London Detective Mysteria -- No Spoiler Review
London Detective Mysteria
System: PC, PS Vita
Price: $29.99, $29.99
Voice Acting: Yes (Japanese)
ESRB Rating: M (17+)
Overall Rating: Stole 8/10 ♥s
Pre-Game Perception: Rich girl falls into the seedy underbelly of London, where she Sherlock’s her way out of dangerous situations. Maybe gets to meet some men like Mr. Darcy where they’ll butt heads because MC is a proud, intelligent woman.
Morning-After Reflection: A young girl goes to detective school and has romcom encounters, until things get serious, then they get seriously fictitious. Basically, teenagers dealing with the sins of their fathers and all the darkness that goes on behind the scenes.
Story: “Her Majesty the Queen’s birthday was to be the heiress of House Whiteley’s debut into high society, but an inquiring mind begs for more than parties as she stumbles into the many curiosities that lay hidden in London’s darkest corners. Help sharpen Lady Whiteley’s instincts as a budding detective, take control of her present to uncover the mysteries of her past, and grow an unbreakable bond with one of many dashing personalities from well-known works of fiction.”
Interest Rating: 5/10 I got this game on sale at around 50% off, and I’m pretty sure I was just getting it because the art looked good and I didn’t yet have much to my collection at the time. There wasn’t any real draw besides the price and it wasn’t a bad premise for me. I’m not into the detective thing, but thought I’d give it a go.
MC: For those that have been waiting for a MC whose personality absolutely cannot be ignored, this is your girl. Emily Whiteley is our MC for London Detective Mysteria, and she is every bit as much the heroine of the story as all the LIs are. In some routes more than others, but the point is: she’s a woman that gets shit done! … And still needs saving from time to time. Can’t be too independent or there’s no reason for the pretty boys to come a callin’, right?
First, the game is set in London, so Emily is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, cute-as-a-button noble girl. She’s 16, and has an extensive background that gets revealed pretty early on in the story. She is voiced! Rejoice! Or don’t. At first I thought this was a neat feature, but quickly grew tired of it. I have read that the seiyuu who plays Emily doesn’t do well in the more intimate moments of this game, but I didn’t get that far. I actually-- uh, I might have turned her off while still in the prologue. I just didn’t like the sound of her voice and the way she spoke. It’s obviously completely a personal preference, because I didn’t want Emily to sound that way throughout the whole game. I liked my headcanon voice better. I’d also like to note that I liked the other female seiyuus in this game. Back to the grindstone. Emily both appears as a sprite by the textbox, and (less often) in the game as a full-sized sprite. She is in most of the CGs, more than half, possibly closer to ¾ of them. Second, she never disappears in the story, she has so much agency. Sometimes she drives the story, sometimes the LIs drive it, but I’m never left wondering what the point of her being there is. She cannot be replaced with a sack of potatoes, which is all I really ask. Sometimes she is the damsel in distress (okay maybe a lot of the times), but she has presence and is more than a plot device (most of the time…). Third, she has opinions. Boy, does she have opinions. So many opinions. Again, in some routes more than others, but even when she isn’t proclaiming her thoughts out loud, we’re privy to them in a constant stream of consciousness as the game is (mainly) seen from her perspective. From time to time it gets told by one of the other characters, but the majority of the game is Emily narrating the events, and interspersing her own thoughts with the narrative.
Yeah, yeah, that makes her all very interesting, but can you self-insert? Well… you can change the first name, and keeping it as default (unfortunately) doesn’t allow for the voice actors to say the original MC name. Except her last name. Whiteley is repeated many times, and is unable to be altered. So, sure? You can add whatever first name you want, and it doesn’t make a difference in the gameplay. The problem though, is Emily is spunky at times, or demure at others, but she very clearly has a personality that is hard to overshadow or mold to what the player may like. Most decisions in the game are not emotional responses, so you have no control over the type of character Emily is. There’s no “Kiss him” or “Give him a high five” choices to display a difference in how forward one might want to be. The majority of choices are based on reasoning. Basically, you can attempt to self-insert, but you might find yourself living the life of a heroine that doesn’t run the same course as you do. I do not mind this. When I play my games, I play as if I’m the MC, not that the MC is me. It’s a distinction that some may not understand, but I find explaining it like acting is the easiest way. I’m the actor that becomes Emily, I’m not experiencing the game like I am there with a different name, but instead experiencing the game like Emily is there, who is me.
