A step forwards in technology, a step backwards in game design... Especially hilarious considering the original Portopia already fixed its text entry problem in 1985 with the Famicom release. The 1985 version might actually be easier to play than this game!
Adding on top of that the badly AI smoothed character animations... It's a showcase of some of the worst uses of AI, and a showcase that is years too late to impress anyone.
Behind all these flaws is Portopia, a (still, surprisingly) decent visual novel/detective game that made waves in the Japanese games industry of the 80s (and beyond). But it's a crappy excuse for a remake that never should have happened. I played it to observe its use of AI, but I discourage playing it otherwise.
Adding on top of that the badly AI smoothed character animations... It's a showcase of some of the worst uses of AI, and a showcase that is years too late to impress anyone.
Behind all these flaws is Portopia, a (still, surprisingly) decent visual novel/detective game that made waves in the Japanese games industry of the 80s (and beyond). But it's a crappy excuse for a remake that never should have happened. I played it to observe its use of AI, but I discourage playing it otherwise.
the presentation and UI is good. That's mainly why I give it 2 stars.
The game is very weird with its word selection to the point it took me out of the story, so I think I'll just put the game down.
The game is very weird with its word selection to the point it took me out of the story, so I think I'll just put the game down.
The remake of Yuji Horii's first game is an interesting endeavor. The game itself is good, the problem is that an expectation was set that somehow an AI would be able to understand anything written. The game is looking for specific commands and doesn't understand anything outside of that. With the right expectations, this is a fun experience.
I take back everything I said about the original, it's a masterpiece compared to this.
0-star port of a really interesting piece of gaming history.
It takes a lot of skill to port an old text parser game and have it be worse than the original. The fuzzy matching means that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, and it's incredibly hard to figure out how or why. A less intelligent parser like in the original would have been easier to work with because at least it's predictable, and you can develop an internal model of how to talk to the game. Here, you're constantly guessing.
As a game, Portopia has the loose style of storytelling that a lot of early computer mystery games did. Modern players might find it offputting, but it works well and it's easy to see why it was such a big deal in 1983. The ludicrous ending twist is hard for players to guess, in a bad way, but overall it still lands.
It takes a lot of skill to port an old text parser game and have it be worse than the original. The fuzzy matching means that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, and it's incredibly hard to figure out how or why. A less intelligent parser like in the original would have been easier to work with because at least it's predictable, and you can develop an internal model of how to talk to the game. Here, you're constantly guessing.
As a game, Portopia has the loose style of storytelling that a lot of early computer mystery games did. Modern players might find it offputting, but it works well and it's easy to see why it was such a big deal in 1983. The ludicrous ending twist is hard for players to guess, in a bad way, but overall it still lands.
I didn't feel too good when I dropped out of my Computer Science uni degree, but I did think to myself : "At least I'll no longer be tormented by this awful 'Natural Language Engineering' module". Lo and Behold, this stupid discipline continues to ruin my life!
All of entertainment/culture gets fucked over by the profit motive, but I can't imagine a movie studio refusing to release Rashomon in the west and then 30 years later release "Rashomon 48fps Stereoscopic 4D Nanite CGI edition tech demo". There is a bare minimum pretense of respect for the medium.
Fuck You Square Enix! Just release the original, and while you're at it let me buy the Paranormasight OST.
All of entertainment/culture gets fucked over by the profit motive, but I can't imagine a movie studio refusing to release Rashomon in the west and then 30 years later release "Rashomon 48fps Stereoscopic 4D Nanite CGI edition tech demo". There is a bare minimum pretense of respect for the medium.
Fuck You Square Enix! Just release the original, and while you're at it let me buy the Paranormasight OST.
They somehow managed to un-solve a problem that was solved 40 years ago
The original Portopia Serial Murder Case is a 40 year old classic that revolutionized the entire video game industry. Despite that it never actually got a remake until now. Surely a remake of a 40 year old game would be better than the original right? WRONG! While the visuals are much better, this game has a huge glaring flaw. You need to actually type in your responses rather than selecting from a list of options. That doesn't sound too bad at first but once you realize you have no idea what you're actually trying to do it becomes a guessing game to figuring out what words you need to type to progress. What's worse is that most NPCs have basic and vague responses that aren't even a real response to what you say sometimes. The point of AI text is that it can learn and respond based on what you do but this game doesn't even do that so it feels like false advertising.
