In my opinion, The House in Fata Morgana is one of the most earnest, sincere and respectful works of fiction I have played. It will make you feel all sorts of emotions through its intense and cathartic tragedies, hopeful and optimistic belief in its characters and to top it all off one of the most beautiful romances I have ever seen. The House in Fata Morgana is a story that takes place across almost 1000 years and delves into all matter of subjects such as discrimination, human nature, self-sacrifice, forgiveness and truth but none is focused on more than perspective as the game pulls back the curtain on all of its cast, thoroughly inspecting them, as it encourages and discusses the importance of coming to understand the circumstances that leads people to the decisions they make - no matter how much they may regret them.

Getting the obvious out of the way, the games presentation is out of this world. The setting is constantly shifting door to door as within each one comes a new era. Whether its 1603, a period of great improvement to the arts, 1707 in which sea trade, travel and discovery thrived or 1869 with great advancements in technology - the game manages to consistently adjust its presentation to fit the time and characters within it, perfectly encapsulating the atmosphere of the mansion in and outside the doors. The sprites are incredibly expressive, the backgrounds are quite distorted and muddy which serves to bring more focus to the characters on screen but also lean into the games gothic and horror elements and the music consists of 68 incredibly high-quality songs that don't shy away from occasionally using vocals - largely spoken in Portuguese. Everything visually and audio-wise just comes together so well it's hard not to get taken in by it all especially when one of the first songs that plays is apart of the best, which is aptly called The House in Fata Morgana.

"Events by themselves do not tell the whole story. Only when you take into account their circumstances, what they thought and felt, their perspectives—only then can you say you've reached the truth"

It wouldn't be a fitting review without discussing Fata Morganas biggest strength, which is its cast. As mentioned earlier, the game lays bare all of its characters thoughts, feelings and emotions for us to see, and it's through this deep exploration of the cast that produces fascinating fleshed out characters coupled with very human interactions, and with this showcase of its characters presents and pasts, the game is able to touch upon an array of themes and subjects that I can only say were handled incredibly well, and treated with the utmost respect. Love is a core part of Fata Morgana and is a major theme consistently shown through the cast, and while the game does show off its beauty it also shows off negative aspects of it, such as the hypocrisy that can be born from love, how love can blind you to another persons faults, or the effects of not talking out issues. Another theme is victimhood, and how the game makes it known that recovery can be a long process, with forgiveness being something that shouldn't be expected but can happen so long as that person makes the choice - they are not obligated to forgive those who have wronged them so deeply, but moving on is very important.

This character-driven plot of The House in Fata Morgana ultimately allows it to unravel its core theme of perspective. How often do we immediately lash out or think negatively of those who have wronged us, seeing them as just the person in front of us, rather than looking at them through the lens of what circumstances might have led them to do what they did? What is the foundation of their actions? Beneath every character in Fata Morgana exists ghosts from the past that haunt their future, phantoms that take the form of previous harmful words and actions, ones they may regret, ones they may not, and yet the game understands that rather than simply categorising these actions into terms such as "good" or "evil" , and that such black and white judgement doesn't exist, it's more important to recognise the basis of them. It could be down to coercion and blackmail, misplaced emotion or the long-term effects of institutions. It may be a simple message, but its an important one nonetheless to come to an understanding with those around you, allowing yourself to see a person from a different perspective might entirely change yours. It is truly remarkable how many different subjects the game explores that is due to its fantastic characters, and furthermore how tactfully each subject is approached.

The House in Fata Morgana's narrative is made up of 1 major route, and while the story does take a long while to show its true colours, that shouldn't discourage you from playing through it as the story is incredibly well-rounded with every section of the game being recontextualized overtime. So much carries meaning throughout, with multiple moments of foreshadowing being present in the earlier parts of the game. It may appear melancholy often, but The House in Fata Morgana is truly a hopeful tale that never gives up, its human to a fault and you will be hard pressed to not find some relation to any of the characters. Mechanically the game has some great features, the choices are interesting (namely the usage of timed choices) and the backlog in certain moments is used to enhance the games mystery which is nice. It also consists of numerous bad and dead endings which may occur due to the wrong choice, they're actually pretty good and provide some very haunting but interesting what-if scenarios.

