Played on Switch (it was in sale for 8 bucks a year ago, I’m late) so I’ll get out of the way that the sheer volume of frame drops from AI sight or flashback triggers SUCKED. And I’ll warn people up front that if gore, particularly eye gore (getting yanked out, open sockets) is a trigger, you’ll probably need to deliberate on if this is for you. I’m specifically triggered by eye gore (not trauma, just always have been) and didn’t know how prevalent it was in the game on the outset, and obviously I managed to enjoy it a ton in spite of it. But it’s. A lot. And I think it’s fair to warn people about it. Beyond that? There’s an exceptionally written story that’s heartwarming and psychologically thrilling, and pretty funny. There are plenty of jokes that are distasteful, but MOST are done at the expense of the characters who are being total degenerates. It’s a shock that I was able to get so attached to a MC who’s an unabashed pervert. Excellent game that I couldn’t put down.

Don't get me wrong this game has some creepy and sexist anime shit that I wish games would kind of stop doing. I'm fine with shitty behaved characters but I wish they were done better in this,

despite that I do love this game consider it a problematic fav of mine, I think the humor and characters that work for me work really well for me and I found the story and mystery interesting, I love date and aiba's relationship, well I love his relationship with most of the characters minus iris which gets into creepy territory which sucks because its such a big part of the game.

puzzles are fun and game is designed for you to replay them and make different choices so I like the flow of the game quite a bit.

if you are unsure if you can handle the weird shit watch a stream of the first hour or two see if you can stomach it and if you can I would recommend.

i've played this game twice and wanna do it a third time. if you can get past all the adult men being horny over the barely legal minecraft streamer chick you're gonna have your balls blasted straight off.

there's a beautiful story about family and how it isn't defined just by blood. while it does a couple of stuff i don't like with it on the main right branch (oh, mizuki...), and the way they explain the multiple ends this game has is kind of stupid, ultimately it's a hilarious heartwarming and agonizing package all at once. the cast is also awesome and while i can't speak for the original japanese voices the english dub knocks it out of the park :)

as for gameplay, the somnium logic is kind of confusing in those gameplay sections (aside from brAIn pAIn and sustAIn i was either using guides or save scumming a lot) but once again i am a guy who likes story and they tell good stories (sustAIn and captAIn still make me cry on command.) even the most mid ones have something to look back on and be like "yeah that was some cool foreshadowing". also the music is awesome i still go back to it a lot.

go play salami files. and when you play salami files you will understand that mizuki has the best route.

I really enjoyed this game for its aesthetics, comedy and unique story-presentation but most of all the great and sincere character writing. I ended up enjoying a great deal of the cast and found nearly every main character effective at their role. I ended up loving Mizuki and Aiba especially. This game's best moments are emotional or comedic beats where its well developed characters interact with each other to drive the story, unfortunately this is not always what happens. The central crime mystery of this game is what ends up moving the main route of this game, which falls short. Several scenarios are too contrived and left me frustrated like getting incorrect information presented the same way as fact or exposition and the few times Aiba is out of energy for no justifiable reason. That's also the case for certain plot points which could've been fine if the scale of the game was kept to its character interactions but it instead developed into a climax that felt completey nonsensical and left behind things I thought the game did wonderful. It was mostly this, but also the heavy reuse of locations and some jokes that didn't land that ended up losing my love but I still think fondly of the characters.

Hey did you know that Renju did not inherit the storage company from his father and it was instead given to other people?

Fun mystery game that kind of plays like a visual novel with some good plot twists. Some characters and parts of the story are silly. There's definitely some stuff that did not need to be in the game.

I enjoyed the story a lot. There are a number of fun characters, but a few of them weren't really noteworthy. The gameplay segments with Aiba were kind of strange.

It will satisfy your mystery game itch but it probably won't dethrone some of the more significant ones like Ghost Trick, Zero Escape, or Ace Attorney.

A game I had been meaning to get to for a while due to many people's rave reviews of it. I wouldn't say I found it lacking per say, I had a good or decent time with it, but I'm definitely not as fanatic with it as many other people seem to be.

The main thing that held it back were the routes. I played blindly and my route order went Iris > Ota > Mizuki. It seems that many people recommend Mizuki route first and I completely understand why. The other two routes just don't hold water at all to the suspense that hers has. Iris's route did not feel like a good one to start on, and Ota is just.... I question why he even exists as a character, because everyone else had some major relevancy to the plot while he's mostly a simp for Iris and not much more. I wouldn't go so far as to say his route was a waste of time but I certainly don't understand why he was written in as a main character. There are several characters, even minor ones, who I could see being a little more pivotal to deserve their own route.

Furthermore, the routes end up converging into a weird.... I wouldn't say plot twist per say, but just a strange detail that isn't really explained all too well. I've been told it somehow relates to Uchikoshi's Zero Escape series, or is tangentially similar to it, but I haven't played those games so I can't really say one way or another what he was trying to get at.

As far as gameplay goes, it was okay? I wasn't too much of a fan of the Somnium stages, usually dreading whenever one was about to start. I definitely had fun with most of them though once they actually started, but some of them felt a little too arbitrary with their solutions, and some of the map designs were just a slog to deal with.

Voice acting was pretty good in both English and Japanese, I switched back and forth as my whims dictated and was content with each. Though I forgot how bad English dub pronunciations are for Japanese names... Atrocious, I cringed every time I had to hear me-zoo-key.

Despite this review being largely complaints I did have a decent time with this. Maybe not particularly memorable, I can't see this sticking with me for more than a few months from now, but fine for the experience it was. None of my over 30 hours with it felt like too much of a slog except for when I was making myself check every bit of flavor text (I think I cut that out after Iris route). I really like what they did with the flavor text in this game, it was just too much to be constantly rechecking.

I'm not really sure if I'm going to check out the sequel. I don't feel compelled enough by this game to drop the money on it. If my friend who bought me this one gets to it and recommends it, maybe I will. Otherwise probably not.

Initially I started this game with intrigue, my mind racing to wonder what in the hell could possibly happen at any corner. As time went on I found my self annoyed, not with the game as a whole, but by the constant urge for the game's dialogue to bust out perverted jokes written by an 8th grader trying too hard to sound cool. For a game so immaculate in its tense atmosphere with the perfect amount of lightheartedness sprinkled throughout to keep you hopeful, having these C tier jokes pop up really was the only thing dampening my spirit every so often. Yet Ai brushes past it as I did and in doing so showcases an amazing sci fi story with lighting fast pacing and charm. It's rare for me to feel like a game has nailed the moment to moment event pacing but it helps because the gameplay interactivity is rather low and really follows the more stricter answer nature of point and click adventure games which by itself really isn't a problem. I had initially kept voices on but as time went on, I was feeling a slight disconnect with how those earlier mentioned perverted jokes popped up and how they were delivered via audio so I had the idea to just turn off voices all together. It immediately clicked to me how much more charm I felt reading the voices to myself while the OST was able to play uninterrupted and by extension became something I actually listened to, instead of it fading into the back of my mind like most OSTs do.

From start to finish, looking past the small amount of hiccups in tension, Ai has a consistent tale it wants to tell and doesn't muck it up with over explanations and keeps you hooked from start to end. It's mostly a novel so there's little to no interruptions and everyone has an amazingly well fleshed out moments that all come together to feel like a real adventure into solving a grizzly murder. Our heroes shined just as they should.