I see your typical recommendations and I approve 100% of them. Somnium proved to me that Uchikoshi really just needed a fresh slate when making a game and that ZTD’s problems could have been circumvented outside of a serialized situation (and maybe less throwing shit at the wall to explain some of the magic-science).

But if anyone here is curious about Visual Novels of this type (mystery/horror/psychological/TWISTS), then I want to make a less-known recommendation for Paranormasight: The seven mysteries of Honjo. This game came out of nowhere this year, and made a solid first impression for what appears will be an on-going series.

It’s very ‘gateway’ for the genre, in that it’s probably not going to be anyone’s favorite, and there’s elements of it you’ll compare it unfavorably versus other titles. Example: It has a fair bit of ‘downtime’ on the horror elements, which can’t be understated when you’re there in the moment and is something that doesn’t happen with much older titles like 999 and makes those masterpieces. But overall, I found it amazing how well Square Enix hit it off with their first attempt. Characters are good, there’s a lot of screwballs who turn murderous or tame when pressured, dialogue is pretty good too, you hardly ever get stuck and the game leans on you if you do anyways, and the “oh shit” moments hit the par. Like, some of the stuff the Narrator does is genuinely mindblowing if you’re new to this, although it’s likely that Doki Doki Literature Club already got most of the internet on guard. But not on the whole, other moments are narrative dependent and you may be left wondering the meaning of even if you’re savvy (such as the narrator’s question at the end of the tutorial segment, I’ve seen 999-experts be thrown off-guard by it and go on huge theorycrafting tangents).