Look, the problem is obvious: if you want to be able to type freely in a text-based game, then you need to be able to generate responses to whatever the player might say.
But that's not Portopia. Portopia is a game with a carefully defined set of words the player can use and asks for specific responses to specific moments. That's like the point. That's half the puzzle of the game.
So if you smash in this generative text thing only on the player's side.......it won't work! Characters won't have anything to say! You still have to be just ask specific here as in the original because if you don't then you won't get any answers besides "Hm? Huh?" And without the knowledge of what your limitations are--what you can and can't do--it's no longer a puzzle. It's just a brick wall to smash your face into.
Even at free, it is baffling they let this out into the public! The idea, in theory, is interesting! Keep it to yourself!
But that's not Portopia. Portopia is a game with a carefully defined set of words the player can use and asks for specific responses to specific moments. That's like the point. That's half the puzzle of the game.
So if you smash in this generative text thing only on the player's side.......it won't work! Characters won't have anything to say! You still have to be just ask specific here as in the original because if you don't then you won't get any answers besides "Hm? Huh?" And without the knowledge of what your limitations are--what you can and can't do--it's no longer a puzzle. It's just a brick wall to smash your face into.
Even at free, it is baffling they let this out into the public! The idea, in theory, is interesting! Keep it to yourself!
Imagine if Nintendo made a 3D remake of Mother 3 as the first official localized release for the West. That would be really funny to sabotage the West's chance at experiencing such a legendary game. Surely, NO ONE would think to ever do such thing with as profound a title as The Portopia Serial Murder Case is right? Righhhhhhht?
It's syntax is particular enough that it won't recognize "hq" (lowercase) as "Headquarters", but will recognize "HQ" (uppercase). I have no idea how to make progress. I ask what seem like obvious, natural questions, with correct grammar and punctuation, and nothing happens; I type in blunt, old-school adventure game inputs, and get some results, but hit a wall shortly afterwards. Maybe this is moreso an issue with the English language version (I believe this is, afterall, the first official release of Portopia outside of Japan, and is a small, free, tech demo that likely didn't get much QA), but I have some doubts. Maybe it's significantly easier if you're already familiar with the original game and know what sorts of questions you should be asking, which I feel safe assuming most English speakers won't be. Maybe this is an intentionally botched "AI tech demo" so that Squeenix doesn't get swept up in the prospects of automating parts of their development process, or maybe, just maybe, AI isn't actually all that impressive yet.
This game is insufferable, I've been answered "Hmm..." to almost all of my prompts. I was barely able to go to the Mansion and the Nagisa Apartments. I'm sure there is some form of Ai built into this game's code, but it is very unimpressive and does not function properly. I'd stay clear of this, as it's a waste of time, even if it is free.
What could've been an interesting way to evolve adventure games is ironically just as, if not more, frustrating than they ever were. The AI is very poor at interpreting your commands and you could try asking where someone is but you'll instead be told who they are. Simple tasks like wanting to go somewhere feel like a guessing game of figuring out what keywords the game is looking for.
Just skip this garbage and go play one of the other versions of this, unless you really feel like reading "I'm not sure what to say about that" and "Hmm..." over and over again
Just skip this garbage and go play one of the other versions of this, unless you really feel like reading "I'm not sure what to say about that" and "Hmm..." over and over again
Couldn't even get past the first bit of the game, the "AI showcase" is pure hogwash.
I thought the game was generally pretty good, even if the exact phrasing for what the game will accept is a bit too finicky. My main issues with the game are the fact that if you save and quit the game just will not work for several minutes after you load it back up, and the ending twist is pretty lame.
Lame plot twist aside I still found it to be a pretty interesting murder mystery.
Lame plot twist aside I still found it to be a pretty interesting murder mystery.
Never have I seen a game fail at what is supposedly promising this fast. Perfect for people who like talking with walls.
