to sum up my thoughts, this is essentially ace attorney but instead of court battles you solve puzzles by going on the internet.

what initially surprised me about project hacker is how engaging i found the overall characters. the cast isn't massive but you've got a wide range of fun and enjoyable characters to help give a lot of these investigations charm. the main character satoru and his childhood friend rina have a dynamic very similar to phoenix and maya, and their interactions were pretty much always smth i enjoyed reading. however the side characters i would argue is where the cast really shines. a lot of them aren't typical one note archetypes, theyre characters with conflicts, troubles and in some cases have motivations that arent necessarily entirely good/evil.

going on to the story, for the most part i really enjoyed it. each individual chapter (called programs) slowly builds off one another and in some cases directly references or builds off threads left in previous ones. this kinda structure makes the world feel a lot more cohesive than a more episodic structure which is what i expected to see going in. theres a few twists in the narrative that really took me by surprise at the direction they were choosing to take, and it culminates in a somewhat climactic finale.

i say somewhat because project hacker unfortunately suffers from "this will definitely sell enough to get a sequel" syndrome. a lot of plot threads and questions are left unanswered by the end, and since the game bombed tremendously and never got a western localisation (despite the fact at one point the trademark for it was filed) we'll probably never get those answered. its not a deal breaker but it is definitely smth i was left feeling a little disappointed by once i reached the credits.

probably the most unique aspect about this game is its gameplay. despite revolving around hacking, the gameplay doesnt really have much to do with it at all (at least in the traditional sense). instead most of the game focuses on using a built in internet browser to search the web for clues on locations, and in most cases, passwords. everyone in this game seems to not know shit about computer security so every password is smth that directly correlates to who they are as a person and their interests. i loved solving every single one of these. it surprising how accurately it manages to capture the feeling of internet sleuthing. while they start off fairly simple (eg. this person has a poster of x therefore going to the website about x should probably give me the answer i need), they slowly start to ramp up into using clues attained from a variety of different, seemingly unrelated sites. what's also really cool is that out of the maybe 50 different websites in the game, probably about half of them are never even used and exist purely for learning more about the world. my favourite of these is an anonymous chat messaging board akin to smth like 4chan where every chapter people will have random discussions about the events of the previous chapters, making the world fill a lot more lived in.

these all come to a head in a heavily game-ified hacking minigame of some sort. these were all pretty cool, however idk if it was just me but some of them can be really fucking hard. the last chapter especially saw me getting a game over multiple times before i finally managed to beat them.

last thing i want to touch on real quick is the music. at first i really wasnt feeling it at all. the majority of tracks in the opening chapter are like 2-4 bar loops with not much going on. and while this did persist throughout the game, i found a lot of the tracks to have this nice charm about them. in particular, the afformentioned hacking minigames have these cool 90s/early 2000s house beats that really get you in that zen mode.

if you can read jp i highly recommend checking this game out. its not gonna blow you away but its a fun little game that really deserves more attention

this game is like if danganronpa and persona 4 had a kid together and you know at first youre kinda skeptical cause one of thems pretty chill but the other is kinda weird as fuck so you wonder how that will affect a child between the 2 and the kid looks kinda strange at first but once you spend time with them and start talking with them youre surprised to find theyre actually pretty cool but then one day the parents decide to split up so one of them wins custody over the kid meaning the other doesnt get to spend as much time with them as before but they still try their best to see them as much as their ex will allow and at first its going great cause they get to have them for days at a time but as time goes on the amount of time theyre allowed to see the kid starts to get shortened days become hours and at some points minutes before theyre ripped away from them and told to wait until next time so after a while naturally the parent decides to confront their ex about it cause this doesnt seem fair and the ex opens the door and after theyve finished exclaiming about how unfair it is to just dramatically decrease the amount of time they get to see their kid and that they deserve at least consistent time windows the ex coldly says "well if you want to see them so badly you can just pay me $10 and see them right now instead of waiting" and the parent is shocked and thinks to themselves this is insane but the waits start to get more painful because of how invested theyve become and they think to themselves every night you know maybe it would just be easier to pay up however this cycle continues until its the kids graduation day and they are finally leaving home forever and the parent is so proud and happy to have been there to witness the childs progress even if they feel partly scammed and then they get to the doors but are kicked out by none other than their ex and told that they can only continue if they pay $100 and at this point the parent finally realises that you know what i have been there pretty much all of the way through this journey who really cares about a graduation ceremony i can already imagine whats going to happen anyway and you know what its probably already being streamed on youtube let me just go home and watch that instead of being tricked into giving more money to someone who owes me nothing for something that on second thought i actually dont care that much about

