Never have I played a game that did so much with so little, but Square Enix’s Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is a masterclass in effective and clever storytelling. Released in 2023, the horror visual novel tells the tale of a curse being unleashed upon a small town, reviving its deadly past in a series of gruesome murders taking place roughly over 24 hours. Set in the 1980s, you’ll jump between characters and timelines both investigating and taking part in the deaths.
But what sets Paranormasight apart for me is its incredibly dynamic and well directed conversations that take up the majority of the game. The camera slowly zooms and pans while the soundtrack provides an eerie backdrop to an already disconcerting situation. Cutscene direction and purposeful lighting make even the simplest discussion into something worth paying attention to. Having just forced myself to finish Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit while skimming so much of the dialog, I was enthralled by Paranormasight.
I was planning to write this review either way, but a sequel was just announced and is releasing this month, Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse. There’s never been a better time to take the plunge in the Mysteries of Honjo.
The majority of your time in the game will be playing detective to the mysterious circumstances befalling Sumida, Tokyo. The Seven Mysteries of Honjo are actually nine and involve grisly deaths from the past manifesting in revenge-filled totems. Whoever holds these totems can curse others to death similar to Death Note’s notebook; if your target satisfies your curse’s rules, you may immediately kill them in a fashion echoing the totem’s past.
You’ll control characters who are both encountering these curse-holders, trying to save your own skin; and you’ll wield them yourself, giving you power over life and death. Paranormasight’s gameplay is broken up into two categories, scene exploration and conversations. Curse encounters are mostly handled through dialog trees, with certain branches condemning you to death and others progressing the story. Scene exploration falls in between, allowing you to investigate an area for clues and secrets, rotating the background 90 to 360 degrees.
Conversations are the game’s highlight though, featuring Paranormasight’s large cast of characters facing off with death on the line. You often never know if you’re speaking with a curse-bearer who may kill you if you turn your back on them or say the wrong thing. Death is never the end though, as the game’s timeline system allows you to immediately replay a tête-à-tête if it goes south. Progressing through the game often requires you to visit a few key moments multiple times anyway, but its friendly quality of life features allow you to fast forward until you reach new dialog.
Progression through the game is generally very clear, simply navigate the timeline for the next available story that isn’t blocked. You’ll jump between a few main characters, all with their own goals and sidekicks, often intersecting with the other protagonists. My complaint over this system is that some aspects of the story feel irrelevant when placed on the timeline in contrast to everything else. The entire tutorial character is just that, the tutorial, with basically no further relevance to the characters or plot (this fact confused me for a long time, I’ll be honest). The true ending is also hidden behind some hidden dialog choice that I had to look up, kind of irritating since the regular ending is rather underwhelming.
I also wish there were more opportunities to use the curses yourself, even if it leads to an instant game over. Your deaths are often funny (and lead to an achievement, if that’s your thing), and give some insight to the city’s lore. But the number of times you can optionally kill other characters that aren’t in the tutorial can be counted on one hand.
Circling back to the game’s presentation, the first thing that jumps out to seeing Paranormasight is its wonderful painterly look, the game isn’t afraid to shy away from showing it off either: conversations will zoom in close on the character sprites showing off their brushstrokes in all their glory. While each character only has a handful of unique sprites (literally like eight base sprites for each character combined with different facial features), the visual novel aspect never feels stale. The direction is just fantastic, with an incredible eye for framing and lighting.
Clocking in right at 10 hours, Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honji wraps up at the perfect time, any longer and I think I would have begun to get annoyed with the lack of curse action available to the player. I’m absolutely looking forward to the sequel to see what they do with a new location and cast.
