It was a complete coincidence that the sequel to Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo was announced just weeks after I finished it, and I was on such a high from the experience I couldn’t wait to try it. The first game was a great mix of intriguing while unsettling plot featuring a dark cast of characters, all ready to kill each other with genuinely gross curses at any moment. Alongside its ingenious art style, I was ready for more.
Unfortunately for me, Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse is a very different game. Gone are almost all the horror elements, replaced with island mysticism. Gone are the detectives out of their depth and serial killers on a rampage, replaced with detectives well within their depth and barely a bad guy in sight. Gone are the two meddling kids, replaced with, well, a bunch of meddling kids.
My boss always emphasized managing expectations. With its stellar introduction, Paranoramasight was a visual novel horror series ready to make dark Japanese myths a terrible reality. I felt underwhelmed playing Mermaid’s Curse, constantly wondering when things would go terrible (they do once, granted) and wishing for the horror halcyon days of me playing The Seven Mysteries of Honjo in early 2026.
Now that we’re beyond the fold, I’ll admit that Mermaid’s Curse has something going for it that I did not expect: it’s a love story! A fascinating, fantastical, tragic love story. Unfortunately for the game’s plotting, it literally takes about three quarters of the playtime for it to reveal that.
I was quickly buttoning through most of the game’s chapters, utterly confused why they were attempting to tell such a mundane story about a seaside town and its boring residents. There are a few curse stones like in the first game, but they never felt like a threat, they’re also freely passed around with minimal effort from our game’s cast, giving the branching storyline a confusing feeling of who has what and when.
A few hours into the game, it’s revealed one of the teenagers we’ve been following is actually over 800 years old, having been cursed to be an 800 year old immortal when they were younger, but now finally, with some relief, near their death. At last, some interesting drama to grasp onto as the player, but it’s not until basically all the scenarios play out do we finally wrap around to some scenes from before the game started, revealing what Mermaid’s Curse is actually about.
Most of those mid-game scenes are dull as rocks though, with the two competent pairs of paranormal investigators going about their detective work and the kids attempting to grapple with some revelations of their own, but it all just feels like it’s in the way! I was seriously bored out of my mind by the game until it finally got to what it truly wanted to be; a big fail in its plotting and pacing. The final quarter of the game is revelatory, it’s just unfortunate it took so long to get there.
As a visual novel there’s not too much here for gameplay, but there is a cool diving minigame you can repeat over and over to grind out a few levels in. It’s a nice escape you have access to whenever you’d like, but you won’t get more than thirty minutes of entertainment out of it.
The requirements for the game’s true ending are also so obscure I had to look them up, it’s a clever trick to trigger it, but also far too clever for its own good.
Overall, if you enjoyed the first Paranormasight and are looking for more horror/mystery storytelling, look elsewhere. Mermaid’s Curse doesn’t even strive for that level of horror, but what it does offer isn’t very compelling. I did learn about Japanese Ama divers though, so there’s something.