ok this might be a long one cause i have quite a bit to say.

credited as one of the most influential mystery/horror vns out there, in particular directly inspiring uchikoshi and serving as the basis on which virtue’s last reward was built on, i was quite excited to jump into kamaitachi no yoru finally now that my jp is at a point where i can read stuff comfortably, and it definitely was worth the wait.

the story is essentially your typical and then there were none type setup. however instead of an island and the cast being trapped by a typhoon, instead the location is a ski lodge, with the characters being stuck in a snowstorm. its a small change but as someone whos seen this setup several times by now it was a nice breath of fresh air seeing the ways in which this change in location has an impact on the mysteries at play.

one aspect that i had heard a lot about going in was kamaitachi no yoru’s at the time unique approach to choice making. while you still have your typical cyoa choose a,b,c type choices, the main focus here is in identifying who the culprit is. quite early on in the story (before any of the main cast dies), you are given an option to point out who you think the culprit is by entering their name. there are no flags here meaning its entirely possible you could just get it right first try and get the best ending, however this is very unlikely. in the case that you don’t know who it is, the story will continue and people will start to die. a bit later on you are given a 2nd opportunity to solve the case in the same fashion. solving the mystery here will still net you a good ending, however slightly worse than if you had solved it prior. failing to solve the mystery here leads the murders to continue, where the only endings you can get are bad ones. looking back now its quite a basic structure but for me it was intriguing enough to draw me in and see how early i could solve the case. and whats especially great is there is no big xd cliche asspull plot twist - the culprit and their motives make a lot of sense, can be deduced from clues the game leaves, and feels rewarding to figure out.

kamaitachi no yoru originally released for the snes back in 1994. because of this, i was expecting the presentation to be slightly dated by todays standards but instead was blown away. the games artstyle uses a combination of photography and amazing pixel art to really craft this immersive world. instead of using anime style portraits, the game opts for sillouettes of the characters instead which adds a lot of charm culminating in a unique aesthetic that i really enjoy. some of these are animated at times as well and they look almost disney level quality at times. adding to this immersion is the ost which might be one of if not the most impressive scores i have ever heard on the snes. this was released under the brand of “sound novel” and its not hard to see why. without even touching on the phenomonal music, the use of sound effects from footsteps to these ominous pads that make you feel dread whenever they appear to the sound of the raging blizzard outside. its honestly mindblowing how a game from 20yrs ago can not only live up to but in many aspects outshine vns that are getting released today.

unfortunately, to experience the game in english your options are very limited with both being shit. the remake (kamaitachi no yoru rinne saisei) has gotten a fan translation however the amazing silhoutte style of the original that set it apart from all these fucking anime characters type portraits has gotten overhauled and replaced with just that which pretty much rips away and shits on one of the best aspects of the game. its so bad of a change in fact that the majority of jp fans dislike it too, mass disliking bombing the reveal trailer back when it came out.

on the other hand, there is an official localisation that was done in 2014 and though i havent played it i can tell you right now that you should stay the fuck away from it. first of all its ios only which should already be a red flag, but all the character names and where the story is set have been “westernised”. the main character names of toru and mari have been changed to max and grace and instead of taking place in a snowy region in japan it now takes place in fucking canada. also some of the lines i've seen just read really badly to the point where it breaks your immersion

it really sucks that these are the only options available. although i dont think my jp is good enough to do it justice rn, i really want to take a shot at making a full english script or even a fan translation for the original game at some point in the future so more people can experience this.