Argh, this makes me pull air through my teeth... I hate that I like this remake less, because I can see they tried, and in a lot of ways, the improvements upon the original work very well!

But just. Not always.

In writing this all down, I'm bearing recency-bias in mind, and the inherent problems in comparing a remake to a game that, due to changing technology, I can't play as I used to again, and as such only exists in my head. (Nice to see "Carrie Careless and the Galette des Rois" actually working, gotta say.)

My nostalgia for Ib is a thick fog, and I have to admit: This game's puzzles are so painfully easy on a repeat playthrough that this may have lessened my opinion of the remake when, in reality, the original was exactly the same way.

I'll talk about the art real quick: It's a land of contrasts. I've made the blunder of becoming a professional pixel artist since I played the original, so strange mistakes like a persistent lack of proper contrast on character portrait colours, pixel art jaggies, and the (rare) untouched sprite from the original (at one point there's a woman and her daughter that are transparently a lot smaller than all the other sprites in the game including Ib, an elementary school child) stick out to me like a sore thumb. The original's color-reduced digital art was a lot nicer-looking to me than the new pixel art portraits - though of course, that art style isn't gone or anything - just, unfortunately, less commonplace.

Environments have strong texturing that I'm frankly jealous of, but lack detail in every other way. The UI feels... disjointed? Like different parts of it weren't just made by different artists, but in different types of digital media from artist to artist. Frankly, I don't care much for the new Rose health bar. :/

When the art wants to go hard though, it goes hard! I loved the extra detail on all the Guertena artworks! They're very lovingly rendered and definitely a stronger way to display a fictional artist's work than before. The full-screen title and such is also beautiful.

Music's largely an improvement! Once or twice I felt like a track was grating, but so did I with the original.

Despite everything, this is a good way to play this RPG Maker classic - maybe the only way to play it properly, actually, so. Y'know. Take my criticisms with a grain of salt.

BOWLING SLAPS
TENNIS SLAPS
BASEBALL slaps
BOXing is alright
GOLF is sla - I mean fun I guess

+0.5 stars for keeping me entertained for a week trying to figure out how anything in this game was possibly gonna add up in a way that made sense (it didn't)

-0.5 stars for being a $60 game that frequently lags on switch, and for half of the somniums being way too much of an overcorrection for the first game's randomness to the point of being essentially linear "interact with the 1 thing in the room to progress" segments instead of puzzles

-1 star for doing a major disservice to the characters by refusing to follow up on any of the relationships or plot threads from the first game in the name of "no spoilers", then dropping an unavoidable major aitsf spoiler into the game anyway

-1 star for extremely disappointing killer reveals and story... this is a murder mystery game where solving the murder mystery is one of the least satisfying parts of the game

-1 star for the fact that every single character's behavior in this game is driven entirely by a need to pull off the main "plot twist"....which is solely for the player's benefit and does not actually affect the characters at all. there's a certain amount of vague dialogue, coincidence, and information witholding that one has to be prepared to accept in a mystery story, but this game took it to a truly ridiculous level and the story is weaker for it.

+1 star for ryuki being the most relatable uchikoshi protag yet due to him being motivated entirely by severe mental illness and the desire to fuck kaname date

I’m having a really hard time thinking of something good that this game did. Um. GAHHH. Shit. Uh. Rayfa was cute…? I don’t fucking know. Okay now onto the bad because I love being a hater. Nahyuta was the absolute worst prosecutor (and probably character) in this series. Imperialism (not much to be pondered there it’s literally just imperialism). Um. The cases were fucking god awful and WAY too long. Literally everyone is out of character in the weirdest way possible. Has a terrible feeling. Bad vibes. Weird racist amalgam of like South Asian cultures that makes no sense. OH WAIT one other good thing DILF DHURKE 4 LIFE. Oh wait also the incest joke was so creepy I hate the writers so much. Um terrible pacing. Literally the worst pacing in a game. Just god awful. The worst game in the series. They cringefailed with this one.

i wish i could give a game negative stars. in all seriousness this game is almost entirely irredeemable in my eyes from the rampant racism in the entire execution of khurain.

the returning cast feels like they're all poor actors trying to pretend to be their past selves, especially phoenix, maya, and trucy (the latter two who are regressed into wind up dolls that say 'steel samurai' or 'magic panties' whenever the camera pans to them). the cases drag on with dull mysteries, and without that emotional connection i would routinely stop playing.

the closest this games gets to being good is turnabout storyteller because it is not attached to the main plot of the game at all. athena and blackquill get some time to riff off of each other and i would really rather play that than see a lobotomized phoenix.

the new characters are also uninteresting, with the exception of rayfa. nahyuta is actually the worst written prosecutor in my eyes (THIS INCLUDES DGS) for the criminal sin of being boring. him being bitchy isn't even funny. it feels like they read everything people liked about the trilogy and tried to copy it without understanding why it worked