This review contains spoilers
Style is, without a doubt, the thing I care about the most in any visual medium. Finishing a movie with no style makes me wish I had slept in the theater, finishing a game with no style makes me wish I had never played it at all, etc. Suda51, thankfully for me, is consistently one of the most stylish people in gaming, and his work on The Silver Case is no exception.
The Silver Case is a very cold, unforgiving game in the way that it feels like we the viewer and the characters we are watching and playing as can never get a moment of rest. On top of the several environments and locations that, with a few exceptions, always feel hostile or looming over us in some kind of way, there is always something to worry about for both the characters and us, whether it be another case ultimately spiraling down the rabbit hole of Kamui for Akira and the Heinous Crimes Unit, or another mysterious threat or anxiety for Tokio Morishima, there is never a real moment of sympathy in this game until the very end. Even then it is bittersweet, as we, with the characters, deal with the realizations that we have been and are viewing the stories of people that are broken and damaged, and people that have been set up from failure from the start.
Those characters are, without a doubt, the best part of this game. Not to say that the visuals themselves don't matter but without the cast we do have make this game. In some ways with these characters there are certain tropes that get flipped on their head, like the hard-ass sailor-mouthed detective Tetsugoro Kusabi's sad realization that he has to escort the love of his life to jail and finally realizing that the world's a lot more complicated than just black and white. Although despite how wonderful and romantic that last sentence may have seemed, everybody in this game is an asshole in one way or another. Everybody we meet and talk to for an extended period of time are all cold, cynical people managing to live in a cold, cynical world and it shows through all the insults and wisecracks and swears that I have to give particular applause to the localizers before because holy shit this is one of the best localizations I've ever seen in a game. Every bit of dialogue is both there for a reason and never goes to waste, whether it be minute details that have later prevalence like the mention in Case 1 of Sumio Kodai being able to read lips or everything Tokio Morishima says to the bartender and Red and Erika that allow us just a little further glimpse into what makes him tick.
Emotionally is maybe the department that this game shines in the most. In my opinion, it's very much Suda51 at his most human, emotional, and sympathetic despite the game's bizarreness. I remember reading Case 2 for both the first and second time and feeling a very deep sadness that I had not felt in quite a while, and very well tearing up at Kusabi's speech at the end of Case 5 and all of Erika's emails to Tokio at the beginning of Report 5 both times I played the game.
Ultimately, I think this is a game about people that are broken, damaged, and that were set up for failure from the start learning to climb past the hardships that they were given and regardless of if it were through running away, revenge, or simple acceptance, living the lives that they were always meant to live.
"Kill the shadow, and give birth to the light.
Find the light within your spirit.
Seize that fucking light, Akira.
The Silver Case is a very cold, unforgiving game in the way that it feels like we the viewer and the characters we are watching and playing as can never get a moment of rest. On top of the several environments and locations that, with a few exceptions, always feel hostile or looming over us in some kind of way, there is always something to worry about for both the characters and us, whether it be another case ultimately spiraling down the rabbit hole of Kamui for Akira and the Heinous Crimes Unit, or another mysterious threat or anxiety for Tokio Morishima, there is never a real moment of sympathy in this game until the very end. Even then it is bittersweet, as we, with the characters, deal with the realizations that we have been and are viewing the stories of people that are broken and damaged, and people that have been set up from failure from the start.
Those characters are, without a doubt, the best part of this game. Not to say that the visuals themselves don't matter but without the cast we do have make this game. In some ways with these characters there are certain tropes that get flipped on their head, like the hard-ass sailor-mouthed detective Tetsugoro Kusabi's sad realization that he has to escort the love of his life to jail and finally realizing that the world's a lot more complicated than just black and white. Although despite how wonderful and romantic that last sentence may have seemed, everybody in this game is an asshole in one way or another. Everybody we meet and talk to for an extended period of time are all cold, cynical people managing to live in a cold, cynical world and it shows through all the insults and wisecracks and swears that I have to give particular applause to the localizers before because holy shit this is one of the best localizations I've ever seen in a game. Every bit of dialogue is both there for a reason and never goes to waste, whether it be minute details that have later prevalence like the mention in Case 1 of Sumio Kodai being able to read lips or everything Tokio Morishima says to the bartender and Red and Erika that allow us just a little further glimpse into what makes him tick.
Emotionally is maybe the department that this game shines in the most. In my opinion, it's very much Suda51 at his most human, emotional, and sympathetic despite the game's bizarreness. I remember reading Case 2 for both the first and second time and feeling a very deep sadness that I had not felt in quite a while, and very well tearing up at Kusabi's speech at the end of Case 5 and all of Erika's emails to Tokio at the beginning of Report 5 both times I played the game.
Ultimately, I think this is a game about people that are broken, damaged, and that were set up for failure from the start learning to climb past the hardships that they were given and regardless of if it were through running away, revenge, or simple acceptance, living the lives that they were always meant to live.
"Kill the shadow, and give birth to the light.
Find the light within your spirit.
Seize that fucking light, Akira.