mechawitch
3 reviews liked by mechawitch
The Silver Case
2016
If it wasn't for Masafumi Takada's stellar soundtrack I would've bashed my head against the wall midway through
This is the best game of the series, but still an incredibly poor written work due to Uchikoshi's absolutely awful writing. Full of contrived plot threads that barely hook together wrapped in a series of gotchas, awful character moments, and completely convoluted and ultimately thematically bare series of events.
There's nothing to latch onto unless you enjoy being thrown around a roller coaster of increasingly stupid and escalating events. I can certainly see the appeal with this one over the rest of the ZE series simply because it is the most ambitious and plays around with admittedly interesting plot structures. The execution leaves way more to be desired and is then retrospectively brought down by the sequel that swore to answer the MULTITUDE of """intentional""" questions left in.
It's ultimately an average not very interesting work that should be left in the bin with the rest of the series as a whole.
There's nothing to latch onto unless you enjoy being thrown around a roller coaster of increasingly stupid and escalating events. I can certainly see the appeal with this one over the rest of the ZE series simply because it is the most ambitious and plays around with admittedly interesting plot structures. The execution leaves way more to be desired and is then retrospectively brought down by the sequel that swore to answer the MULTITUDE of """intentional""" questions left in.
It's ultimately an average not very interesting work that should be left in the bin with the rest of the series as a whole.
Man I really wanted to like this but jesus christ this just feels silly a lot of the time
30 hours of regugitating similar scenes, bad models, constant map transition scenes, bad effects, hit or miss puzzles just for the last 5 or 10 hours to have actual things happen isnt worth it. 999's structure made for a super enjoyable and fairly clever trip down alternative paths (with some pseudoscience) fun but the way this game attempts to accomplish that is obnoxious it feels like a good chunk of the game is just meandering through similar scenes to maybe get 1 or 2 useful pieces of information only for it to reach a final point in which its nothing but a nonstop of new, complex information to process. After a certain point in the final stretch I seriously wondered why this even really needed to be made? It's got some neat character moments, some puzzles are alright, its at least fairly forgiving with some QoL features (the flow chart/skip button). By the end the game gets interesting but would I say it's really worth the constant back-and-forth of the previous 30 hours, not really. Also god this game looks ugly like really, like christ this game would go up a point if I didnt have to stare at models that looked worse than mid-aughts gmod videos.
30 hours of regugitating similar scenes, bad models, constant map transition scenes, bad effects, hit or miss puzzles just for the last 5 or 10 hours to have actual things happen isnt worth it. 999's structure made for a super enjoyable and fairly clever trip down alternative paths (with some pseudoscience) fun but the way this game attempts to accomplish that is obnoxious it feels like a good chunk of the game is just meandering through similar scenes to maybe get 1 or 2 useful pieces of information only for it to reach a final point in which its nothing but a nonstop of new, complex information to process. After a certain point in the final stretch I seriously wondered why this even really needed to be made? It's got some neat character moments, some puzzles are alright, its at least fairly forgiving with some QoL features (the flow chart/skip button). By the end the game gets interesting but would I say it's really worth the constant back-and-forth of the previous 30 hours, not really. Also god this game looks ugly like really, like christ this game would go up a point if I didnt have to stare at models that looked worse than mid-aughts gmod videos.