Okay, calmed down so now here are some thoughts about PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo
I liked it very much, I don't usually have the patiance for visual novels, especially ones that make you replay events to get right endings, but this one was really gripping and I managed to finish it in one sitting on a friday night. Although whole story felt engaging, I didn't like the "true" ending much and thought it was overall underdeveloped and flattened some of the emotional stakes in the story. If canon endings have been stronger I would've given it 9/10 or 10/10 even, but for that ending it's more of a low 8/10.
Harue's route is the best route though, solid 10/10.
the replay system was incredibly easy to navigate and let you tweek your choices much more easily than some other VN - literally never had to save manually.
incredibly engaging characters and although I think the "main" character and Yoko are the weakest point of the game the rest are stellar and I genuinely felt emotionally gripped by all of them.
the concept is great and although more shoneny than I expected it to be there was still tense horroresque dark elements that I really liked, this game sort of had everything to grip me: horror, mystery, drama, humour, action, you name it (the game though uses horror more like the setting and less like a genre, so it's not very scary, just FYI).
I really liked the mystery and the conspiracy of it all, some people say it was predictable, but honestly I don't think story had much time to do second guessing on some plot points so I appreciate they were at least satisfying.
I really liked the visual style of the game, muted colors and consistent pallete while also keeping characters easily recognizable.
I liked the meta stuff with the storyteller, which is telling cause I hate meta stuff in games.
I didn't like the true ending, I think it undermined a lot of emotional stakes in the story and the reveal wasn't as exciting as I expected it to be. If you know you know.
overall the story falls a bit flat in the last act, I felt like they were missing maybe ~5h of gameplay that would flesh it out a bit better, even though the choices and conclusions were sort of "natural" I feel like some of them would benefit from more time (mainly the Tsutsumi route)
I wish they ustalized the concept they used for the curses a bit more, they seem to forget about how it can enhance gameplay and POV of the characters after like the first act and instead it moves to more traditional VN stuff maybe up until the very end.
I also didn't like how some info was just zoomed into your brain after aquiring it. though I understand time limitations meant there wasn't really time to do proper investigation into mysteries and "the grudge of a person gives you all the context you need" was the best solution/.
