For the folks out there, that enjoy the logical torture of a Phoenix Wright game, you’re in for a treat with Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo. This game is mostly text-based with a heavy slice of the paranormal for the gameplay and story backbone, and unique elements that I’m not sure that I’ve seen before in a game during my lifetime (and I’m sure I’ve missed some games).
Without further delay, let’s get right into this ghostly adventure.
Seven Layers of Story
Official Synopsis via Steam
Shogo Okiie, an ordinary office worker, visits Kinshibori Park in the dead of night with his friend, Yoko Fukunaga, to investigate a well-known local ghost story: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo. Shogo doesn’t quite believe Yoko when she talks about how the Mysteries are connected to the Rite of Resurrection and doesn’t pay it much mind – that is until strange events begin to unfold before his very eyes.
Meanwhile, several others are making their own investigations into The Seven Mysteries…
Detectives investigating a series of strange deaths, a high-school girl seeking the truth behind her classmate’s suicide, and a mother who has sworn revenge for her lost son.
Their desires and motives intertwine and interplay, with the Seven Mysteries of Honjo at the core, leading the story towards a battle of wits and curses.
The heavy amount of Japanese folklore in Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo that dates back to the 1800s is thick and sometimes confusing. Each curse/mystery contains its own story about why the mystery is a curse and its effects on those who cross it. For example, the first curse in the game is “The Whispering Canal”, a tale that involves fishermen who encounter a strange voice while they’re working, and that demands they leave their catches behind or face the wrath of the curse. That wrath will not only freeze the fisherman in their tracks and steal their fish, but it will also cause the stubborn fisherman to be dragged into the canal and never heard of again. Pretty creepy shit.
Each one of these mysteries contains a similar sort of story structure, where the curse is described through Japanese folklore and then constructed in a way that lends certain details to the player so they can correlate curses with solutions during the game. Going back to my opening statement, it’s just like a Phoenix Wright game, where you’re given objects and details, then you must logically figure out what the solution to the problem presented might be through these details. The fact that this story is essentially Japanese horror/folklore makes it far more engaging to connect and pay attention to rather than have to deal with a courtroom trial and evidence. It certainly is a different take, if not a more interesting one.
Anyway, the overwhelming part of the story is exactly how much you must ingest and keep in your noggin’ while you play. Since this game mostly deals with logic and story details as the main crux of the gameplay, at times you can get lost quite easily trying to find solutions that will help you move along in the overall story. For example, there is a portion of the story where you must figure out how to combat a fire-driven curse that another character has attached to them. The solution is to throw an object away that you found on another map. If I had not actually guessed this solution, after many times juggling other possible solutions, I’m not sure I would have arrived at it in a logical fashion. The story of each curse contains so many tiny details that it’s tough to gather it all up and cipher through it at a moment’s notice. And this might just be me but it felt like quite a bit at once. That’s not to say that it didn’t ultimately work or I didn’t get used to the amount, but for some, I can see this being a moment where you might wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into.
Now, this doesn’t at all mean that the game isn’t worth the time and effort. Quite the opposite because the acting, animation, and pure horror show of the moments make the story come to life in a very positive way and make going through the details of the files/stories you come across worth your time. It is engaging and it does hook you, especially after you get over the initial hurdle of gameplay design. The story is thick with some Grunge-like undertone that makes it feel like a car wreck at times that you just can’t take your eyes off of as you pass by. The horror and unsettling accounts via curses make for a strong story that gets even better once you get beyond the initial intro.
The gameplay branches quite a bit
As the story is certainly leading the charge with Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, how the gameplay works is fascinating. It takes its cues from the Phoenix Wright structure, where you’re introduced to a story, as well as all its little details, and then it presses upon you a problem that can only be solved through the details that you acquired. Some of it can be legitimately a guessing game, much like it is at times with the Phoenix Wright series, and other times it can be small puzzle pieces connected from other stories in the game that provide you with the ultimate solution to your problem. That is the biggest difference between this title and the PW series, as the PW series tends to have self-contained pockets of stories rather than one gigantic narrative you can flip and flop back and forth within.
In a way, Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is a more insightful and complicated game than anything PW has done in its history. Don’t get me wrong, I have played the shit out of PW games since the moment I discovered the series near a Phoenix Wright coffee machine at one of the early 2000 E3s. No one was playing it, but I knew it was gold the moment I started it. I was playing it for nearly two hours. I missed some appointments. Anyway! Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo expands upon the PW structure by allowing the player to go back and forth between the seven mysteries and find a single solution to help push past the potential problem. It presents a larger PW structure, if not trickier. And you know how complicated that series can get.
What also makes it go is how it integrates a “find and seek” method of gameplay into the mix. You can move your character around in a 360 search fashion, though standing still, and discover objects around the play area that progress current gameplay or helps set up later gameplay. You will find this process somewhat tedious and frustrating when you start it, but after the first mystery is solved, and your first curse acquired, you’ll get the gist of what you should be paying attention to as you progress. And it isn’t as plain as that description makes it out to be. The exploration area of pieces of the overall map can change at any given point in your investigation of these mysteries. You might turn around and see a tree the first go around, but on the second you may see a man appear or a floating orb. It’s all instantaneous and it goes with the story when it is called for during particular points.
Related, the gameplay is also branching, though linear at times. The branching part means that you have multiple solutions to get you to the next point in the story. For example, the first part of the story has something happen to one of the main characters if you turn around at a certain point in the dialogue. If you let it happen, that could mean the death of that character, but you can still progress forward. If you do it another way, saving the life of the character, then that might mean the end of another important character. Either way, the story still progresses and you get different pieces and parts handed to you. This is interesting because it makes the narrative a huge flowchart of wonderful possibilities.
