What sets The Shell apart to me from other visual novels is its gritty setting and aesthetic which gives it a somewhat grounded feel. The novel is a basic murder mystery fiction, but the characterisation, strange plot twists and graphic content set it apart from most other visual novels. Despite the gory content, it feels more accurate to describe The Shell as a thriller, especially after the halfway point when the past events haunt the detective responsible for finding a new serial killer.

While I did enjoy the drama and central mystery surrounding Reiji and Toko, it’s not especially cerebral. In fact, the best parts of the story for me were the interactions between the large cast of characters. Seeing Reiji take shots at his cop friend over their work ethic, or seeing Tojiko act like a gremlin gave the game a sense of happiness amongst all of the seedier and gory parts.

As the story unfolds, you see a side to each character that makes them feel like people and not just a potential victim.

The atmosphere in The Shell is also surprisingly charming. The soundtrack, character portraits and backgrounds paint a quaint and idyllic Tokyo, despite the horror lurking beneath the surface. The OST in particular is really special as each song paints a real spectrum of emotion and gives each scene an extra bit of fullness and immersion. Whether its Paranoia's thoughtful and contemplative piano playing during the evening, The Egg of Neanis's haunting chanting or the calming string instruments when you're deciding where to travel to next fits perfectly.

The story can be a bit predictable at times, particularly in the final third, which feels contrived with coincidences piling up to an improbable degree.

The ending really requires a level of disbelief at how plot-critical information is given out so freely and conveniently. Nevertheless, it's still an engaging and fun read if you don't take everything at face value.

I'm not a huge fan of the font used and would've liked a few options to pick from. It's especially problematic in the map screen because the text for each destination is scrunched up, making it tiny and hard to read. Thankfully, hovering over a destination for a second or so enlarges the text at the bottom of the screen. It doesn't fix the issue entirely but it does help to know. I'm sure it's just a me thing and is at best a small annoyance, but it may be off-putting for readers with poor eyesight.

Just like the original release, unveiling the true ending and experiencing everything the game offers still remains challenging without a guide, though getting stuck is less likely due to investigation sequences being streamlined.

The game now prompts players to keep searching if they try to leave before gathering all clues during an investigation. Additionally, collecting clues in the wrong order and potentially missing crucial evidence has been axed. While investigations themselves remain as pixel hunts, these changes significantly reduce the chance of missing key information and getting locked into a loop of bad endings. You can even skip right to the next choice in an instant in this re-release, making replays less tedious if you aren't using a guide.

As the first chapter in a trilogy, Inferno lays the groundwork for the sequel Purgatorio. It's not a literary masterpiece by any stretch, but if you can stomach graphic content and like this type of fiction I think you'd enjoy it. The sequel is a massive improvement and builds on what this game achieves.

I would say for the most part I quite liked this visual novel. I'm always down for a good mystery story and I'm glad this mostly delivered.

The mysteries themselves were consistently interesting and the pacing was surprisingly solid. If only other mystery writers like Uchikoshi, Nakazawa, and especially Ryuukishi07 can learn pacing better like this game.

Even though I'm generally not into dark gory stuff, I actually thought the way it was handled in the story was quite good. Having just enough shock value to get the point across but doing it in a psychological horror way like Silent Hill 2, which is one of my favorite horror games.

While none of the characters are close to being one of my favorites , they definitely fit their roles well and were for the most part decently likable. Plus points to the protagonist Reiji being proactive, chill and in this version actually has full voice acting.

While I only had a few major issues with this game, they were quite notable.

As many people have stated, the H scenes are... Handled weirdly. Half of them are lead ins into bad endings for some reason. The other half are just weirdly placed fan service. The age gap ones in particular were quite uncomfortable due to how easily they got into it.

The absolute worst thing about this game is definitely the choice system and the general structure of the endings. On one hand, I do like the idea of multiple bad ends being used for foreshadowing for the good ends. There are a few major choices and endings that makes the way the plot progress and branch interesting.

However everything else about this choice route and ending system just sucks. I get that this is an older visual novel, which generally has a lot of choices. However, when you combined that with additional map travel system. That's a combination of a weird affection system, but more importantly which ones you go to can affect which ending you get is quite annoying due to how frequent they are at impeding plot progress.