Morra Square Enix
Gave this a shot cause was genuinely curious about this and the possible application of tech like this though I have no clue how I feel about it just jammed into a remake of a game like this. Like I do get the hesitation people were having but I do think the way this was described could be a neat way to get around some of the inherent issues with text parsers in adventure style games possibly.
The problem here is that it's just a fuckin mess of implementation and basically nothing like they described at all. If anything it suffers from all of the same problems and much worse than other adventure games that have made better advancements and accommodations to player thought and actions. Like I checked out the OG game to compare and this works nowhere near how they hoped it would at all in comparison, shit it doesn't work. While I can respect them trying this experiment to test it and feel it out this just needed way more time in the oven than I feel it really got. This doesn't really react to the player and if anything is WAYYYYYY more annoying to use here because you have to constantly guess what the game wants you to exactly say and do. You're not having conversations or "natural flowing dialogue" with Yasu. You have to go down a laundry list of guesses and hope that eventually Yasu actually fuckin answers you after asking a million different variations of the same goddamn question over and over again.
Playing a bit of the OG game honestly having even just menu options and knowing that you have ways to actually ask questions, who to, what exactly you're asking, where a suspect or witness or whoever is an instant extreme improvement and it baffles me how little this game gives you to go on. Even using the NPL menu with "similar phrases to use" doesn't actually help at fucking all. Here it felt like every question I asked was met with confusion and eventually I hit a wall not knowing who to ask what and with the inability to present evidence to literally any of the suspects even though Yasu kept telling me that I could and should. I couldn't even ask most of them about their alibis or anything about any of the information they gave me. I dug looking around environments and pointing shit out to Yasu and picking stuff up on my own but wow the game does anything it can to stonewall you and that is definitely not intentional. Apparently using the "higher quality parser" and the voice parsing helps but it eats through VRAM like nobodies business and basically is only usable if your shit is fuckin good so I couldn't try it at all and honestly I doubt it if even the basic shit is fumbled this badly.
They should just rerelease the OG game for modern platforms and try this again with something all its own to really experiment with it down the line once they've worked more of this out or something cause as is this is a complete fuckin mess. Knowing Square though this is probably a complete one and done tho.
What a shame. On the upside its made me way more interested in finally giving the original game a shot so may or may not do that sometime soon. We'll see. If anyone's got any NES reccs feel free to go for it cause that's a huge blind spot for me honestly. Reminds me I gotta get on some PC-98 stuff too. I really need to play more detective/mystery/adventure games in general too.
The problem here is that it's just a fuckin mess of implementation and basically nothing like they described at all. If anything it suffers from all of the same problems and much worse than other adventure games that have made better advancements and accommodations to player thought and actions. Like I checked out the OG game to compare and this works nowhere near how they hoped it would at all in comparison, shit it doesn't work. While I can respect them trying this experiment to test it and feel it out this just needed way more time in the oven than I feel it really got. This doesn't really react to the player and if anything is WAYYYYYY more annoying to use here because you have to constantly guess what the game wants you to exactly say and do. You're not having conversations or "natural flowing dialogue" with Yasu. You have to go down a laundry list of guesses and hope that eventually Yasu actually fuckin answers you after asking a million different variations of the same goddamn question over and over again.
Playing a bit of the OG game honestly having even just menu options and knowing that you have ways to actually ask questions, who to, what exactly you're asking, where a suspect or witness or whoever is an instant extreme improvement and it baffles me how little this game gives you to go on. Even using the NPL menu with "similar phrases to use" doesn't actually help at fucking all. Here it felt like every question I asked was met with confusion and eventually I hit a wall not knowing who to ask what and with the inability to present evidence to literally any of the suspects even though Yasu kept telling me that I could and should. I couldn't even ask most of them about their alibis or anything about any of the information they gave me. I dug looking around environments and pointing shit out to Yasu and picking stuff up on my own but wow the game does anything it can to stonewall you and that is definitely not intentional. Apparently using the "higher quality parser" and the voice parsing helps but it eats through VRAM like nobodies business and basically is only usable if your shit is fuckin good so I couldn't try it at all and honestly I doubt it if even the basic shit is fumbled this badly.