So, who is Emily Whiteley? She’s quite mature for her 16-year old age. I’ve seen 25-year old MCs with less gumption and sense. She is still childish at times, and recognizes this throughout the story, but she is still practically a child, so I can easily forgive and understand that. She is written very well as a young woman who is attempting to navigate the new experiences of life and what this story brings to her while hanging on to her innocence and upholding her ideals. She is complicated and has layers of depth and I’d fight people for her, but I don’t have to, because she fights enough for both herself and the reader. The prologue pushes the “not like other girls” trope a little too hard, despite her being just as tropey as other girls, so I thought I wasn’t going to enjoy Emily. I was pleasantly surprised as the story went on and the writing didn’t try so hard to convince you Emily was different than others; despite it being a common theme that she has a je ne sais quoi making her unique to the story.
Likability Rating: Shu. Emily can’t replace my favorite MC, but she deserves a place at my top table. I enjoyed how complete and consistent she was in each individual route. I enjoyed how they captured her. She is woefully underrepresented in the otome world.
Plot: So, what I got from the blurb on the store page is that Emily is clumsily falling into the plots of this game, and dating people from literature. That’s-- well, that’s only ⅓ true. Emily doesn’t really “stumble” into the darkest corners of London, she kind of charges into them in most cases, or finds herself there because someone else charges into it. And she isn’t exactly dating people from literature, because no one is actually who they represent from well-known works of fiction. Holmes, for instance, is actually Holmes Jr., Sherlock's son. But it’s a different take, so I’m not complaining. It gives the writer more liberties to shape the characters the way they wanted to without die-hard fans up in arms.
Since all the characters are high school age (15-17), you might expect it to be a fluffy slice-of-life game, I certainly did. And it kinda feels that way. The prologue does little to dissuade this idea, with Emily, Holmes, and Watson tasked with finding a cat before the Queen’s party. Suddenly it’s school days and singular cases that do touch on heavier themes, but nothing I would consider the M rating for. And then you get punched in the face. Seriously, I’m like, “Oh, this is cute and happy, and tra la la.” All smiles. Then I got on my first path and I thought to myself, “That’s kinda dark, but I’m sure it’ll be all sunshine again in a minute.” Then I fell into their trap. It was cleverly hidden with fake terrain; and that pit had spikes at the bottom too! I’m not kidding, guys, it went from friends laughing on a beautiful day, to slightly worrisome, to instantly dark. I was wondering if I somehow loaded up a different game. It could have been the route I chose first, but it was so unexpected that my initial thoughts of how cute this game was were instantly thrown out the window and I had to reevaluate what I thought about London Detective Mysteria.
The common route is pretty long, and choices are crucial to earning affection from LIs, so you’ll be replaying it over, and over, and over again to get all 8 routes. Yes, eight. Technically there are 9, but the ninth is accessed without going through the common route. Luckily, there is a skip to next choice feature, so you can speed through most of the story without having to slog through it. Every route has its own story, so there isn’t the repetitiveness that comes with having so many routes. And you basically have to play the five main LIs to collect enough information for the overall plot, so there’s another reason to give everyone a go.
Replayability Rating: ★★★★☆ No route feels like another, however, the super-same long common route brings this game down a star. Once you’ve gone through twice, there’s very little new, so it becomes tedious.
Love Interests: Let me tell you about all the young men you’re about to romance. Let me also tell you that there are no adult romances in this game, so if you had eyes for Pendleton, or Daddy Holmes, they’re off the table. I know. It’s okay. You can cry. This is a safe place. Aaaaaand back-trekking to these teen heart-throbs. London Detective Mysteria gives us five favorable fellas that we get to explore young love with. It also comes with two friendship routes for the reoccurring side characters. A… questionable? friendship route with both Holmes and Watson. And then there’s the Grand Route, which includes romancing absolutely no one. So we’re just going to pretend the last two don’t exist for now.
