PARANORMASIGHT

PARANORMASIGHT パラノマサイト FILE23 本所七不思議(PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo)A) is a mystery Visual Novel with horror elements developed by SQUARE ENIX. The story revolves around an occult ritual that releases a set of cursed objects and each person with a curse is then forced to kill the rest for the purposes of another occult ritual.

, ,

Review

PARANORMASIGHT is a bit deceptive in how it presents itself versus how it really is.
It presents itself as a horror game but…well, it’s a mystery Visual Novel with horror elements. This might sound like a ‘who cares’ difference, but it is key.
If you’re expecting to be spooked for big chunks of the VN then yeah, no, that ain’t happening. Even on the VN/Game spectrum, it leans very much into the VN part of it. It has gameplay inside, but it’s pretty linear all things considered. I might use the term ‘game’ later on but this is an accident on my part.
Let me give you an idea of the structure. The first half of the VN takes place at night. It’s also far more exciting and tense than the second half of the VN. The second half takes place during the day and is much calmer and investigation-focused.
One reason for the difference in tone has to do with those ‘cursed objects’ I mentioned in the opening text. Those can only be used at night and they accounted for about 70% of the tension in any given scene.
Yes, this is another situation like Cross Ange or Koutetsujou no Kabaneri where the story is split into two distinct halves. However, the transition here works quite well. It helps that it’s split along the time of day (or night), which helps with the tone.
The first half of the VN is basically filled with you, as the player, having to figure out what people’s curses are, while not getting hit with them yourself. It’s pretty thrilling solving this ‘puzzle’.
I feel this is a decent place to pivot into the gameplay. Primarily, this is a point-and-click style puzzle game, where you’re presented with a puzzle and, well…you solve it. The solutions to the puzzles are not difficult to land at, but they are creative and not immediately apparent in many cases.
However, this is also where PARANORMASIGHT falters: it doesn’t make full use of the mechanics it establishes. Among these mechanics are: recalling information; using items; using curses during parts of the VN. Basically, it’s very railroaded and that’s a bit frustrating.
Now a hard pivot: Mayu’s escape. I mentioned that the second half is more relaxing and, well, this is true, though there’s one exception. At one point in the VN, you gain access to a character trapped in a room and escaping that room requires creative problem-solving. This is also one of the more frustrating parts of the VN, since if they extended the ideas from this segment to the rest of it, it would lean more ‘game’…but it would also be soooo gooood. Actually, more interactions between the player character and Mayu would have been great.
That said, I can understand that making it less linear would make PARANORMASIGHT longer which, yeah, that might be a problem. Especially on the development end. Though that won’t prevent me from pointing out the missed opportunity.
Going back to the tone and the first half/second half stuff. The second half is the majority of the VN, so for most of it you’re calmly investigating and solving puzzles. The first half, the tense bit, is much shorter. Would PARANORMASIGHT benefit from having more tension besides the night segment? I’m leaning on ‘probably’.
I think it would have made sense to include a third part, which takes place during a second night, where the climax would occur. But…let’s keep a few things in mind: by that point, you (the player) already know what all the curses do, what their limitations are and so on. The tension in the first half primarily derived from the fact you didn’t know what those curses did. It wasn’t just the fact you were in danger. As a result…I’m not really sure if more tension could be injected into PARANORMASIGHT. It’s kinda…yeah. Although, while playing, I did feel anxious during the second half, because there was a deadline (the night) that I was getting worried about. That’s partially why I think a second night might have been a good idea…it’s what I was expecting to happen anyway.
Another thing to consider is that those tense standoffs primarily take place during the Prologue which, y’know, is even shorter. There is tension in the other parts of the night, but it’s primarily concentrated in the Prologue. PARANORMASIGHT kinda unintentionally screws itself, because the Steam discussions I’ve read indicate a decent number of players found the lack of ‘thriller thrills’ in the rest of the VN disappointing. Though, again, considering the circumstances, it would have been difficult to inject more tension into it.
Now for the ending: PARANORMASIGHT‘s real ending is a bit anticlimactic. This isn’t too surprising considering how they went about it, but still. Notably, though, it renders basically the entire VN pointless, since it is based on changing the past. But this is a bit of a quirky situation, since many of the payoffs we see throughout PARANORMASIGHT do still happen despite the time travel. So, yeah, it’s strange.B)
To finish this off…a few disconnected thoughts based on my notes.
I must admit that I looked at a walkthrough to reach the ending, but the reason was because it was midnight and I was too tired to think properly.
I really enjoyed PARANORMASIGHT and played it from beginning to end pretty fast.
As far as I can tell, there aren’t any serious storytelling issues with PARANORMASIGHT besides the issue with how it presents itself and maybe the ending, but even that seems kinda minor.
The way the player character is integrated into the story was unexpected and handled with grace. It was a pleasant surprise is what I’m saying.
I really liked the presentation of the VN, which was fancier than most and it really immersed me into it. Same with the worldbuilding and folklore. Very immersive and it’s ‘cause it was well-integrated.

A) ‘FILE23’ conspicuously missing from the localized title for some reason.
B) I’m noting this in a footnote, but someone in the Steam discussions suggested an alternate ending where everything occurred but Yoko was defeated after the fact. I think this is an interesting suggestion but I find it difficult to figure out how it could actually be done considering how the story is written. The problem is that she’s hidden for most of PARANORMASIGHT with zero chance of her being discovered. One solution is possibly Mayu, who could have informed the player or the other way around.