Bustafellows is described as a noir mystery otome game, so I was excited to get it when it came out in 2021.
But it came out right while I was still in the middle of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, so it got pushed aside and lost in the shuffle of my backlog until this year’s mystery game celebration spurred me to dive into it after all this time.
You play Teuta, a young journalist with the power to send her consciousness back in time a few hours, although she wakes up in the past in someone else’s body. When she sees that a man has been killed, she goes back in time to warn him and becomes mixed up with the “Fixers,” a small group dedicated to bringing justice to people where the law and society have failed them.
Her power is not as important to the story as I expected from the premise. It allows her to save the day at certain critical moments, but most of Bustafellows feels like it could have been written without the time travel.
Bustafellows is a beautiful game with backgrounds that have moving animations (a big deal in a visual novel). It made everything feel more alive, and it really feels high-quality. On the other hand, there are a number of points where characters are talking in the background without a text box appearing on the screen… which I’m sure is just fine if you know Japanese, but if you’re relying on the English translation, that means you need to check the log to find out what the missed lines were, since they’re fortunately translated there.
(Except for the very end, which is a cutscene presented that way, with no ability to view the log since the game ends after that.)
Anyway, Bustafellows is one of those otome games where the love interests are a big group of friends, and I really like that. There are a number of slice of life scenes that are just fun because of the dynamic the characters have with each other, both in the common route and in individual routes.
The common route is a decent length, and your choices across its chapters lead you to one of the individual character routes. Each of these routes has a different focus. They range from mystery investigations to crime thrillers, although the mystery-solving aspect was never as strong as I’d hoped it would be.
I liked most of the love interests, although one just annoyed me and a couple of the others felt like their routes were rushed. Overall, I liked the characters (especially Mozu, my love) enough to make me enjoy my time with Bustafellows…
…Which is good, because the overarching plot doesn’t do it many favors. The common route introduces some mysteries and conspiracies that are largely ignored in the character routes, and then returns to them in two epilogue routes unlocked after all the other routes are complete. Unfortunately, the conclusions feel rushed, which developments that came out of nowhere. Developing those aspects of the story more slowly, with hints dropped throughout the routes, would have made it much better.
In short, Bustafellows shines when it focuses on its characters and their interactions, and stumbles when it tries to bring its mysteries to a satisfactory conclusion.
A sequel is coming out in Japan, and I liked the characters in Bustafellows enough to hope the sequel will be localized. But if it is, I hope it handles its mysteries more carefully, explores Teuta’s time travel powers in more detail, and adds on-screen translations for all of its dialogue.