The five main LIs all have a Destined End, and an Ill-fated End, with only one of the guys actually having two additional Wretched (read: Bad) Ends. The side-characters don’t give you any choices once you’ve made it on their route, they end quickly, and they both only have what the game refers to as a Charmed End. Basically, a pretty decent ending, but I wouldn’t call it ideal, and it certainly isn’t bad. There isn’t a certain route order to follow, however, Jack and Lupin’s routes are locked initially until you complete a Destined End with one of the three other men. So, who do you choose first? Well, I would just go with whoever you fancy. We get a lot of Holmes and Watson in the common route, so if you’re curious about the foreigner, give Akechi a shot. I went with Watson first because he was right up my alley, but you can easily do Holmes or Akechi first and face no real spoilers for the game. In that case, I’ll list them in my order of husbando material, from least to most. Nothing at all to do with gameplay, so feel free to pick and choose how you want, keeping in mind that Lupin and Jack cannot be first.
Who wouldn’t love to date the son of Sherlock Holmes? Me. That’s who. I suppose he wasn’t that bad, but it just wasn’t really my thing. It was too… it was young. For as mature and rational that Holmes is supposed to come across in this game, he was such a child. We see a lot of him throughout the game, so it isn’t hard to figure out what type of man Holmes Jr. is. However, as soon as Daddy Holmes shows up, we see just how childish Jr. can be. That is, in fact, how his route starts. It barely gets better from there. He isn’t certain how to express himself to Emily, so he pulls her hair and runs away. Not for real real, but it amounts to the same thing. Watson, being the awesome wingman he is, tries entirely too hard for his friend in this route. I didn’t hate the route. It had some cute moments. It ended appropriately. It was just very much a “first love” sort of story and relied too much on the supporting cast to move forward.
Ah, who wouldn’t want to date Japanese Holmes? Wait… I feel like I did this before. I guess I have a type I don’t enjoy. Haha. But really, Akechi is just fine, he simply is not as up there as some of the other boys on the roster, so he ranks fourth for me. Where Holmes is rude and conceited, Akechi is polite and humble. He is constantly attempting to improve himself, and holds everyone to a higher standard so they will also improve themselves. It’s unfortunate that Akechi and Kobayashi (his assistant) show up late in the common route, don’t get much screen time when they are around, and disappear in most everyone else’s route. It feels like they were thrown in as a last minute thought in order to bring the numbers up for LIs. Kobayashi is Akechi’s wingman in this as much as Watson was in Holmes’ route. Akechi, however, doesn’t need much prodding in solidifying his relationship with Emily; there is very clearly a point that Akechi took the reins. And very clearly a point that he became the man that he needed to be for Emily.
Jean Lupin, our little liar-- I mean gentleman thief. London Detective Mysteria attempts to mislead the player in who Jean Lupin is, but just by looking at the promotional pictures, it’s pretty clear who this character is in the game. I don’t think they try very hard to hide it, and it seems to be for story purposes more than tricking the player. Very flimsy story purposes that make me question how sharp the rest of the characters are. Oh, but the things I could do to say about Lupin. I fell for this smooth criminal. I’m not normally the type to find the flirty thief anything more than amusing, but this time was different. Not only is everything he says so sensual, but his theatrics are super romantic, so I was swept away in the dramatic performance this passionate playwright was putting together. He set the stage. He played the part. And even if the actors decided to go off script, he was prepared to pull their strings to bring them back into his show to perform as his puppets. Although I enjoyed the conclusion to his Destined End, his Ill-Fated end is where I expected the game to originally go, and would be happy with either ending.
