Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Jake Hunter Detective Story: Memories of the Past Has Some Fun Cases

 Reviews, Video Games  6 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Mar 082021
 

When I started thinking of playing another 3DS game, I decided to check my 3DS to see what game I’d left in the system.

To my surprise, I found Jake Hunter Detective Story: Memories of the Past, which I hadn’t played and didn’t remember prioritizing, but apparently at some point it was the next game I intended to play.

So why not? I decided to play it.

Memories of the Past is a visual novel adventure game in which you play a detective investigating various cases. It contains six cases, but the Jake Hunter release history gets a little complicated, so let’s talk about that first.

The series began all the way back in 1987 on the Famicom and saw consistent titles across a variety of platforms from then on, including a line of mobile games.

The first five cases in Memories of the Past are actually the first five mobile games, the first four of which are remakes of the original four Famicom games.

Finally, the sixth case is titled Memories of the Past and was created for this DS game. In fact, while all six cases are unlocked from the start and I played them in order, the game clearly intends for you to start with Memories of the Past, because it prompts you within that case to play through the others, creating a single continuous experience instead of treating each as a separate game.

(If you play them separately, like I did, you can skip the previous cases in Memories of the Past, but it still quizzes you on the major points.)

Gameplay-wise, everything is handled through menus. You won’t be tapping around the environment to search for clues, but rather choosing “Inspect” and then picking an area/object to inspect from the list that comes up. It can be a little tedious, since occasionally it needs you to inspect things multiple times or in the right order, but it’s fine.

It also frequently quizzes you on the current case’s events to make sure you remember the important details.

I found the first three cases to be pretty straightforward, entertaining enough to see how the mystery plays out, but not too compelling. The fourth was probably my favorite, with two alternating points of view and a story that had some fairly emotional moments.

The fifth case was fine, and the sixth was interesting in how it tried to bring things together, but not particularly noteworthy on its own in my opinion.

In addition to the main six cases, there are also a number of “Jake Hunter Unleashed” cases, shorter mysteries with chibi art and an emphasis on humor. They essentially feel more like puzzles, since they give you all the evidence and witness testimonies right away and you need to figure out the truth.

One more thing I want to mention is that this is another series that decided to change its setting to America for the localizations. Unlike Ace Attorney, where changing the names makes sense for the pun-based humor, there’s no reason for that to have been done in Jake Hunter. I assume they thought western audiences would be less inclined to buy “Detective Saburo Jinguji,” but honestly I find “Jake Hunter Detective Story” to be such a bland title I’m not sure it paid off.

Anyway, Jake Hunter Detective Story: Memories of the Past was enjoyable enough. I wouldn’t say it’s a new favorite, but I’m intrigued enough to check out the next game that was released in English…

…which is not any of the five Jake Hunter games that came out after Memories of the Past, but rather the next one after that, Ghost of the Dusk. (And so far they’ve skipped over the next game, Prism of Eyes, despite it getting an English rating, so staying up to date with the Jake Hunter series doesn’t seem like it’ll get any easier anytime soon…)

The House in Fata Morgana is an Emotional Gothic Romance

 Reviews, Video Games  4 Responses »  Tagged with:
Mar 012021
 

Romance month is over and the contest winner has been contacted, but now there’s one more visual novel we really need to talk about.

Originally, I intended The House in Fata Morgana to be the last review of February, but I didn’t finish it in time… in part because it gets so heavy at certain points that I needed to take a break, and in part because it’s the sort of story that deserves to be savored, not rushed.

Described as “a gothic suspense tale,” The House in Fata Morgana begins with you awakening in a strange mansion, where a mysterious maid tells you that you are the mansion’s Master and invites you to learn about its history.

It is a slow burn story, not in the sense that it takes a while to get interesting, but rather that it takes a long time before you truly understand what the story is about.

There will be times when you’ll question why I considered including it in February’s celebration at all, although you should understand by the end; I’ve described it here as a gothic romance, but at times it is horror or tragedy.

I don’t want to say too much about it, because the slow unfolding of its tale is part of this visual novel’s beauty.

The House in Fata Morgana is powerful and emotional, and it also plays a clever trick using its medium partway through that I assume most people only find accidentally, like I did.

Click for The House in Fata Morgana spoilers
If you’ve finished or gotten far enough to know the truth about the fourth door, go back to the fourth door’s story and check the backlog from time to time.

The backlog does not reflect the false story, but something else entirely.

There’s so much I want to say about The House in Fata Morgana, but most of it I don’t even want to include behind spoiler tags, in case someone would see it by mistake. Instead I’ll just say that if you like visual novels at all, I consider this one a must-play (as long as you’re okay with some seriously dark sections and sensitive topics), and it quickly rose to stand among my favorite visual novels.

Oh, and the soundtrack is absolutely gorgeous, which makes the emotional moments stand out even more.

The House in Fata Morgana has a prequel story as well, which I’ll definitely read, although I’m tempted to wait for the Switch version to be released in English, since the console versions bundle the two together with additional content. Anyway, go read The House in Fata Morgana!

Celebrating All Things Romantic: Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly

 Celebrating All Things Romantic, Reviews, Video Games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Feb 242021
 

Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly is another otome I picked up for my Vita (although it’s also out on Steam now), and when I started it, I expected to love it.

The protagonist is a young woman who wakes up with amnesia in a mysterious manor. Soon she learns that there are several others trapped there with her, as well as monsters that prowl the manor’s halls.

If they want to escape, they need to search the manor for the pieces of a broken kaleidoscope, as instructed by the manor’s mysterious master.

I love this premise. The eerie, monster-filled manor gave me almost a Resident Evil or Fatal Frame vibe, and the premise felt similar to something like Zero Escape – a group of strangers who may or may not be able to trust each other, trapped for reasons they don’t understand and given a strange task to complete to escape.

There’s even a combat mini-game, of all things, that rewards you with points you can spend to unlock short episodes, which we’ll get back to in a minute.

Psychedelica’s structure is a bit unusual for a game like this. Instead of branching onto character routes right away, you’ll play through the common route and get the main ending first. After that, you can make different choices to see character-specific endings and other alternate paths, some of which are locked behind seeing specific scenes, other endings, or certain short episodes.

Short episodes are small scenes that either show something from the characters’ pasts or an additional scene from their stay during the mansion, often with a slice-of-life focus.

This structure can be a bit confusing, but fortunately Psychedelica has what I love to see in a visual novel like this – a flowchart that lets you quickly jump back to any scene.

The common route and main story are pretty interesting, and I enjoyed learning the truth about what happened. The short episodes also have some entertaining moments, even if they do steer the tone a lot more toward slice-of-life than the game’s initial premise might suggest, and a couple of the character endings are interesting (especially for one character who is largely a mystery outside of his route).

But oh, the romance is bad. Some of the love interests are straight-up unlikeable, and even for the ones I liked, the actual romantic connection was pretty weak.

Click for Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly spoilers
And did they really need to use the “childhood friend had a crush on the protagonist” trope for four of the five love interests?

This led to a weird situation where my enjoyment of Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly steadily diminished after I finished the common route. That core story was pretty interesting, but after that I felt like I was trudging through a series of awkward and bland scenes just to see the full story.

There are definitely some good things in this otome, but ultimately this isn’t one that will stick with me. But what did you think of Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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