great collection of several fun detective romps and brainteasers with cool and fun atmosphere. it has a clearly lower budget than some its mystery adventure contemporaries, but it's smartly used and packs a good variety of content and quality presentation to make it worth your time.
the main story within is an original scenario written for the DS game that stitches together the first 5 sub-scenarios of the then-current Jinguuji Saburou feature phone "novel" series, hence the subtitle. the first 4 are reinterpretations of the original Famicom adventure games with wildly different stories (though the 4th is quite faithful), and the remaining 5th is the first original story for this mobile series. the connections to all these stories are pretty loose, but the way they're utilised in the main scenario is still a much more fun way to include them than simply listing them all in the main menu (though it does do that as well...)
the rest of the game is made up of goofy mini-stories stuffed with branches and gags to look out for, while also letting you solve the mystery yourself instead of following the linear novel structure of the main game.
the writing (both in the original Japanese and in translation) is presented as a sincere homage to classic detective noir fiction, as is the atmosphere referred to earlier. characters are a balanced bunch of quirks and vices, and the scenarios are layered in such a way that makes the journey of discovering the truth behind each mystery an immediately appealing one. there aren't any absurd antics, subversions or unhinged philosophy rants to be found here but that doesn't make it a boring story, does it?
a great comparison I read is that playing these games is like watching an episode of your favourite TV drama series. you're not about to have your mind blown by any particular piece of writing, but the overall experience makes it comforting and still memorable.
also the jazz MIDI music kicks ass. seiichi hamada's one of the few staffers who's been with the series since the very beginning in the late 80s and he's still going.
the main story within is an original scenario written for the DS game that stitches together the first 5 sub-scenarios of the then-current Jinguuji Saburou feature phone "novel" series, hence the subtitle. the first 4 are reinterpretations of the original Famicom adventure games with wildly different stories (though the 4th is quite faithful), and the remaining 5th is the first original story for this mobile series. the connections to all these stories are pretty loose, but the way they're utilised in the main scenario is still a much more fun way to include them than simply listing them all in the main menu (though it does do that as well...)
the rest of the game is made up of goofy mini-stories stuffed with branches and gags to look out for, while also letting you solve the mystery yourself instead of following the linear novel structure of the main game.
the writing (both in the original Japanese and in translation) is presented as a sincere homage to classic detective noir fiction, as is the atmosphere referred to earlier. characters are a balanced bunch of quirks and vices, and the scenarios are layered in such a way that makes the journey of discovering the truth behind each mystery an immediately appealing one. there aren't any absurd antics, subversions or unhinged philosophy rants to be found here but that doesn't make it a boring story, does it?
a great comparison I read is that playing these games is like watching an episode of your favourite TV drama series. you're not about to have your mind blown by any particular piece of writing, but the overall experience makes it comforting and still memorable.
also the jazz MIDI music kicks ass. seiichi hamada's one of the few staffers who's been with the series since the very beginning in the late 80s and he's still going.