And then there’s Watson. How he managed to get into a class specifically designed for the best and brightest young detectives is kind of amazing seeing as how he fails at traditional schooling though excels in other, more street smart fields. This is an example of wisdom over intellect. It’s a constant joke that he’s the “dumb” character, but he has so many talents that can’t be measured through grades. And I love him. I absolutely love him. He is best boy. He genuinely cares for Emily from the get-go. Time and time again he shows up in others’ routes as the one constantly on Emily’s side, constantly worried about her wellbeing, constantly building her up when other characters :cough:Holmes:cough: attempt to tear her down. Yeah, he has some outdated (for our time) ideas on how resilient women are, and what a man’s job is when it comes to protecting women, but this is London in the 19th century, so it isn’t out of place. He’s an absolute delight in every route. He is an absolute delight in his route. He is sunshine. Oh, but here comes the bad. My only issue with his route, however, is that in order to make Watson better, the writers appeared to take from Emily, making her the weakest character in his route than she was in any other route.
The final main LI is Jack Millers. But why put someone so shady as top husbando material? How can someone be better than Watson when it comes to who I’d want Emily to be with? It’s probably because we get more insight into Jack than any other LI. Everyone gets some of their own screen time in their route, but I feel Jack gets the most. It’s needed in order to tell his story and explain his motives, or to explain what is happening that Emily is not aware of. It also felt like a longer route than most of the others, I’m not certain if that’s the case, as I don’t time individual routes. I believe it is the longest in terms of in-game time, followed only by Lupin, or roughly the same time as Lupin, I’m not sure exactly. Time in the game is only mentioned as some rough concept. Putting that aside, let’s go over why this is my favorite man and route. Smart, awkward, social outcast? Mhm. Romance drenched in conflict? Yes, yes. Tragedy? Of course! Yeah, Watson is amazing (even in Jack’s route, tbh). Yeah, Lupin was a fun ride. But I will not get over Jack and his romance with Emily.
As an afterthought, I’ve decided to include the two friendship routes as LIs. They may be short routes, and they may not have their own measurable love meter, but they are additional routes for this game. I don’t intend to include them in my “Boy Crazy Rating” since I don’t see them as actual LIs for the game, but instead side routes. However, they are important enough, and recurring enough that they deserve some mention.
Sara Marple is an enjoyable character that I rather liked when she was part of the story. She’s one of the few characters that stands up to Holmes; probably because Jack doesn’t care to, Lupin doesn’t stand up to anyone, and the Japanese exchange students don’t know him well enough yet. Even saying that, though, she doesn’t attempt to cause a stir in almost anything. Chill. That is what Marple is. Her route is picked up where all the routes split, and it is rather short and uneventful. It is basically what would happen if nothing happened. I could have lived without playing it, as I’m not big on the friendship endings for romance games, especially when they don’t bring any new story or insight into the overall plot of the game.
Kobayashi, like Watson to Holmes, is Akechi’s assistant. His route is a little more difficult to get on, since you have to first earn enough to get on Akechi’s route before you’re able to then change to Kobayashi. The unfortunate part of that is that his route ends up being rather sad all around. Not only does Emily’s romance with Akechi fizzle, but then you end up on a friendship route with Kobayashi. I’m cool with MCs not being required to love everyone, so it’s fine that she doesn’t fall for Kobayashi, but it makes me feel for him a bit. He’s bright, sweet, and the voice of reason when it comes to the pairing with Akechi. I’m sure, if it weren’t for Kobayashi, Akechi and Emily wouldn’t have ended up together in Akechi’s route. It’s also a shame that more of his personality isn’t explored in this route; you get to scratch the surface of what makes him unique, but nothing deeper. 9/10 Would date Kobayashi if given the choice.
Boy Crazy Rating: 90% Despite some personalities being outside my ideal type, and the “first-time” love trope being something I typically don’t care for, the romances were believable and enjoyable. I’ll add a few of these boys to my husbando collection. Don’t worry, I’ll show them the ropes and how to hang with my more experienced men.