They should just rerelease the OG game for modern platforms and try this again with something all its own to really experiment with it down the line once they've worked more of this out or something cause as is this is a complete fuckin mess. Knowing Square though this is probably a complete one and done tho.
What a shame. On the upside its made me way more interested in finally giving the original game a shot so may or may not do that sometime soon. We'll see. If anyone's got any NES reccs feel free to go for it cause that's a huge blind spot for me honestly. Reminds me I gotta get on some PC-98 stuff too. I really need to play more detective/mystery/adventure games in general too.
Genuinely can only think about the developers who wasted who knows how much time just to churn out a product that is so fundamentally broken that it's widely declared to be "less playable" than a game old enough to have grandchildren. I can only hope that this works better in Japanese because there's no other reason I can think of to sit on this game for 4 decades and release this as the "new and improved" version. Whole game feels like a teacher of a foreign language class grading me on my ability to converse with a student who's been sleeping through the lessons.
go to mansion
look at lawn
investigate lawn
look at grass
look at stairs
look at the lawn
reach down and touch the yard
investigate the thing on the lawn
look at the glimmer by the stairs
touch the sparkle
touch object by stairs
investigate sparkle
investigate object
get thing over there
get thing
tell Yasu to get thing
tell Yasu to get the thing on the lawn
tell Yasu to investigate lawn
reach down and touch the grass
please look at lawn
please look at the lawn
please look around
help
help me
help me please
slap Yasu
look at lawn
investigate lawn
look at grass
look at stairs
look at the lawn
reach down and touch the yard
investigate the thing on the lawn
look at the glimmer by the stairs
touch the sparkle
touch object by stairs
investigate sparkle
investigate object
get thing over there
get thing
tell Yasu to get thing
tell Yasu to get the thing on the lawn
tell Yasu to investigate lawn
reach down and touch the grass
please look at lawn
please look at the lawn
please look around
help
help me
help me please
slap Yasu
You ever see something that only exists because some suit thought it would net them a promotion?
The stink of "internal pitch released to the public" is one that this game will never manage to wash off of itself, because that is what this so obviously is. This was designed, top to bottom, for the sole purpose of being used in a business proposal to trick some old guys into investing. AI is hot right now, peaking in its usual fad cycles — gamer president memes aren't going to be around for much longer, but they're everywhere right now —and the Square Enix business department have taken the Web3 bait. NFTs, crypto, the blockchain, and now with a re-imagining of The Portopia Serial Murder Case, we're getting into the GPT-esque AI text parser sector. What's unfortunate for the Square Enix Web3 diehards is that their ideas fucking blow and their execution is somehow even worse than their concepts.
The idea of augmenting your traditional text parser with AI may sound interesting. It isn't. Square Enix claims that the point of this move is to limit the classic guess-the-verb problems that arise in primitive text adventure games by allowing the computer to take broader guesses at what the user is trying to say; in effect, putting the challenge of "what am I supposed to do" on the program, rather than the player. The reason why this doesn't work at all is because it's ironically harder to grok what the game is willing to accept as an input when you don't have a predefined list of which verbs work and which ones don't. LOOK and USE and TAKE are primitive, but they're also intuitive. Having a conversation with your AI partner to facilitate going to a location while they hem and haw and chide you for wasting time is frustrating, not convenient.
The game told me very early on that the victim's nephew had a motive and lived down by the port, at Nagisa Apartments. The most rudimentary of text parsers should be able to link "Kobe Port" and "Nagisa Apartments" as being interchangeable should the user wish to go there; with AI, this ought to be trivial. I wanted to go check the place out to see if there was any evidence in the area. Here's what happened:
>Go to Kobe port.
"Maybe we should focus on the task at hand?"
>Let's go to Kobe Port.
"Hmm..."
>Go to the port.
"Maybe we should focus on the task at hand?"
>Go Kobe Port.
"Maybe we should focus on the task at hand?"
>Let's go to Nagisa Apartments.
"I always forget exactly where that place is. It's somewhere near the port, though. Let's head there first and get our bearings."