Outside some minor issues with areas of the game that drag for too long, dialogue where the characters don't speak like they would in their respective time periods and some characters needing a bit more time to their backstories, none of these issues are enough to truly take anything away from the extremely gratifying experience that is The House in Fata Morgana. Don't let the games slow start scare you, this game is truly one of a kind that everyone should pick up. It made me euphoric, it made me distraught - and it also made me cry multiple times, something I respect any game for doing.

I really enjoyed this game for its aesthetics, comedy and unique story-presentation but most of all the great and sincere character writing. I ended up enjoying a great deal of the cast and found nearly every main character effective at their role. I ended up loving Mizuki and Aiba especially. This game's best moments are emotional or comedic beats where its well developed characters interact with each other to drive the story, unfortunately this is not always what happens. The central crime mystery of this game is what ends up moving the main route of this game, which falls short. Several scenarios are too contrived and left me frustrated like getting incorrect information presented the same way as fact or exposition and the few times Aiba is out of energy for no justifiable reason. That's also the case for certain plot points which could've been fine if the scale of the game was kept to its character interactions but it instead developed into a climax that felt completey nonsensical and left behind things I thought the game did wonderful. It was mostly this, but also the heavy reuse of locations and some jokes that didn't land that ended up losing my love but I still think fondly of the characters.

Hey did you know that Renju did not inherit the storage company from his father and it was instead given to other people?

I ended up liking this game but not without really bad first impression. The mystery's set up telling us there's some sci-fi ploy we don't have rules for and Ryuki's anachronistic sense of time did not engage me to the story as there was no point to predicting or guessing anything. New characters had either dull or bizarre introductions and a certain major character is introduced with awfully long exposition. Ryuki's partner, Tama, was awful. Her constant unfounded sex jokes made me miserable. The game's story started boring me and did not pick up until ''She Was the Universe'' afterwhich I was excited to get to Mizuki's side. While I still enjoyed both her and Aiba just like I did in the first game their dynamic fell into issues of either sterile dialouge or repeated humour from Date & Aiba's dynamic (repeating jokes from the first game are a bigger problem with minor NPCs.) However in roughly the last third things started improving immensly. There was much more happening in the story including better interactions between the major and new characters. I also began to realise what the plot twist of this game would be unlike the first game where I kind of assumed what was happening as the last thing that'd make sense. When the twist came I really enjoyed the mystery that came out of it and the fantastic character arc it lead to within the best somnium of either game. By now major plot points, although many still feeling contrived, felt like they were aiding to fun character interactions which made it much more enjoyable. I'm not saying this is flawless, the game would still improve from having better justified plot points but they let stronger aspects flourish unlike how the first game built up to a dissapointing ending. I liked the ending of this game much more because it kept its tone and let its great characters shine.

honestly the only thing I didn't like about this game were some of the stupid puzzles and the camera glitching out half of the time, the walking is tolerable

the story is amazing, though the connections between this game and the silver case are loose (but i'd imagine that because this game released before that in the west) the characters and their interactions are funny and charming as all hell, i find the 4th wall breaks funny as well

this version would have been much better if it had the HQ music of the PS2 version, and a camera that didn't glitch out every 2 seconds
but storywise i think this is suda's best work
i cannot recommend this game enough please go play it

it was fucking great, i love all the characters even when some took their time to show their true colors, but they're all interesting with distinct personalities. The mystery itself is really well executed that i was doubting the main conflict, are there 18 or 19 people on this island? Even with the first half being slow it helped me get accustomed to the setting and characters. The music was great too, it has some basic background tracks but when it wants to shine it fucking nails it. My only issue is that the first day has some really boring padding like George talking about war or few characters talking about gold on the beach that could easily be changed to something much interesting.