Game Review > Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo

What is the game about?

Paranormasight is a horror/mystery visual novel set during a night (and day) in Honjo, where 9 people unexpectedly receive the power of a curse. Each of the curses is based on one of the '7 Mysteries' (of which there are actually 9), and each has the ability to kill another person so long as a specific condition is fulfilled. What's more, they each are imbued with knowledge of the 'Rite of Resurrection', a method of reviving the dead that requires soul dregs as fuel, a resource collected by killing people with their respective curse.

The story follows multiple curse bearers with different goals as they make their way through this long night and day. This kind of 'battle royale' set up might seem familiar to some of you, though I'll say that you shouldn't go into it with any preconceptions based on that.

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The 'Sight' in Paranormasight

While this game falls under the umbrella of being a visual novel, it expands on the formula in the way the player views and interacts with the world. By using WASD keys or a joystick, you can move your cursor over the screen to select people or objects, and if you reach the edge of the screen... the screen moves. In fact, a lot of locations offer full 360° view of the environment.

Many of these are real life locations from the place the game plays in, the Honjo area of Sumida City, adapted for the sake of the game. Apparently this work was done in cooperation with the cities tourism board and some other local institutions.

Most of the time, the ability to look around isn't that important outside of getting some flavor text, but occasionally you will be surprised by a character unexpectedly being right behind/besides you, or suffer as a consequence of turning your back on someone you shouldn't have. Beyond that it's mostly useful for its ability to immerse you deeper in the world.

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The Protagonists & Story

During the prologue, you follow the story of one particular individual, for whom I don't want to say too much.

During the main game, there are 3 perspectives you switch between, and where to advance in one you must sometimes solve a minor puzzle by making the right choice in another. These are:

• A pair of police detectives, an older man and a young energetic one. Tetsuo - the older one - receives the curse stone and sets out to collect all the other stones and ensure no one uses them.
• Harue & Richter: A mother who's son died in a kidnapping one year ago, and the private detective she hired to investigate the case after the police gave up on it. After becoming a curse bearer, she intends to use the Rite of Resurrection to revive her son, though Richter convinces her to not kill anyone herself (yet...), and instead try and steal the soul dregs of other curse bearers first. She became one of my favorites during the first scene she appeared in. Richter is also great, very extra, with a cowboy hat and white suit. Richter, stop JoJo posing! This isn't the time!
• Yakko Sakazaki & Mio: A highschool girl whose friend commited suicide a week ago (or did she?), and another girl who at first only seems interested in the occult but is later revealed to have some actual knowledge on the matter.

The story isn't just about conflict within this single night, but also about the events leading up to it and the pasts of certain characters (e.g. finding out who killed Harue's son.)

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The 4th Wall

A foundational aspect of videogames is that you, as the player, control the actions of the player avatar. In this function, you will sometimes make decision that the characters themselves have no real reason to, by virtue of the fact that you know things they don't. Perhaps you loaded a save, perhaps the game itself told you something, perhaps you're using some other source of knowledge.
This gap is not usually something the game, or even the players themselves, think about. But in Paranormasight, it's a core element of the framing device.
You, as the player, are a presence on the characters shoulder, on all the characters shoulders, and you can use information both from the future and from other perspectives to advance.
There is one particular situation where you have to supply multiple pieces of information to a character in sequence, which results in her wondering out loud if there is something there with her, feeding her information.

(Frankly, I wish it had gone further, wish the game had let her go ahead and try to talk to whomever is helping her and let the player respond in some manner. Alas, it was not to be.)

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Is it any good?

Yeah, I would say so.

The art style is nice, and it has a lot of memorable characters. The mystery/mystery uncovering aspect was neat, the few puzzles there are are decent, and it has a good bit of humor too.

(There's this one guy that you meet once in a while who is really unpleasant to deal with. So it's really fun when 3 characters who all have dirt on him end up confronting him at once, and completely obliterate him on the social battlefield.)

The ending was a bit weak, but not enough to seriously harm the game as a whole.

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Price

My final playtime was a bit over 10 hours, and I went through it decently fast.

While on sale, you can get the game for 10€ on [Steam].