This review contains spoilers
I was really disappointed by this game.
It's world building is pretty interesting, and it ties into the actual main case pretty well. You learn more about the world as you learn more about the case and quirks of the world appear in the case.
The mystery itself isn't too bad either, although it really feels like the deduction is cut short by a lot of the dialogue. I'll deduce something only to have the main character immediately spell out what the clue means, making my mental effort feel completely meaningless. On top of that, I heard a lot about how the game allows different people to come to different conclusions, but I was really disappointed with how that actually was done in the game. There's essentially just two conspiracies that are super clear cut and the only thing that's up for debate is the ultimate murder (and it's only up for debate because there's almost no information given and it really doesn't matter at all). Both of the killers were in the room, and it's pretty much just a question of which one murdered the council members versus which one was shot first. I thought it would've been much more complex and up to interpretation throughout, but it's pretty much exclusively this little sliver at the end.
I also really hated how the game tried to be both a mystery game and a platformer. The combination just doesn't work at all. Stopping my investigation to go pick up blood crystals usually feels tedious, and when the game blocks your investigation based on not exploring the map enough it can be extremely annoying. There were a decent number of times where I had to just look around different rooms until I found the nightmare computer or key item that I needed to continue. The platforming was at best inconvenient and at worst aggravating.
The trial at the end was also really bland. It was pretty much just the game reading back the mysteries that I already solved for an hour. There was barely any new information given, and the actual structure of the trial was literally just selecting the evidence I got in a text box. There was no gameplay here and no new story, it's just a waste of time. I feel like the devs wanted to do something much bigger here, but instead wasted all their time placing relics around the map and writing the quirky descriptions that I ignored 90% of the time.
This game's main issue is that it tried to mix oil and water with their genre, and the game suffers a lot for it. It's not an amazing mystery game and it's a pretty bad platformer. If they focused on the mystery element then they could have had something much better.
It's world building is pretty interesting, and it ties into the actual main case pretty well. You learn more about the world as you learn more about the case and quirks of the world appear in the case.
The mystery itself isn't too bad either, although it really feels like the deduction is cut short by a lot of the dialogue. I'll deduce something only to have the main character immediately spell out what the clue means, making my mental effort feel completely meaningless. On top of that, I heard a lot about how the game allows different people to come to different conclusions, but I was really disappointed with how that actually was done in the game. There's essentially just two conspiracies that are super clear cut and the only thing that's up for debate is the ultimate murder (and it's only up for debate because there's almost no information given and it really doesn't matter at all). Both of the killers were in the room, and it's pretty much just a question of which one murdered the council members versus which one was shot first. I thought it would've been much more complex and up to interpretation throughout, but it's pretty much exclusively this little sliver at the end.
I also really hated how the game tried to be both a mystery game and a platformer. The combination just doesn't work at all. Stopping my investigation to go pick up blood crystals usually feels tedious, and when the game blocks your investigation based on not exploring the map enough it can be extremely annoying. There were a decent number of times where I had to just look around different rooms until I found the nightmare computer or key item that I needed to continue. The platforming was at best inconvenient and at worst aggravating.
The trial at the end was also really bland. It was pretty much just the game reading back the mysteries that I already solved for an hour. There was barely any new information given, and the actual structure of the trial was literally just selecting the evidence I got in a text box. There was no gameplay here and no new story, it's just a waste of time. I feel like the devs wanted to do something much bigger here, but instead wasted all their time placing relics around the map and writing the quirky descriptions that I ignored 90% of the time.
This game's main issue is that it tried to mix oil and water with their genre, and the game suffers a lot for it. It's not an amazing mystery game and it's a pretty bad platformer. If they focused on the mystery element then they could have had something much better.