PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo

This game has exactly the right amount of eeriness that gets me tense for the whole playthrough without being too scary for my easily frightened ass.

9/10 i totally recommend it! (✯◡✯) The plot was very well made, each character contributed to the story, and the vibe and setting of the game is very unique and interesting to say the least. I also appreciated the overall moral of the story and the way you have to think out of the box when it comes to puzzle-solving. While i loved the twists and mystery aspect, i just wish it could've been better hidden and not predictable at times for more suspense but nevertheless it's an amazing game especially for people who want to get into vns.✧

This is a weird one for me. Not a big visual novel person, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I ended being fairly mixed overall on this one. The game makes a very strong first impression; the prologue is absolutely stellar. The pacing is great, the tone is tense and spooky, and it ends on a nice big crescendo to lead you into the meat of the rest of the game. Unfortunately I feel like the pacing then comes to a screeching halt and rarely, if ever, hits the highs of the prologue again. There is so much exposition and explaining in this game about the rules of curses, curse echoes, spirits, possession, and whatnot that just doesn't need to be there. It slows down the pace to a crawl, and by over explaining all the magic and supernatural elements, it cheapens them and makes them not very scary. As for the good, the music is great and the visuals are genuinely unique; I've never seen an anime style game use this visual style before. The characters have thick black outlines where you can see the brushstrokes, and the shading is very soft and muted, leading to an interesting contrast. The little animations the characters do, while understated, are also all great and add a lot of life to them. They also utilize what are I Google street view low res style 3d scanned environments, and I think they add a lot coupled with the unique visual style of the characters. The prose itself is also pretty solid throughout. The characters are believable and sympathetic, and there are some great scenes here and there. But like I said above, it feels like so many of these scenes are just characters expositing at each other. The game also feels about 3 or 4 hours too long for the story it wants to tell. Finally, without going into spoilers, probably one of the best and most interesting things the game does with its narrative is the "meta" elements. You'll see very quickly what I mean if you try this game out. These are the parts of the game that worked best for me, and I would have loved to see more of it during my time with the game. Overall it's like a 3/5 for me. It has the elements of a great spooky mystery story but with all the exposition, and how ungodly long certain scenes are, it just can't maintain the tension and pace it needs to