If I had one critique about Pert-em-Hru it’s that the game is too short. From what I gather (and looking at the cut content on The Cutting Room Floor) the game was going to be bigger and scope, but was deemed too be to much work to take on by the small dev team, which is pretty fair. I think the most interesting side effect of this is that all of the possible party members and can learn new skills through levelling up, but due to how infrequent encounters are it’s something you’d only really see if you stick with a single party member.

The game itself though is still a fun and breezy experience with some killer sprite work, especially with regards to the enemy design. As a horror experience it’s hardly going to keep you up at night, but the devs aren’t pulling their punches with regards to the violence.

As a final note, I’d definitely recommend going in blind on a first playthrough; a big part of the appeal is just seeing how well you do in keeping the cast alive and seeing if you can do better next time.

Though Ayuto begins the game without having sinned, he is not "sinless" by this game's definition because through you he has the capacity to do so, if you're callous enough to let his fellow tourists get whacked. And considering that this is a horror game, isn't that part of the draw for most players? Serise claims as much if you let the first character, a nine-year-old girl, die, after which Ayuto wonders why her death gives him such an adrenaline rush. We are judged just as the characters are by our bloodthirsty appetites, and depending on the extent to which we indulge them, the final scene of the game, visually identical between the good and the bad endings, takes on two vastly different tones. It's an elegant and unfussy take on how the player's actions within the diegesis of a game unavoidably corrupt the narrative elements; as such, this game seems like a pretty influential expression of the "game space as underworld/point of no return" concept that hits like Siren and Persona 3+ would go on to mine (and while we're at the comparisons, you can bet that Kotaro Uchikoshi stirred a handful of this into 999).

The RPG stuff is strictly rudimentary, but the game's mechanics are secondary to its genre's function as an expressive tool for tremendous visual imagination. Can't think of the last RPG encounter I've been through that hit as hard as Ayuto's underwater scuffle with the mummy.

sure kill people who wanna steal your shit, but why magical mummy khufu gotta go judge and sick death on people tho for something as small potatoes as shoplifting in another country once??? even punishing the chick who apparently sold drugs idk I don't see the big deal,,,,

weirdly gets me thinking about SOCIETAL CONSTRUCTS, man. why would a far removed cave living big shot like him deem actions like those as all time lows deserving of death? who taught the mummy tha preschool morals??? gets me thinking abit beyond tha game ahh but who gives a shit right?

otherwise a quick fun lil rpg maker ghost story. funfun