Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, a brand new IP published by Square Enix, released in 2023 with about as much fanfare as a clown showing up to your birthday party. So, in case you have never heard of this game: it is an adventure visual novel game in the same vein as Danganronpa and Zero Escape and was released for Nintendo Switch, Steam and mobile via iOS and Android. It has a striking retro art style, thanks to Kobayashi Gen, the same artist behind the underground hit JRPG The World Ends With You, yet it was still sent out without any marketing except being shown in a Japan-only Nintendo Direct. Before we go any further, I believe the less you know going into Paranormasight, the better, but I will set the stage for you to understand the basic plot of the game.
The Seven Mysteries of Honjo
The setting is Sumida, one of the main wards in Tokyo and focuses on the occult side of Japanese legends. The story is based on the real life and titular “Seven Mysteries of Honjo” which is the old name for Sumida Ward. You start the story as a pretty average office worker called Shogo Okiie. Shogo has gotten himself caught up looking into the aforementioned mysteries due to a friend who is deeply interested in the occult, inviting him to help her find one of the curses at night time. Through chance, Shogo is cursed by one of the mysteries and is forcefully entered into a “death game” ritual where he can use the curse to kill the other curse bearers involved. If he or the person he is talking to fulfills the required condition of the specific curse, (which is intentionally left vague for you to figure out each condition) he is able to kill that person instantly with no evidence being left behind.
It was from this point that I became hooked into the story because although this is a linear visual novel, the game actively involves you, the player in its own “Death game”. When you are simply just talking to another character you must first figure out if they are a curse bearer and then what is the condition of their curse stone, to avoid your character being murdered. For example, our main character Shogo’s curse is extremely strong and lets him kill another person if they try to escape from him for any reason. But you, the player, are the person who gets to choose when to activate it. This aspect is extremely thrilling and even intense at times, because you, the player, are the one to activate the curse ability. The ultimate end goal of the ritual is if anyone in this “Death game” manages to murder enough people, they are able to bring back someone they love from the dead. However — our main character Shogo doesn’t really have anyone that fits the bill.
From here the story makes twists and turns and switches between the perspective of 5 different characters such as Yakko Sakazaki, a high school girl who recently lost her best friend or Harue Shigima and Richter Kai, a mother and her private investigator, who have been searching for the mother’s child that was lost in a kidnapping many years before the events of the story. Although there are “bad endings”, the story is mostly a linear visual novel. The gameplay revolves around going through dialogue with other characters, clicking on objects on the surrounding area and moving around the in-game map of Sumida to gain clues which are conveniently added to your file menu which you can check anytime. This might sound familiar to Ace Attorney fans, sadly you will not be taking any curses or mysteries to court. This is probably the area of the game that will put most people off as sometimes it can be very vague as to what you have to do to continue the story.
Square Enix’s death game
Perhaps Square Enix wanted this to become another (oc)cult classic? With the publisher’s history of throwing games out to the ocean and seeing if they sink or swim, I believe so. From 2021 until 2024, Square Enix published a LOT of games with zero or close to no marketing, leading to disappointing sales across the board. For example, the long awaited sequel to the previously mentioned The World Ends With You, selling less than the original at <200k units in spite of being a multi-platform published game.
However, if we look around the release of Paranormasight in particular,, it seems Square Enix gave a lot of smaller developers chances to make a hit game, but would not provide marketing for the games, hoping that one of them makes it big. Within 6 months (September 2022 — March 2023), Square Enix published 13 games. How many can you actually name? Have you heard of Various Daylife, a game from the key staff behind Bravely Default? Did you play Star Ocean or Valkyrie Elysium, sequels to beloved Square Enix franchises? The chances are probably not.
Square Enix’s president, Takashi Kiryu even admits the company has a marketing problem. In an end of year 2023 Q&A, the president stated that he intends to strengthen the publishing section of the company, to bolster the marketing capabilities of the company.
A mystery worth solving
That said, this game is barely hampered by its small budget. I only felt that the lack of voices in this game detracts from the overall experience. When I compare this game to my favorite visual novel, Umineko No Nako Koro Ni, another story that fuses fantasy and supernatural with mystery, which had voice acting added on subsequent re-releases, I can’t help but feel something is missing.
Even though it was low-budget title for Square Enix and developers Xeen, it seems like it was a moderate success for them as they are continuing the series with a sequel manga called Paranormasight File 25: Encounter with the Psychic Girl Kurozuru Miwo. Which will be focusing on one supporting character from the story, Mio. Maybe we will see previous characters appear again? And now, with the recent Nintendo Direct, in a surprise announcement, a sequel is being made and is coming out very soon, so now is the perfect time to check out the original story.
If anything described here has tickled your fancy, I strongly recommend you check Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo out. If you love stories that combine fantasy and mystery together or visual novels with interactivity you need to read this now. The pacing is just right, lasting around 10 hours, meaning the story doesn’t overstay its welcome and keeps you hooked and wanting to continue reading until you finally get some answers as to just what the hell is going on in Sumida. I can only hope we get more unique visual novels such as this translated in the future, perhaps next time with more of a push from the publishers.