Romance: Despite the game focusing on the presented plot, there is plenty of romance to be had. Some of it doesn’t come about until you are clearly in the Destined End route (which are rather long, spanning a full chapter or two in most cases). Some of it comes as soon as the LIs route starts, and-- hngh, that’s the stuff I need. I like the slow burns. The build up with little showings of love that could be overlooked if the characters weren’t written as well as they are. With Emily being so introspective, we also get glimpses of the feelings these little acts evoke in her. Either the writing or translation does a great job at bringing the feels, and I felt. Of course, the voice acting has a lot to do with this as well, but that’s for me to gush about in another section. I honestly thought London Detective Mysteria was going to be much more juvenile, fluffy, and more focused on the overall story than the romance. I was okay with what I predicted this game was going to be, and was completely ready to still eat what I ordered. But this was a case of expecting sirloin and getting prime rib. It isn’t the best game I’ve played, it isn’t the best romance, but it was a delicious surprise that I’ll gladly sink my teeth into.
Heart Palpitation Rating: A-. The sweetness is almost sickening. Hang on, don’t take it away, I didn’t say stop. More sugar, please!
Spice: If you’re looking for something to set you aflame, this is not the game. It’s very chaste, which reflects the time of the game, I suppose. What? You mean to tell me that people were sexing over 100 years ago? No way. But really, Emily is a noble lady at 16. The game is pretty plot heavy. I was actually more caught up in the romance than waiting for the characters to get naked and do it; which, now that I consider it, that is a little surprising because I’m all for that D. There are some sexually charged scenes, but logic would dictate that in those moments the characters aren’t about to give into lust, and they don’t. That doesn’t really take away from the scenes themselves, or the game as a whole, except that it is the mildest of mild when it comes to the spice level.
Cold Shower Rating: Fail. You might find yourself breathing heavy due to suspense, but it certainly isn’t from heated moments. Take a nice hot shower to warm yourself up.
Angst: I know I talked about this in the plot section, but this game sucker punches you with the dark themes. It doesn’t get to angst-levels of angst, but it was completely unexpected for me. I should have seen the warning signs. London Detective Mysteria does have a M rating. What did I think that rating was for? It is partially the route I ended up choosing first that gave me this shock. After playing through the whole game, it wasn’t the most gruesome route, but it was the second. They are all a little horrifying, but not all of them dive right in to detailed blood and gore relating to murder. The overall story is a bit angsty, itself. The characters carry a small amount of angst as well - Daddy issues and unfortunate backstories. And some of the Ill-Fated Ends can get angsty. But overall this is a moderately angsty game, nothing that’s going to leave you a sobbing mess. Maybe some chest pain or indigestion, or both.
Drama Llama Rating: 7/10. Always remember that the drama llama stands for violence and tears. Today won’t bring destruction, and they seem to even be allowing us to feed them. Stay vigilant.
Voice Acting: It’s interesting to me to note that half of the original voice acting cast was replaced when the company re-released the game in Japan. I don’t know the reasons why, and since the only English translated version for London Detective Mysteria is the re-released version, I doubt I’d find the reason without substantial time and effort. I don’t care to put the time or effort into it. I simply thought it was interesting, gave it a little pondering, and moved on. A large portion of the cast that we are given are relatively unknown, or lesser known. You’re not finding any many big names in this title (there was literally one I recognized, and he’s not in 90% of the game). But don’t let that fool you, this voice acting is top-notch in my book. One in particular stood out in every. Single. Route he was in. Yūsuke Shirai (白井 悠介) is f*cking gold in delivering every line Watson gives. I took notes for this game, and at least once a route I made a note about this A++ voice acting. Just another reason I love the character so much; a great seiyuu can do that.
Though the most notable, Yusuke Shirai is not the only good seiyuu for this title. I rather enjoyed Masami Iwasaki’s (岩崎 征実) rendition of Lupin, both the sweetly delivered ones and the charismatic and self-confident ones. I guess I have to give Masami Iwasaki credit for his stuttering Lupine as well, but only because he pulled off two different personalities between one character. Jack doesn’t get many lines outside of his own route, but I kinda dug how Masatomo Nakazawa (中澤 匡智) portrayed the character. I liked how this often emotionless seeming character didn’t stay flat throughout the story. Yoshitaka Yamaya (山谷 祥生) brought us an energetic and (often yelling) Kobayashi, but he deserves a mention in his own right because that cheerful voice will not be soon forgotten. We get to hear a lot of Pendleton, so I think it’s only fair to commend Toshinobu Iida (飯田 利信) on being the smoothest of butlers that most girls want to bed that we all respect. I especially liked the times he wasn’t composed, though few that they were. Really, I can’t express how surprised I was with the quality of voice acting from London Detective Mysteria, since this game gets talked about very rarely and the seiyuus even less. It was good stuff and deserves more praise.