On the flip side of that coin, the game can be linear when you get into a sticky situation. For example, I had to deal with a torso-less curse that was just floating legs. It was horrifying. There was only one solution to get beyond this curse and it didn’t immediately involve me using my curse to dispose of it. This was a tricky puzzle that was only solved thanks to the narrator’s intervention after my seventh death. I might review games, but I’m not perfect at all of them. Anyway, once the solution was presented to me, I felt like it was restrictive and only could be found if I had that one detail I just didn’t remember. The solution was cool, very Hideo Kojima-like, but I’m not sure I would have solved it had it not been for my outside help. There are moments in the game that lead you down a very narrow solution path that only has one way out. I’m fine with that, as the game has taught me to think more logically and try to get more involved with the details it provides through story and notes, but getting to that moment might be frustrating for some.
The first hour or two in the game is essentially the introductory/tutorial period. You won’t feel like it’s a waste of time, rather it will feel like you’re just stepping into a world that gives you plenty of time to ingest the details it gives. Once you get over the initial hump, and you meet a few characters you may or may not dispose of along the way, then the game gets huge. The game eventually opens up…
*SPOILER ALERT*
…a mode called Story Chart. This allows you to go back and forth between stories and look and see if you can do them differently. The chart gives you some indication where there is a branching point in the narrative, so you’re not completely wasting your time if the payoff doesn’t produce another solution. This mode also allows you to play as other characters you might come across or you might have killed during your journey. They have their own stories of tragedy and their curses that provide different types of gameplay.
This mode is the moment that truly opens up the world of Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo to make it so much bigger than the game initially leads on to be. The new characters expand the mystery and eventually tie a few loose ends together creating a bigger experience. None of the characters feel wasted at this moment. They feel defined and unique with their own paths. Their gameplay paths are also detailed in this mode, which means there is more gameplay to be had.
With this mode, it justified the hard work and logical puzzle-solving I had gone through in the game. It was a reward for the minor amount of annoyance of reading the history of these mysteries. It honestly feels like the game rewards you and opens up the door to its real gameplay once you get through that initial hurdle. It’s quite lovely that way.
*SPOILER END*
Let’s keep this rolling.
Actual Cursing
One thing you have not asked of this review yet is how you fight against other curses. Oh, yeah, there is a fighting part of this game. No, it’s not like the screen shifts to a 2D fighter or a Final Fantasy turn-based moment, rather it allows you to use your curse at the right time by hitting LT. The first curse you gain in the game is the whispering canal curse that drowns and disappears your enemies. This can only be done when they turn their back on you and it’s quite effective once it is performed. But much like everything in this game, there is a time and place that curse can be used during dialogue and can’t be used prior to that moment. This is another linear aspect of the game that can be excused because if you use your curse freely, I’m positive most of this game would only last about an hour. And it lasts way longer than that thanks to the restrictive nature of the curse abilities.
Now, before you gripe and say that sucks, please do understand this is still cruising the same path as the Phoenix Wright gameplay structure. While you can try to end trials in the PW series when you see fit, there is truly only one place in the story that can conclude cases in PW. Much like that series, there is only one place you have to get to in order to activate your curse to conclude the moment. That might feel linear but it’s the climax of the story for your moment and it works when you think about how each story is structured. Or any story is structured for that matter. And to make this a little bit unique, the game also has moments where you can choose to kill or not. It gives you the choice at times, but not all the time.
Getting back to an earlier mentioned story element, a good chunk of the gameplay with Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is trying to come up with the solution to a particular problem as the narrative reveals it by digging into the story’s details. Thankfully, if you screw up and don’t get the solution correct, the game will let you repeat the moment as many times as it takes and it won’t send you too far back. Instead, it will get you as close to returning to that defining moment of decision-making. For example, there was a story with the floating legs that had me dying repeatedly thanks to a small detail I didn’t notice when talking to the antagonist. That detail was in plain sight. I died several times and the game kept returning me two steps from death in the dialogue. I figured that Square Enix and Xeen weren’t interested in torturing me and were more interested in opening my ears and eyes to the specifics of the dialogue and case details. Even that poor narrator eventually served the solution on a silver platter but it still took me a few more tries to catch on. The game wants you to be hooked and engaged in the story and isn’t interested in you having to repeat everything to the point where you just don’t want to play anymore. I can respect that type of structured gameplay. When the narrative is good and it’s rolling, you don’t want to leave it too long or too many times.
The logic puzzles in this game are thick and difficult. They require you to actually think about what you’re selecting, much like PW, and reason with yourself prior to pulling the trigger. What is even cooler than having to actually think through the problems is the variety of problems presented. For example, there is another curse encounter that has the antagonist counting down every time you get something wrong. If they reach zero, you’re toast. Their dialogue tips off the solution and it also allows you to make too many mistakes, which makes for a terribly fun time trying to figure out the overall solution. The way that curse encounter works versus others makes for a good batch of unique problems that require unique solutions. Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo throws so much variety at you that it’s tough to get bored.
Ultimately, the story wants you to obtain and obliterate the majority of curses of Honjo. Your goal is to bring a loved one back to life, something each character appears to be searching for in the game, and the more you solve problems means you’re getting closer you get to that point. The way the game is structured and executed is clever, if not outright brilliant. It appears that the narrative drives the gameplay, which is proper for this type of game. Overall, it’s just a fun and lovely experience with a side of horror to drive it.
On that note, let’s wrap this rambling up.
Conclusion
Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is a more complicated version of Phoenix Wright. It contains some tricky puzzles to overcome while being driven by a thick amount of Japanese folklore, as well as a touch of horror. It can be frustrating, if not overwhelming at times, but its take on the Phoenix Wright gameplay logic puzzle structure makes for a fun and unique experience.