Emphasis mine. So the writers understand that the port and Nagisa Apartments are linked, but the game logic fails to make the connection. Awesome. Really impressive showcase of your new technology.
Also, the LOOK command has been rendered completely useless. You're now expected to hold the right control button, making all of the UI elements disappear in order to inspect the background CGs for details. If this sounds like a terrible change, it is. Trying to LOOK around Toshi's apartment just made my partner say that the building was quiet. Inspecting the background CG revealed a phone, which I then examined through the text parser. Also in the CG was a piece of paper tucked beneath the phone. I tried to look at it, but the game was confused. It didn't seem to know if there was a piece of paper, or a note, or a letter, or a notepad, or anything of the sort beneath the phone. It just kept "Hmm..."-ing me. I don't know if this was an inconsequential background element that was painted in by an artist without being considered interactive in the game logic, or if it was a critical piece of evidence that I wasn't allowed to pick up because I wasn't using the correct terminology. If I could have LOOKed around the room for a written description of what was there, the game might have been willing to tell me which word corresponded to that piece of paper. But it didn't, so I didn't get to examine it. (EDIT: After some asking around, the piece of paper was actually a core piece of evidence. The game specifically wanted the term "memo".)
I don't know what about this is meant to be "AI". My partner acts like his brain is seeping out of his ears unless I prompt him with the exact line the game is expecting me to say. It's artificial, sure, but this is far from intelligent. And the game is ten fucking gigabytes! They must have packed the entire model into this thing, and it barely functions! Honestly, this feels like a shoddy Flash-based text adventure more than it does a modern AI tech demo. Something this badly put together wouldn't have flown back when Zork was new; in 2023, this is unacceptable.
One more Square Enix failure for the pile. How many more does the company have left in them before they're forced to fold?
The stink of "internal pitch released to the public" is one that this game will never manage to wash off of itself, because that is what this so obviously is. This was designed, top to bottom, for the sole purpose of being used in a business proposal to trick some old guys into investing. AI is hot right now, peaking in its usual fad cycles — gamer president memes aren't going to be around for much longer, but they're everywhere right now —and the Square Enix business department have taken the Web3 bait. NFTs, crypto, the blockchain, and now with a re-imagining of The Portopia Serial Murder Case, we're getting into the GPT-esque AI text parser sector. What's unfortunate for the Square Enix Web3 diehards is that their ideas fucking blow and their execution is somehow even worse than their concepts.
The idea of augmenting your traditional text parser with AI may sound interesting. It isn't. Square Enix claims that the point of this move is to limit the classic guess-the-verb problems that arise in primitive text adventure games by allowing the computer to take broader guesses at what the user is trying to say; in effect, putting the challenge of "what am I supposed to do" on the program, rather than the player. The reason why this doesn't work at all is because it's ironically harder to grok what the game is willing to accept as an input when you don't have a predefined list of which verbs work and which ones don't. LOOK and USE and TAKE are primitive, but they're also intuitive. Having a conversation with your AI partner to facilitate going to a location while they hem and haw and chide you for wasting time is frustrating, not convenient.
The game told me very early on that the victim's nephew had a motive and lived down by the port, at Nagisa Apartments. The most rudimentary of text parsers should be able to link "Kobe Port" and "Nagisa Apartments" as being interchangeable should the user wish to go there; with AI, this ought to be trivial. I wanted to go check the place out to see if there was any evidence in the area. Here's what happened:
>Go to Kobe port.
"Maybe we should focus on the task at hand?"
>Let's go to Kobe Port.
"Hmm..."
>Go to the port.
"Maybe we should focus on the task at hand?"
>Go Kobe Port.
"Maybe we should focus on the task at hand?"
>Let's go to Nagisa Apartments.
"I always forget exactly where that place is. It's somewhere near the port, though. Let's head there first and get our bearings."
Emphasis mine. So the writers understand that the port and Nagisa Apartments are linked, but the game logic fails to make the connection. Awesome. Really impressive showcase of your new technology.
