PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo
How far would you go to bring someone back from the dead? Discover the depths that some will go to in this horror-adventure game.
PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is a visual novel, adventure and anime game
developed and published by Square Enix.
Released on March 08th 2023 is available only on Windows
in 4 languages: English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
It has received 4,547 reviews of which 4,358 were positive and 189 were negative resulting in an impressive rating of 9.2 out of 10. 😍
The game is currently priced at 11.99€ on Steam and has a 40% discount.
The Steam community has classified PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows® 10 / 11 64-bit
- Processor: AMD A8-7600 / Intel® Core™ i3-3210
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: AMD Radeon™ RX 460 / NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 750 / Intel® HD Graphics 530
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 2 GB available space
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
BIG recommend if you're into any of the following keywords - Visual Novels / Spooky murder mystery stories Style of stories, gameplay, writing - Ace Attorney / Danganronpa / Zero Escape / AI Somnium Files Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
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This game can be described as "Oh... it makes sense now". It a great mystery with a lot of moving parts slowly giving you pieces of the puzzle and by the end you have a complex yet beatiful story filled with very different and charming characters. Although its supposed to be "horror" and it has some jump scares, the most memorable parts for me ended up being the goofy conversations that the characters had and the over the top reactions that some of them have in the story. The gameplay its self it like most visual novels, mainly reading but the encounters with the different curses ended feeling more like Stand battles (from Jojo's bizarre adventure) than anything. Having to understand the conditions for each one to activate and find a way to activate yours felt thrilling to do and the game having different ending depending on what you do in this "fight" makes you feel like every choice is a valid one. Overall it was a really entertaining game and its kinda short, I finished it in 14 hours but that's because I tried to get all the achivements, it's a perfect game to finish in a weekend, worth the price honestly. Hope to see more game like this from Square Enix.
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I like this game but please BE AWARE. This game is not advertised well. This is not a bloodthirsty horror game. This is a detective story. You do not have free will in this game. It is just a telling of a story. I liked it a lot but you can be disappointed if you expect the game to be a bloodthirsty battle royal like Mirai Nikki/Squid Game or anything like that.
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"#$%!&^* hell, it all makes sense now!" I had this thought that finished shaping itself just as I was finishing the game, a marvel at a curious phenomenon: How did PARANORMASIGHT manage to amass such an overwhelmingly positive reception? What trickery, witchcraft did it use to tickle the spirit taste and satiate both: non-VN players, considering the lack of gameplay depth, and traditional VN fans, given the shortage of storytelling depth. That is the real mystery of Honjo! It must be doing something right; I mean, I haven't had this much fun with a VN in a while. It's almost as if perceived weaknesses work in its favour, attracting all kinds of players to it with what are essentially gimmicks. By doing them really well. There's a lot of dearth here... if you look at it from a particular viewpoint. Coming to this game expecting involved investigation and deduction, or an adventure/VN hybrid with puzzles and minigames (Danganronpa, Ace Attorney, Zero Escape etc.), you'll find it lacking. If you're hoping for a multilayered mystery with rich thematic undertow and characters with believable emotional dimensions, you'll be disappointed. What you will find is still very compelling nonetheless. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3065673807 Under all the frills and ruffles of would-be adventure game dressing, PARANORMASIGHT is essentially a highly interactive panoramic visual novel. One where you drag the screen around a fixed point, engage with hotspots, and click on buttons, like *think* or *curse*, hopefully in that order. But mostly, you're navigating dialogue trees until you exhaust all options like in an adventure game. (Actual choices are rare and directly lead to bad endings.) All of this is put together in a rousing, stimulating way, smoothly knitted into the plot, making the narration itself interactable, so it feels like there's more proactive gameplay than it is. It's an illusion of control. In reality, you're led by the hand - be it by the in-game map, or the meta-map aka the flowchart; or by the curse button, which will cast itself even if you don't press it, or won't, even if you do. (It's sentient like that.) Although you're piecing together information from multiple sides, converging to one point, the whole game is rather linear in its non-linearity - another loophole. But it's all so dynamic and exciting. Unlike the inertness of a typical VN with sprites against static backgrounds, evoking actors in an intimate tableau vivant of sorts; here, it's a phantasmally deepened space of a TV box. Everything comes alive in a spirited flash of cinematic tracking shots, dramatic close-ups, zoomings, interesting angles that play with visual depth. Sometimes swallowing characters while panning over the vast skies of scenic Honjo, reducing them to accidental bystanders. Other times, this 360° slow rotation from a constricting spot creates a rather creepy effect in its limitation. Coming back from slowly combing the area, the tension and horror build as you anticipate something to jump at you... Like someone's face suddenly coming into your focus, gawking at you... ahh!! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3056915522 Alas, only the prologue is this eerie and spooky. (Ok, and the high school chapter - why are they so creepy at night?) Afterwards, it settles into a procedural rhythm of an investigative mystery. From the very start, I felt there was something TV-show-like about this world; and yes, it may seem like I'm saying something obvious seeing how the mysterious host, The Storyteller, literally transports me through a vintage colour TV set into the game universe. Hell, the small screen aesthetic permeates everything, its curve extends even to the menu - from the grainy look and the colours washed-up to the hauntingly nostalgic monochromatic tint, to the clickety-clack noises and schlager-like music, to the swift zooming on exaggerated grimaces all with the "a-ha, gotcha" jingle. But this quality extends way beyond appearance, into the storytelling itself. The way I was thrown into the middle of a scene, with little context, I never shook the feeling that these characters are, well, characters. Actors, who seem to be going along with all that freaky paranormal stuff a little too easily, ready to curse others with the most flimsy motivations (some exceptions), like it's a game. Well, with all those rules and conditions, it is, but one I can only watch them play. Becoming a curse bearer is accepted rather casually, blindly, as if following a script. And despite having several POV characters, I never got an impression that I'm playing as any one of them, but more like with them, in-between, as a gamer/observer. As if they're my puppets who I even tell when to think, with the button; their strong black outlines almost making them into cardboard cutouts. I can read about their backstories in Files, on the side, same as those legends of Japanese curse folklore, same as all the tourist spots in Sumida, Tokyo. With the already established meta framework tying into the use of Story Chart in interesting, smart ways, I was intrigued by these layers of reality, hoping for some absorbing thematic throughline. Because only a transcending mystery would be able to compensate for the undeniable sense that this story is rather gamey, but without substantial gameplay to carry it and not sufficiently novelesque to fill that hole. