ear worms that I’m not gonna manage to shake out any time soon despite these being licensed pieces.
(+) Conclusion
If I haven’t exhausted my compliments for the mystery of this game, absolutely jaw-dropping game with the most insane “question” and “answer” arcs. Starts off too wordy but once the mechanics come into play the game transforms into an unforgettable experience. I wish Trinitite keep working on newer titles so they can just polish up the character writing since they’ve already edged out every other VN in the trapped genre.
Shockingly impressively and an extremely memorable game, but with a botched execution in the writing department and a lack of an ending.
This is one of the best puzzle games I've ever played.
Nothing I say can do this game justice. Be prepared for an unforgettable experience.
Nothing I say can do this game justice. Be prepared for an unforgettable experience.
Boring, tedious and the narration is really really really really dry and soulless, the characters are stones. Yeah maybe the mistery is good but you have to put up with the terrible narration and the characters conveniently put there to advance the story.
Vote 4
Time trapped : 3 H 10 M Dropped
Vote 4
Time trapped : 3 H 10 M Dropped
imagine a segment where characters go in and out of rooms in scooby doo, extend that to 30 hours, this is the sekimeiya.
This review contains spoilers
I will start this off, as per tradition for the amateur reviews, with a food analogy. Suppose you buy a cake. It has a fundamental level of biscuit, the cream layers, maybe the jam layers, and the toppings. When you go for a slice of cake, you’re experiencing the gestalt of all those layers coming together.
Sekimeiya is a huge slab of biscuit with barely anything on top type of cake.
The foundation is extremely solid. The web of causes and effects is intricate and convoluted, but everything that appears to not make sense eventually will, and it is possible to feasibly figure out parts of it as you go along, or at least make decent guesses on the nature of what’s happening. Some things aren’t covered within the story, but, if you want complete understanding of the setting and mechanics not immediately relevant to the plot, there are post-game blurbs that will cover even that.
Despite that, the VN gave me little to no other reason to care about anything that is happening. This is especially evident in the first three or so hours devoid of any intrigue or apparent motivations for anything to happen whatsoever, that even avid Sekimeiya fans admit is kind of bad.
It’s multiplied tenfold by how the story is presented as well, there are dry emotionless impenetrable walls of text even for the very minute details of the environment or the very surface level observations. Basically, imagine the slog of this review, but stretched over twenty to fifty hours of reading. It has gotten so unbearable for me that I, a million-word fanfic and trashy manga reader, have started skimming the text about halfway through.
The character writing is extremely weak – they all have exactly the same voice. Thankfully, the game has an option to colour the dialogue text, or it would have been nigh impossible to tell who’s speaking at the moment. The characters have some distinctive traits, for the most part pertaining to their motivations, but all of them speak in the same exact robotic monotone you will read in the narration text for the entirety of the game.
The art is solid but unremarkable. The character sprites are very unexpressive, and you’ll be staring at them for the vast majority of the game, as the splash arts are few and far between, maybe a dozen or so over the whole game.
The music is mostly good, though as far as I’m aware, almost none of it was actually written for the game, so there’s very little thematic/melodic cohesion between the tracks, though they do capture roughly the same vibe. No character themes or location themes or persistent motifs or anything of the sort.
I can recommend Sekimeiya to anyone who puts untangling the web of causes and effects above everything else in a mystery story, to the point they’re willing to forgive it being mediocre to lacking in every other area.
I can’t recommend Sekimeiya to anyone for whom that just isn’t enough to engage them in the mystery the story is presenting.
SOMEWHAT SPOILERY PART OF THE REVIEW STARTS HERE
I’ve said near the beginning of this review that the story makes complete sense in the end. Now, how it gets there is a whole another question.
The beginning (the first 3 hours or so) is, frankly, atrocious. You’re immediately thrown into the thick of it and assaulted with exposition dumps to the point I was suspecting some weird memory-wiping stuff going on and that I was supposed to notice how flimsy and unconvincing the main character’s reason was to be where he is. Upon the incident happening, none of the characters react like you would expect them to react and go off on the little exploring adventure with absolutely no apparent incentive to do so (and with no non-apparent incentive either for the half of the cast).
Even after the beginning, the game is riddled with extremely convenient coincidences and actions taken for the sole purpose of getting on with the story, especially on the part of the main trio of characters. The characters themselves continuously oscillate between being so stupid you start to wonder how on Earth do they not forget how to breathe and super logically flawless 1000 IQ computing machines with eidetic memory as soon as it’s required of them to move the plot along.
As a lesser aside, the setting is very weird. And I don’t mean the tower – why did it have to be Japan? This just comes off as a huge case of “weeaboo, Japanophile for you gaijins”, the developers aren’t Japanese and it’s not ever relevant to the plot in the slightest, so I have no idea why didn’t they just write about the culture they lived in for their whole life, which would surely have added to the liveliness of the descriptions. Anime style doesn’t really lock you into the Japanese setting, after all.
For a game apparently inspired by Umineko, it seems to have taken the exact wrong lesson out of it: there is no heart to the story at all, none of the characters have more than second order depth (first being the motivation, and the second being the motivation for their motivation), and about half of them don’t even have that in the first place. Those motivations make sense on the logical level (example: she is his friend and he wants to save her) but not on the emotional engagement level (same example: the only interaction between them we get to see for a while feels more like a post-grad get-together of people who weren’t even particularly great friends at school, and the future interactions aren’t very convincing either).
