Mar 312021
During my big visual novel buying spree a few years back, another otome I picked up was London Detective Mysteria.
London Detective Mysteria follows a young noblewoman named Emily who gets the queen’s blessing to attend an academy for young would-be detectives. There, she meets characters who are largely descendants of famous fictional detectives (and other related characters), like Sherlock Holmes’s son and Miss Marple’s granddaughter.
At first I thought this was just a way to avoid using the actual characters, but that’s not the case at all. Most notably, the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Herlock (yes, they actually named him Herlock Holmes) is an important part of his story and motivations.
That gives the story a neat “second generation” sort of feel that I didn’t expect when I started.
The common route deals with Emily and her classmates encountering various mysteries, and the game even provides a special journal feature to let you save any line of dialogue to check it later while trying to figure out a case. There’s only a handful of times when that’s actually useful, but it was a nice thought.
Based on your choices, you end up on one of several character routes.
I liked all of the love interests, and each route had a fairly interesting story that ties into the overarching story about a sinister organization and Emily’s personal investigation into her parents’ deaths. Once you see every ending, including the bad endings and non-romance routes, you unlock the “grand ending” that follows up on that.
Unfortunately, the grand ending route feels underwhelming compared to the individual character routes. It’s clearly intended to build up to a sequel – in fact, the grand ending epilogue actually ends with an outright teaser for the next game.
There has been no word about the London Detective Mysteria sequel, but I hope it’s still being made. This was a fun otome and an entertaining mystery story, and I’d really love to see it continue.
So if you like visual novels, romance, and mysteries, London Detective Mysteria is worth checking out… as long as you’re okay with it ending on a cliffhanger that might never be resolved.