Also, the LOOK command has been rendered completely useless. You're now expected to hold the right control button, making all of the UI elements disappear in order to inspect the background CGs for details. If this sounds like a terrible change, it is. Trying to LOOK around Toshi's apartment just made my partner say that the building was quiet. Inspecting the background CG revealed a phone, which I then examined through the text parser. Also in the CG was a piece of paper tucked beneath the phone. I tried to look at it, but the game was confused. It didn't seem to know if there was a piece of paper, or a note, or a letter, or a notepad, or anything of the sort beneath the phone. It just kept "Hmm..."-ing me. I don't know if this was an inconsequential background element that was painted in by an artist without being considered interactive in the game logic, or if it was a critical piece of evidence that I wasn't allowed to pick up because I wasn't using the correct terminology. If I could have LOOKed around the room for a written description of what was there, the game might have been willing to tell me which word corresponded to that piece of paper. But it didn't, so I didn't get to examine it. (EDIT: After some asking around, the piece of paper was actually a core piece of evidence. The game specifically wanted the term "memo".)
I don't know what about this is meant to be "AI". My partner acts like his brain is seeping out of his ears unless I prompt him with the exact line the game is expecting me to say. It's artificial, sure, but this is far from intelligent. And the game is ten fucking gigabytes! They must have packed the entire model into this thing, and it barely functions! Honestly, this feels like a shoddy Flash-based text adventure more than it does a modern AI tech demo. Something this badly put together wouldn't have flown back when Zork was new; in 2023, this is unacceptable.
One more Square Enix failure for the pile. How many more does the company have left in them before they're forced to fold?
someone at square enix really woke up one day and thought “what if portopia serial murder case was bad actually”
After 40 years of innovations and improvements to the genre, THIS is how you decide to remake this game??? WHAT A FUCKING JOKE. I despise how the Steam page likes to pretend that there was no other way the gameplay could've been improved, and that AI is the ONLY way, as if to completely disregard the Famicom port. I'm not gonna pretend I even can compare this game to the original PC version, but Jesus Christ I can't see how AI improves the gameplay at all. The game can only recognize keywords when presented in the most dry and direct way anyway, so I eventually started typing my commands as if they were pre-determined phrases. You know, like the Famicom version. And only then did the game actually give me results. But even then the amount of times Yasu has no idea what you're saying or misinterprets what your saying is so frequent that I legitimately wanna commit my own Portopia Serial Murders.
Square Enix can fuck all the way off if they think this is an acceptable way to preserve video game history. Honestly, I'd rather play Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir. That's a game I hate on a personal level, but at least there was an attempt to present that game in a modern way that didn't completely shit on video game history.
Square Enix can fuck all the way off if they think this is an acceptable way to preserve video game history. Honestly, I'd rather play Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir. That's a game I hate on a personal level, but at least there was an attempt to present that game in a modern way that didn't completely shit on video game history.
Stop demaking shit if you won't rerelease the originals
Fuck you
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/826960021274492948/941105721498550302/ezgif-6-a0b72fd5d4bd.gif
Fuck you
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/826960021274492948/941105721498550302/ezgif-6-a0b72fd5d4bd.gif
> Go to study
"Hmm....." (command rejected)
> Go to the study
"Alright, let's go inside"
---
> Show pendant
"Let's maybe talk about that after the interview" (command rejected)
> Show her the pendant
"Tell me what you know about this pendant"
---
The above is this game, pretty much. It's rigid like the original text adventure made in the 80s with only 7 or so actions you can do at any point so the remake didn't add more to it, but on top of that the NLP makes it a worse experience despite it being advertised as "AI-powered", given similar phrases and synonyms aren't parsed correctly.
I'd suggest to anyone to play the original instead, at least the limitations are understandable there.
"Hmm....." (command rejected)
> Go to the study
"Alright, let's go inside"
---
> Show pendant
"Let's maybe talk about that after the interview" (command rejected)
> Show her the pendant
"Tell me what you know about this pendant"
---
The above is this game, pretty much. It's rigid like the original text adventure made in the 80s with only 7 or so actions you can do at any point so the remake didn't add more to it, but on top of that the NLP makes it a worse experience despite it being advertised as "AI-powered", given similar phrases and synonyms aren't parsed correctly.
I'd suggest to anyone to play the original instead, at least the limitations are understandable there.