The premise implies a procedural whodunnit, à la Phoenix Wright, but it's actually much stranger than that - it's closer to an open-world collect-a-thon, though one where almost every item is important, a key puzzle piece in an overarching mystery. Or rather several, interlinked mysteries; a multiple homicide and missing person at first, then followed by matters of break-ins, sacrifices, genealogy, demonic possession, fanaticism, and every suspect bearing a secret that may or may not implicate them in all of the above. Combine this with the Pynchonian naming conventions (Kafka Memory, anyone?), the vaporwave soundtrack, and a surfeit of red herrings to add flavour, and you have a very strange game, the type of which I've never really encountered before. Compared to Phoenix Wright, the immediate appeal is the freedom. You can visit the suspects in any order, revisit them with new evidence and testimony to uncover a fresh angle, or just keep exploring a gorgeously designed world map. It uses the uncanny nature of a lifeless game world to tie into its theme of religious hubris - the powerful rich using the powerless poor to create their own fantasy of perfection is given an effective, literal analogue here, and the writing is intelligent enough to trust us to understand this without pressing the point too hard. The main issue is that this all becomes clear within the first half of the game, and because of the player-created structure there isn't the same kind of momentum as a traditional whodunnit - the only tension is whether you can hoover up the last bits of evidence. And the trial is a big disappointment, too, especially given how it set up a difficult situation regarding sympathetic (but not blameless) participants in the crime, then sweeps any complications in character relationships under the rug with a truncated epilogue. Still, one of the most ambitious games of recent times - I can't imagine I'll forget it any time soon.

Reviewed on Dec 01, 2021


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