Retro Mystery Club Vol. 1: The Ise-Shima Case is essentially a graphic novel with some menu selections to determine what bit of story plays out in the current moment.
I didn't have exceptionally high expectations, but even those were not met. Between the lack of variety in gameplay, mediocre writing, and technical issues-- I was very disappointed with my experience.
What I Didn't Like
The Writing
The story itself isn't a bad one.
It reminds me of Murder She Wrote in a way, complete with the cheesy nature of the mystery and the characters that get far too personal with the detectives even though they've only just met.
The problem is the quality of the writing.
My feeling is that it was just a poor translation, but the dialogue in the game seemed very awkward at times and was difficult to keep track of. Beyond that, even the dialogue that was not awkward was uninteresting a lot of the time.
And for a fancy visual novel style game, that is a major problem.
No Variety in Gameplay
I don't play a lot of visual novels because usually they lack a variety of gameplay. Looking at the screenshots of this game, I figured this would be like the MacVenture ports on the NES. Unfortunately, even though the style was similar, that was where the similarity ended.
In the MacVenture games, you have a set of actions to explore the areas, select items to investigate further, and so on. You are able to go between rooms and revisit them to find things you missed or solve puzzles you were not yet equipped to solve out.
In short, you have agency to explore and solve the mystery on your own terms.
In Retro Mystery Club, there are actions, but you are forced to figure out which action or actions you need to select to continue moving forward. If you can't figure out which action to take, you are stuck at that point in the story. Your partner (Ken) won't let you leave until you find the next story point by taking the correct action.
I can see how this is meant to help the player not get stuck or soft-locked like the classic mystery games, like the MacVenture titles, but it also removes the agency from the player and makes the game a visual novel rather than an adventure game.
Technical Issues
Although not a dealbreaker for the game, the Steam Achievements are not working as of this writing. Looking through the Steam Discussions this issue has been a problem for a while.
Another time, the wrong language was displayed for describing an action. This only happened once, but it shows the lack of attention to detail in releasing this game. Considering there is a second volume that was released in 2024, you would hope they would stabilize the first one as you would get more new players-- but that does not seem to be the case.
What I Liked
Visuals and Sound
The whole audio-visual presentation of the game was exceptionally well done.
The pixel art was very well done, while not going too far off from the original style they were targeting (which I assume is the Famicom Detective Club games).
The sound reminded me directly of the sounds of an NES, both the music and the effects.
The whole thing made me quite nostalgic for those MacVenture ports that I'm fond of, which I definitely appreciate about this game.
The Conclusion
It has been a very long time since I forced myself to finish a video game. If I hadn't known it was only going to be 4 to 5 hours to complete, I probably would have abandoned it.
The lack of Steam achievements and the low-quality writing made this a hard pill for me to swallow, which is a huge disappointment. I have had this game in my Steam library for a while now and have really been in the mood for more investigation-based titles. It really seemed like the right game to play.
Unfortunately, not every game can be made with the same love and care I expect from my video games.