Expression Rating: Yu. I think I’m limiting myself by sticking to this grading scale for voice acting, as I think London Detective Mysteria deserves higher than Yu, but I wouldn’t give it a perfect score of Shu. Maybe I’ll start doing + and -. In any case, this is some good shit. It’s not perfect, but I couldn’t imagine playing the game without hearing these characters. I wouldn’t change most of them out for the big names in otoge, they’re great the way they are.
Art: London Detective Mysteria is just a game full of surprises. For real real, I had never heard of it before I found it on sale, and there are very few reviews on the Steam store for it. It is a hidden gem in so many cases, and the art is another that surprised me. Two-bit side-characters are given sprites next to the textbox. Not everyone, of course, but when the typical game only gives main characters and recurring supporting characters sprites, this is a big deal. I get to not only hear random classmate number 3, but I get a picture of some kid that has no bearing on the game at all. I mean, this is cool.
The art itself is also rather well done. I’m not a fan of the way the eyes are drawn, but that’s a tiny complaint compared to the positive praise I can give this game. Each character is notably different from every other character. Main characters only get two outfits, but several poses and facial expressions. All main and supporting characters appear as both a full-sized sprite and a textbox sprite, including the MC, though she is less common as a full-sized sprite.
There was one other nit-picky thing I could point out. There’s a lot of pink in the normal art. I’m not sure if they did this to make things seem warmer, or if it was just a preferred coloring method, but everything seems to have this overlay of pink tint to it. It’s hard to describe, but bear with me here. When Emily is introduced, she is blonde. We’re then given her sprite by the text box, and I completely forgot that she was supposed to be straw-blonde because her hair looks a light pink in her sprite. And since I saw this 95% of the game, every time a CG would come up where she was blonde, I would go, “Oh yeah! That’s Emily!” because we’re not reminded very often that she is, in fact, blonde and not anime-pink. And no, I’m not getting her confused for Marple (who does have actual pink hair). It’s just this dusting of pink that doesn’t just affect the hair, doesn’t just affect Emily, and doesn’t affect the CGs, so I know it has to be a game thing for this section only.
Still Picture Rating: ★★★★☆ Many characters. Such design. Very pink.
CGs: So, the CGs are good. They’re really good. But they are not meant to be used the way the game uses them. What do I mean by that? Take your basic, well done CG, okay? It’s beautiful on the screen, the resolution is right, it’s saturated and looks great at the size it’s at. Now perhaps you want to bring attention to a specific point on that CG, emphasize the story for a moment, like perhaps how shocked someone looks. Naturally, you zoom in on that feature. These CGs were not made to be zoomed in. It causes them to look rough and pixelated because the resolution is lower than what it needs to be to have smooth lines that close to the original art. I mean, sure, it’s neat to have the game show you were to look, but it makes the overall CG feel less polished because you’re forced to notice the quality. As full-screen art, it is wonderful the way it is. I really have an appreciation for the scenes chosen. There was never a time I thought “I’d like to see that” and didn’t get a CG for it. Some even had me screaming because they were soooooo gooooood.
Look at this Photograph Rating: 92% Great moments for CGs. The tone was clear simply by looking at the pictures. Awesome work that I will be coming back to time and time again. It’s a shame I can’t easily buy an artbook for this game. It turns out I got an artbook PDF with the game. It's so good.
