In starting to write this review I cast my mind back to when I started playing it, knowing that I took far longer in days to finish it than the run time of the game actually is.
Thinking about the start though started to make me cast my mind a little further back, “when did I even hear about this?” I ask myself with no answer and start to feel annoyed as of course this was not in an English speaking direct even if published by a major company.
Paranormasight, developed and published by Square Enix, is a paranormal horror visual novel.
Without going into spoilers the game surrounds as the subtitle says “The Seven Mysteries of Honjo” and the curses that are linked to them.
Early on you are introduced to the idea of curse stones, an item that allows its bearer to kill someone with a curse as long as the person targeted fulfills certain requirements.
Who has these and what they lead to and what their motives are become a long winding story with multiple characters you get to follow the perspective of.
Outside of that I don’t want to explain any plot but this set up leads to what I find are the greatest parts of the game, the interactions between these curse stone bearers.
Yes, a mild spoiler there but (shocking) being there are “seven mysteries” more than one person has access to these stones and when they meet conversations are just interesting, but they can be tense and exciting.
It may be a fairly bad analogy but these meetings reminded me of Stand Battles from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, just with less muscles and bombast.
Each character is trying to figure out each other's motives but also if they have a power and what will fulfill it.
In terms of gameplay this becomes some very exciting puzzles and Paranormasight does a lot to make you scratch your head and think outside of the box.
Each of these curse fulfillments are tied back to their mysteries, the ancient tales that have been told and makes use of your classic in game files better than maybe any other game by you wanting to read them for clues and not just because the story isn’t being given to you well enough.
At one time or another Zero Escape games appear in my top 5 on backloggd. I love it when a visual novel gives you more, not just conversational choices but puzzles. To me this is why videogames are one of the greatest mediums that exist because even things such as Fighting Fantasy books can’t quite give you the same level of interaction with reading.
Paranormasight at its peaks are like the Zero Escape games even with much less elaborate puzzles. This is where a negative comes in however and that is the amount of even consistency that it does get to those heights.
A game which I do love that is actually this short should not have taken me almost a month to finish, but the reason being was that I started put it off around the middle of the game because the absolute genius it had shown at the start had seemed to disappear and, look, I’m a dummy, I can’t be doing with just reading.
Thankfully it picked back up and reached the same heights once again. I feel that my own delaying may have also made that “middle” larger than it was in reality.
In the end I would recommend this to anyone who has enjoyed the Zero Escape or Danganronpa games. I’d say if you’ve got the patience for a more interactive VN then give it a go too, though I can appreciate it’s not a genre everyone enjoys and I guess even Nintendo and/or Squeenix didn’t think it was worth mentioning to English speakers because “we’re not into it”.
It’s a great story. The characters are class, the visuals and music are both really nice and because it is fairly “simple” it’s a budget game (around £15) so will not hurt your wallet as much as many recent games.
Thinking about the start though started to make me cast my mind a little further back, “when did I even hear about this?” I ask myself with no answer and start to feel annoyed as of course this was not in an English speaking direct even if published by a major company.
Paranormasight, developed and published by Square Enix, is a paranormal horror visual novel.
Without going into spoilers the game surrounds as the subtitle says “The Seven Mysteries of Honjo” and the curses that are linked to them.
Early on you are introduced to the idea of curse stones, an item that allows its bearer to kill someone with a curse as long as the person targeted fulfills certain requirements.
Who has these and what they lead to and what their motives are become a long winding story with multiple characters you get to follow the perspective of.
Outside of that I don’t want to explain any plot but this set up leads to what I find are the greatest parts of the game, the interactions between these curse stone bearers.
Yes, a mild spoiler there but (shocking) being there are “seven mysteries” more than one person has access to these stones and when they meet conversations are just interesting, but they can be tense and exciting.
It may be a fairly bad analogy but these meetings reminded me of Stand Battles from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, just with less muscles and bombast.
Each character is trying to figure out each other's motives but also if they have a power and what will fulfill it.
In terms of gameplay this becomes some very exciting puzzles and Paranormasight does a lot to make you scratch your head and think outside of the box.
Each of these curse fulfillments are tied back to their mysteries, the ancient tales that have been told and makes use of your classic in game files better than maybe any other game by you wanting to read them for clues and not just because the story isn’t being given to you well enough.
At one time or another Zero Escape games appear in my top 5 on backloggd. I love it when a visual novel gives you more, not just conversational choices but puzzles. To me this is why videogames are one of the greatest mediums that exist because even things such as Fighting Fantasy books can’t quite give you the same level of interaction with reading.
Paranormasight at its peaks are like the Zero Escape games even with much less elaborate puzzles. This is where a negative comes in however and that is the amount of even consistency that it does get to those heights.
A game which I do love that is actually this short should not have taken me almost a month to finish, but the reason being was that I started put it off around the middle of the game because the absolute genius it had shown at the start had seemed to disappear and, look, I’m a dummy, I can’t be doing with just reading.
Thankfully it picked back up and reached the same heights once again. I feel that my own delaying may have also made that “middle” larger than it was in reality.
In the end I would recommend this to anyone who has enjoyed the Zero Escape or Danganronpa games. I’d say if you’ve got the patience for a more interactive VN then give it a go too, though I can appreciate it’s not a genre everyone enjoys and I guess even Nintendo and/or Squeenix didn’t think it was worth mentioning to English speakers because “we’re not into it”.
It’s a great story. The characters are class, the visuals and music are both really nice and because it is fairly “simple” it’s a budget game (around £15) so will not hurt your wallet as much as many recent games.