The characters have no interests or quirks of distinctive ways of speech or particular ways they react to events or any strong opinions on anything. The few inter-character relationships the game has are more claimant than apparent – friendship apparently just means asking “how are you” periodically and giving a hug once. All this makes it especially funny when the game claims to avoid a certain type of paradox because the cause for the event originated in the characters mind, but there is no character to the character so it just ends up a one step removed motivational deus ex machina.
Honestly, the more I’m writing this, the less impressive it feels that the story makes sense in the end. It’s really not that impressive to write an intricate web of causes and effects, when you don’t have to work with characters being actual characters – that’s just basic puzzle design. Still, the recommendation stays the same – if you love solving puzzles just for the sake of it, so much that you can forgive the rest of it being less than impressive, give it a go. Otherwise it just doesn’t have enough of the rest of it to keep you invested
Sekimeiya is a huge slab of biscuit with barely anything on top type of cake.
The foundation is extremely solid. The web of causes and effects is intricate and convoluted, but everything that appears to not make sense eventually will, and it is possible to feasibly figure out parts of it as you go along, or at least make decent guesses on the nature of what’s happening. Some things aren’t covered within the story, but, if you want complete understanding of the setting and mechanics not immediately relevant to the plot, there are post-game blurbs that will cover even that.
Despite that, the VN gave me little to no other reason to care about anything that is happening. This is especially evident in the first three or so hours devoid of any intrigue or apparent motivations for anything to happen whatsoever, that even avid Sekimeiya fans admit is kind of bad.
It’s multiplied tenfold by how the story is presented as well, there are dry emotionless impenetrable walls of text even for the very minute details of the environment or the very surface level observations. Basically, imagine the slog of this review, but stretched over twenty to fifty hours of reading. It has gotten so unbearable for me that I, a million-word fanfic and trashy manga reader, have started skimming the text about halfway through.
The character writing is extremely weak – they all have exactly the same voice. Thankfully, the game has an option to colour the dialogue text, or it would have been nigh impossible to tell who’s speaking at the moment. The characters have some distinctive traits, for the most part pertaining to their motivations, but all of them speak in the same exact robotic monotone you will read in the narration text for the entirety of the game.
The art is solid but unremarkable. The character sprites are very unexpressive, and you’ll be staring at them for the vast majority of the game, as the splash arts are few and far between, maybe a dozen or so over the whole game.
The music is mostly good, though as far as I’m aware, almost none of it was actually written for the game, so there’s very little thematic/melodic cohesion between the tracks, though they do capture roughly the same vibe. No character themes or location themes or persistent motifs or anything of the sort.
I can recommend Sekimeiya to anyone who puts untangling the web of causes and effects above everything else in a mystery story, to the point they’re willing to forgive it being mediocre to lacking in every other area.
I can’t recommend Sekimeiya to anyone for whom that just isn’t enough to engage them in the mystery the story is presenting.
SOMEWHAT SPOILERY PART OF THE REVIEW STARTS HERE
I’ve said near the beginning of this review that the story makes complete sense in the end. Now, how it gets there is a whole another question.
The beginning (the first 3 hours or so) is, frankly, atrocious. You’re immediately thrown into the thick of it and assaulted with exposition dumps to the point I was suspecting some weird memory-wiping stuff going on and that I was supposed to notice how flimsy and unconvincing the main character’s reason was to be where he is. Upon the incident happening, none of the characters react like you would expect them to react and go off on the little exploring adventure with absolutely no apparent incentive to do so (and with no non-apparent incentive either for the half of the cast).
Even after the beginning, the game is riddled with extremely convenient coincidences and actions taken for the sole purpose of getting on with the story, especially on the part of the main trio of characters. The characters themselves continuously oscillate between being so stupid you start to wonder how on Earth do they not forget how to breathe and super logically flawless 1000 IQ computing machines with eidetic memory as soon as it’s required of them to move the plot along.
As a lesser aside, the setting is very weird. And I don’t mean the tower – why did it have to be Japan? This just comes off as a huge case of “weeaboo, Japanophile for you gaijins”, the developers aren’t Japanese and it’s not ever relevant to the plot in the slightest, so I have no idea why didn’t they just write about the culture they lived in for their whole life, which would surely have added to the liveliness of the descriptions. Anime style doesn’t really lock you into the Japanese setting, after all.
For a game apparently inspired by Umineko, it seems to have taken the exact wrong lesson out of it: there is no heart to the story at all, none of the characters have more than second order depth (first being the motivation, and the second being the motivation for their motivation), and about half of them don’t even have that in the first place. Those motivations make sense on the logical level (example: she is his friend and he wants to save her) but not on the emotional engagement level (same example: the only interaction between them we get to see for a while feels more like a post-grad get-together of people who weren’t even particularly great friends at school, and the future interactions aren’t very convincing either).
The characters have no interests or quirks of distinctive ways of speech or particular ways they react to events or any strong opinions on anything. The few inter-character relationships the game has are more claimant than apparent – friendship apparently just means asking “how are you” periodically and giving a hug once. All this makes it especially funny when the game claims to avoid a certain type of paradox because the cause for the event originated in the characters mind, but there is no character to the character so it just ends up a one step removed motivational deus ex machina.
Honestly, the more I’m writing this, the less impressive it feels that the story makes sense in the end. It’s really not that impressive to write an intricate web of causes and effects, when you don’t have to work with characters being actual characters – that’s just basic puzzle design. Still, the recommendation stays the same – if you love solving puzzles just for the sake of it, so much that you can forgive the rest of it being less than impressive, give it a go. Otherwise it just doesn’t have enough of the rest of it to keep you invested