I liked Honor Mizrahi as a character, but even after my thirty-five hour play session, I'm still not convinced by the combination of visual mystery novel and Picross puzzle solving. A single Picross puzzle can take around ten minutes to complete. Now imagine trying to stay engaged in a mystery while constantly being yanked out of the story for required Picross solving. Conversely, imagine wanting to solve some Picross puzzles and having long story sequences separate each puzzle.

One mistake of my own made the Picross solving especially annoying for me. I didn't learn of the "show mistakes" option until my last play session. So I would back myself into corners and have to start the entire puzzle over again. That's on me. I would have liked the game more if I knew of this simple way to locate my missteps.

For me, if I'm in a Picross mood, I'd rather play a Picross game. If I'm in a visual mystery novel mood, I'd rather play one of those. When combined, one or the other was frustrating me.