There's a Dara O'Briain sketch where he says "you never read a book that stops after 3 chapters, asks you what the major themes are, and then stops when you can't answer". Well, they've done it. Shijima Story is more-or-less a TV show that pauses at the end of every episode to give you a bit of a quiz. I knew this was an FMV game, and was interested to see how they'd handled it, but for the most part it's by placing all the gameplay in big blocks after 15 minutes of FMV footage where you make 'deductions' to try and puzzle out the mystery. I don't think that's fundamentally a terrible approach to take, but combined with other decisions the game makes, I'm just left puzzled, and probably not in the way the designers intended.
Every element is just a little less quality than I'd hoped. The story spans 100 years and 3 time periods, but the actors spend most of that shuffling around the same slightly cheap sets. Nothing looks dramatically different in Taisho period to the Reiwa period. The performances are just a little hokey. The mysteries are underwritten, and focused on bizarre nonsensical twists, and withholding key deductions from the player for a dramatic reveal. The majority of the puzzle solving is actually focused on matching visual patterns completely unrelated to the crime, like a Poirot case where the solution is written on the back of an Eiffel Tower jigsaw puzzle.
I quite like some of the performances and particularly enjoyed seeing Gaku Sano, star of Kamen Rider Gaim, playing various parts. I'm a big fan.
Worth picking up if it goes on sale for under a tenner, but wouldn't recommend it for more unless you're the specific sort of Agatha Christie fan who doesn't care about motives or alibis but just elaborate Jonathan Creek style Tricks.
Every element is just a little less quality than I'd hoped. The story spans 100 years and 3 time periods, but the actors spend most of that shuffling around the same slightly cheap sets. Nothing looks dramatically different in Taisho period to the Reiwa period. The performances are just a little hokey. The mysteries are underwritten, and focused on bizarre nonsensical twists, and withholding key deductions from the player for a dramatic reveal. The majority of the puzzle solving is actually focused on matching visual patterns completely unrelated to the crime, like a Poirot case where the solution is written on the back of an Eiffel Tower jigsaw puzzle.
I quite like some of the performances and particularly enjoyed seeing Gaku Sano, star of Kamen Rider Gaim, playing various parts. I'm a big fan.
Worth picking up if it goes on sale for under a tenner, but wouldn't recommend it for more unless you're the specific sort of Agatha Christie fan who doesn't care about motives or alibis but just elaborate Jonathan Creek style Tricks.