The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story Review ([8-0] Naelok)
What are you looking for here?
You might have heard that this is some kind of live action Phoenix Wright type game where you solve mysteries by presenting evidence and make deductions and such. And I mean... I guess it is like Phoenix Wright. Specifically, it's like those moments in the Phoenix games where you have no idea what the hell is going on and you just pick things from the list of evidence until the story continues.
At one point in the story, you have to decide whether or not a killer didn't enter a room because they are either afraid of fire, darkness or tanuki statues with the only clue about the right answer being that someone mentioned that they disliked cigarettes and that someone had stepped on a matchbox out in the yard. There's an entire mystery that culminates in your character falsely accusing the wrong person. People's stories changed and entire characters get retconed left and right. So.... the writing here is not what anyone would call tight.
And what makes it even worse is that you have to do all these deductions and shit in this holographic memory bridge thing where you assemble vague statements together. They help things along by making it so that the clues are also in little triangle patterns, but that's even worse if you think about it. You aren't really putting clues together logically, you're just trying to put jigsaw puzzle pieces together.
So if you're looking for Phoenix-type deductions and interesting mystery solving gameplay, you aren't getting that here.
What you DO get though is what can only be described as an ADORABLE no-budget acting performance by a couple of middle ranked Japanese actors and seiyuus. The main character wears the same hideous outfit for the entire story, the props look like they were bought off Amazon and the whole thing has really strong 'hey are you free this weekend? I want to film a movie game' vibes. And while you can't say that the resulting performance is good, it is absolutely HILARIOUS.
My favourite parts were when the suspects were gathered in one place and you had to choose one of them as your prime suspect. They all put on these "NO, I'M NOT GUILTY! GULP!" faces that never failed to make me laugh. This one gardener guy that never was involved in anything was my MVP.
Overall:
Do you want a well-written mystery game with a tight plot and cool gameplay? Then look somewhere else.
Do you want to see a Japanese women in a plaid skort dramatically stare into the camera and pretend to be a detective? Then that's what you will get in here.