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3139769226 But in place of such mystery, I got a puzzle instead. Not a puzzle game, but a puzzle story. And what a thrilling puzzle it is, one that grips you hard, occasionally quizzing you, making sure you're paying attention, seducing you with witty tricks, letting you feel smart. What comes next, how it all ties together? You forgive it a bit too twisting of twists and too many neat coincidences; chalk it up to the 'small screen-small world' syndrome. Plot, plot, plot... everything fits, even things that seemed off at first. Every line is purposeful, almost utilitarian. Yet, cardboard cutouts or not, the characters are fun, their dialogue engaging, despite information density, occasionally straying into wild tangents... that also prove to have a concrete purpose. Getting to the solution of the puzzle is paramount. Its pacing doesn't let some 'filler' stop it, like, uh, breathing between the lines, or asking questions like: "What's it all really about? What's it saying that it isn't saying?" Great plot, poor story and thematic depth. The central question of "how far would you go to bring someone back from the dead" isn't really explored deeper in a satisfying way. It makes for a catchy tagline though, can even fit on a tourist brochure with other trivia. My biggest gripe is how the meta framework doesn't amount to anything more substantial than yet another gimmick that doesn't say anything interesting beyond the clever a-ha moment. That said, I can't deny I had great time with this game although, in the end, it's just a clever puzzle story, nothing more, nothing less. And that's... ok? Is what I'd like to say, but I can't shake the feeling there should be more to it. This will especially appeal to those averse to anything that isn't directly plot related aka 'filler'; those who consider reading a passive activity and need to make it more stimulating; and those who need their mysteries to have neat solutions. Mystery of Honjo solved! It took me a while to figure out what was bothering me; now I can put it to rest. It already started fading by the time I wrote this review. I'll remember how much fun I had if not the story itself, but hey, that means I can experience it again as if it's the first time. Although I'm not sure if replayability in this (meta)context is a blessing or a curse. You can curse me at [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40848670-Drugoja-In-The-Dreaming/]Drugoja In The Dreaming
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Alright. PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is done and dusted. It's honestly hard to believe this is a Squeenix title. This game takes the visual novel genre and completely upends it, trying out fresh, and dare I say bold new gameplay elements that really breathe some new life into the genre. I used to think of Steins;Gate as the greatest VN of all time, but I think Paranormasight has supplanted it in the number one spot. The story is engaging, with plenty of twists and turns, multiple endings that never bog down the continued experience, and as mentioned before, a fresh look at how you can approach the genre (at least compared to previous VNs I've played). https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3122220735 The first, and most important thing you need to know about Paranormasight is that it regularly breaks the fourth wall, meaning it interacts with you the gamer directly as part of the story and gameplay mechanic. Other media where you will find the fourth wall being broken include Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Deadpool (movies), Tearaway and...well...Deadpool (video games). The fourth wall being broken will likely catch you off guard at a couple points during the game, such as a puzzle requiring you to leave the story to manipulate the game options in order to progress the story, for example. Additionally, you personally factor into the story, and if you've not been paying attention to the details within your playthrough, you also won't be able to progress the story, as the game WILL test your knowledge about what you've learned so far in the game, periodically. Which I thought was really cool. The story itself has a lot of moving pieces and never loses track of where it's going. There will be instances of you needing to redo some parts, armed with new information to inform new decisions, but despite that, the game never loses its forward momentum. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3122010352 The characters were all very well written, and it was easy to identify with each in various ways. Additionally, the entire story premise was really cool and incredibly interesting. It has a splash of spiritual Grudge, but eschewed scary in favor of being a detective style mystery instead. The graphics were appropriate to the setting and were generally well done. The characters were more realistic whereas the backgrounds tended towards having a hint of watercolor influence to them. The soundtrack...was banger. This was eminently listenable in or out of game. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3122220785 This game is fully Steam Deck compatible. I did have two late game instances of the game crashing, but I lost no progress with either crash and had zero issues otherwise. As I said earlier, this might very well be the greatest VN I've personally experienced, and it also doesn't overstay its welcome. It took me not quite 11 hours to 100% this game, which was perfect in my estimation. Its replayability will be dependent on whether you're the type of person to re-read books over and over, but cost vs value is definitely there whether you are or not. This game offers a reasonably unique experience worth enjoying. If you found this review helpful and would be interested in supporting my Curator group, Robilar's Reviews, it would be appreciated. Cheers. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32549618/
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 20 November 2024 16:02 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 21 December 2024 12:31 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 12:34 |
| Steam reviews | 22 December 2024 07:51 |
Online players
94
Developer
Square Enix
Publisher
Square Enix
Release
08 Mar 2023
Platforms
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