Combine the above two things with a minor issue with a ghetto version of the Ace Attorney's investigation and deduction systems and you just have a visual novel trying to implement way too many systems at once.

It wants to be a mystery game, but also just a utsuge-ish psychological horror, but also have the typical eroge affection and H scenes. Take out at least one of these systems and things could have flown way better. Especially if they wanted to commit to many bad ends that actually contribute to the story.

That said, I still definitely enjoy the story enough to look forward to part 2. I will likely wait for THE SHELL Part 2 just to have a steam release and a prologue with a good translation.

Final Score: 8/10

"Find my true self"

The Shell Part 1: Inferno, originally released as Kara no Shojo (The Girl of the Shell), is a masterclass in video game characterisation and atmosphere. The intricately written murder mystery contains so many small little details that add up to a whole which creates this sense of place and feeling of familiarity that few other visual novels could even come close to achieving. The gorgeous artwork which has elements of sketchbook drawings and muted anime colour palettes are gorgeous and combined with a beautiful and sombre OST, Innocent Grey's first entry into their masterful trilogy is one worth playing if you have the patience to sit through a 15 hour long visual novel.

Pretty good for the most part. The culprits ended up being kind of obvious but the mistery around them was pretty captivating to follow. Also loved how the themes surrounding the cases paired up and contrasted so well with reiji's and toko's character arc, it all tied together very nicely.
All this being said, getting all endings without a guide sounds like a bad time. It requires that you be at the right place at the right time without any real pointers, pretty much trial and error.
Still, a nice experience. A final shoutout to the ost and the voice acting both of which were great.

It's impossible to put into words how big of a step-up this is from Cartagra. Fantastic art style (that only gets better with each entry!), great OST and jazzy 1950s post-WW2 Japan vibe, interesting characters, as well as an immersive mystery. You also have characters with mostly realistic hair colours and fewer explicit anime tropes, so it feels less "anime" than most VNs.

It's extremely hard, near impossible even, to 100% without a guide, though. To get the true end there' a part where you need to find a clue with pixel accuracy or else you can't progress. Also, the sex scenes felt forced most of the time, very "porny", which despite being far lessened compared to Cartagra, is unfitting of the "artistic" approach Innocent Grey takes in KnS. It is especially disgusting that the main character is a man in his late 20s or early 30s and has sex with high school girls. All three of these issues are lessened exponentially in KnS2, and in KnS3 you can go without a guide, the sex scenes are only between post-graduate adults and not explicit (I like to call it a non-H eroge), and are very tasteful. One issue that doesn't change is that somehow different choices on the protagonist's part, 20 miles away from anything else that's happening, with him still arriving at the same place, somehow affect an outcome that happened before, but whatever.

KnS as a series is tasteful, in contrast to the amount of gore it has otherwise, though. Sometimes we get a maniacal murderer's POV (with a shift from ADV text into NVL; and vertical, right to left writing if you're reading in Japanese) and very bloody CGs, but the victims' suffering is never treated lightly, unlike many other mystery VNs. If someone dies in KnS, they die extremely quickly, and the killer goes on to absolutely defile them physically. There isn't much sexual violence in this series (which is preferable to some other VNs I've read which insert it both as a barely disguised fetish, as well as "shock value"), but murder victims get absolutely mutilated. And yet, despite the shock of how quickly this happens, you never feel like the writer is playing around with the victims, nor saying that the killer's feelings matter more than the damage they've caused. Very often in VNs I feel like writers use sexual violence and physical violence in a very tonedeaf way that makes characters look like their playthings. And yet I never felt this way with KnS despite it being more graphic than most VNs that do this.

Another thing that separates it from other mystery VNs is that it just tries to be a good story and not a subversion or shinhonkaku take on the genre. You have literary references and old-school, point and click, clue selection, choice gameplay that will lead you to a bad end if the protagonist doesn't figure out the mystery, but the mysteries themselves are very fair. The actual related plot and atmosphere are what make it stand out.

KnS1 is a well-paced visual novel (with an average of 25 hours according to VNDB), which is something you won't find a lot. Dante's Inferno and Divine Comedy, as well as mid-20th century Japanese cultural references are interesting, too. Having a fully adult protagonist unlike most VNs which are university students at the oldest, and usually high schoolers, is refreshing, problematic content in KnS1 and kind of in KnS2 aside. Definitely one of my favourite series.