UI/Mechanics: It’s… fine? The overall UI is okay, and it isn’t difficult to navigate and figure out, but I do have a few minor complaints. The first thing I do on starting a new game is scope out the UI. Open every menu, see what’s where and what does what. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Button map. Epilogues. Gallery. It’s all where it should be and easy to get to. Loading and saving is pretty easy. Neat feature: You can add a note to your save, which helped me once when I saved after a bit of important information, then didn’t return for nearly a week. However, it’s a note-note, very short, you don’t have many characters that you can use, so I had to figure out what my shorthand cipher meant. After never using this feature, I attempted to turn it off in the menu options; and though there is a button for it, it only seems to work until you exit the game, then it resets to default, so it prompts you if you want to leave a note again on the following save. Pointless, since I only save when I’m exiting the game. On top of that, if you say you don’t want to leave a note, it doesn’t save. So every time you save you have to say “Yes” even if you leave the note field blank. Or constantly turn off the note feature in the main menu before attempting to save every time you enter the game. This is one of the minor complaints I have.
Next neat feature: There’s something called a diary where you can save someone’s dialogue for future reference. I actually used it for cute or impactful things and not at all what it was meant for. But you get to hear the character voice the line you saved every time you play it, so that was cool. However, I didn’t find a use for it for figuring out detectiving information. Knowing what is important wasn’t difficult, but you also can’t open it when on a decision, so there’s really no point? Ah, which brings us to decisions. They are timed. I panicked my first decision since I hadn’t played a timed choice game before. It was an easy question, I just wasn’t expecting a clock to pop up and tick down with sound, and while I was figuring out what these new moving and noise making things were on my screen I hadn’t even read the options and I didn’t know how long the timer was and what was the question again? So I panicked and just clicked what looked close enough to reasonable for the answer. After that, it didn't bother me because I was prepared and knew what to expect.
There is also a set of skip to next or previous choice buttons. Cool and handy when you’re going through for your third through eighth run. And you can’t turn the MC’s voice on and off at will. You’re asked at the beginning of the prologue if you want it off, and that’s it. You can turn her to mute, if you decide later that you don’t want to hear Emily’s voice. But I was curious if she was so awkward during romantic scenes as I’ve heard, and, unfortunately, never got the chance to check it out. Everything else is pretty standard. There’s an affection meter in the status section. The game prompts you with on-screen responses when you make the correct choice or earn affection with someone. I’m not sure what the Detective Grade is really for, besides patting yourself on the back that you could answer the extraordinarily easy detectiving questions. It seems a low grade does nothing, as well as a high grade.
What’s this button do? Rating: A-. Neat features with little practical use. Attractive UI and easy to navigate. Status prompts were exceptionally adorable, along with certain meter ratings.
Errors: I didn’t come across any game-breaking errors, however, a guide I followed in order to get some of the harder routes (the friendship ones) mentioned that at certain parts of the game, if you use the skip to next choice button, it would crash the game. So I just avoided using the skip button on those noted. I wasn’t trying to recreate a bug. I mentioned the note feature above, and the inability to turn it off for good. Emily’s voice cannot be turned off in the Grand Route, or any of the additional content (epilogues), but you can turn her down to mute. I suppose that’s not so much an error as an oversight since the option isn’t given for those specific parts of the game.
There are some spelling, sentence structure, and grammatical errors, though nothing out of the ordinary. It actually is translated pretty well with most of these errors showing up in one of the routes the primary translator didn’t do. Apparently they outsourced two routes to someone else because there was so much work. I found this out because I thought there was a shift in the writing style, and on further investigation found I was right, that specific route was not translated by the same person. Anyways, there was nothing that confused me or impeded my gameplay.
Here there be Bugs Rating: Pass. Only mildly annoying pests in this yard. Your house is safe from all the things that lurk beneath.
Background Music: Do I have a thing for background music? I’m not sure that’s the case. Sometimes there’s a particular score that has me going, “Oh, I love this!” But most of the time I find it just nice to listen to while playing. I’ve made a mention of a few games I’d enjoy their OSTs, but those are just general interest and not something I actively seek out if it has any sort of difficulty rating past “Is it downloadable on a major music site?”. London Detective Mysteria has a rather enjoyable soundtrack. There was one character theme I had that “love this” moment with, and so I bought the soundtrack off Steam. Unfortunately, I didn’t even consider that not everything was on it, and that ONE song was not on it. :sigh: I’ve listened to it a few times, pulled out my favorites, added them to playlists, so it wasn’t a waste; but I was disappointed that the one thing I was looking for wasn’t available. It’s still good music.
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