This probably the worst non-indie otome game I’ve played so far. I question if this was really written for a female audience.
The MC is a complete doormat and treated like a child by the men around her. She is of course younger than them because not only are women expected to be subservient, but also younger for some reason. In one scene the boys are actively keeping away a shoujo manga from the MC. A manga that was written and designed for her target audience. All because it’s too “steamy”. In this she is treated as a child who should not be exposed to anything remotely sexual. Yet we have two of the boys constantly touching her without consent, especially Karasuba that even touches her legs and sits close to her. This also has that gross habit of all Japanese media of having a woman apologize for everything she does and her existence. Even when it’s not her fault.
This game also goes really hard on hating women. Being called a “woman” is an insult to men, which is why our society’s insults are based on likening everything to being female, or female anatomy.

Now that this is done, I’ll have to see how it’s loose sequel holds up.

Music is however fantastic. If anything give the soundtrack a listen.

It’s another show about girls made to appeal to pedophiles and has the tentacle rape jokes a plenty for you. Complete with a predatory lesbian that wants to get it on with these children.

If you want to learn about fishing please do it from another fishing anime, unless you are one of those otaku that loves all your gross pedo anime.

First and foremost the translation by Demiforce is pretty garbage. Not only do they add themselves to the narrative on one clue, but there’s also lots of American pop cultural references as well as “Wassup,G” in one part of the game that is out of place. Some of these references weren’t even around when the game was made. One major thing is the transphobia they added for one character in particular when you are interviewing students. Of course Nintendo gave them something to work with which is the other half of this review. How utterly misogynistic this whole game is.

This is the prequel game to “The Missing Heir”. So it basically is telling you where Ayumi came from.

Ayumi who made a Detective Club at school with her friends Hitomi and Yoko. Yoko who was murdered and is the main case of the whole game. Ayumi who is only there as a prize at the end for ‘doing good’ and then becomes the main office slave, useful to get coffee and do men’s menial labor. So much for being a Detective. Of course there are a number of points where she’s “just in the way” as well. Leading for her to be taken as a damsel to be saved… twice.
Yeah this game is a dating sim too.
At least she wasn’t Yoko! Yoko faces a worse fate.

By the end of the game the text exonerates a murder who is also an accessory to murder. Who literally DISPOSED of Yoko and killed Shinobu. The game praises him as a “good guy”. The girls of course are simply trash. Thrown away. He dies an “honorable” death. “He looks up for his students!” As long as they are male.
Meanwhile this is where the plot goes off the rails. Where everything points to him and it flips to “Oh, this other teacher is suddenly a homicidal maniac and REALLY did all the killings!” The story would have been much better if it was about a man who everything thinks is “great and wonderful” but in the end was human garbage. Nope, gotta put all that on someone else… right. at. the. very. end. Just to have Mr. Dogshit come out smelling clean, despite a hit and run and then disposing of the body. Despite tossing a girl into a river. Girls aren’t human to Nintendo in this game.

Also of course it has the “Yoko looks EXACTLY like Shinobu” interchangeable women BS as well on top of all this.

On top of all this there are points where you are blocked not knowing what to do. One is a dunk guy where you have to go through all of the options more than once and is just annoying. Prepare to get stuck.

This game is supposed to be a(nother?) reboot prequel to the whole Jinguuji Saburou series. I have no idea why Aksys games didn’t butcher this into Jake Hunter again. Probably because this is set in New York.
Still this game exists meaning that NO OTHER Jinguuji Saburou games do. So, this isn’t connected to anything.
People will start pointing out about how Jake Hunter is Saburou… but NO… Aksys did a good job of whitewashing the Saburou games into Jake Hunter. Jinguuji Saburou is dead.
Maybe they are planning to have a compilation game where they finally do a correct translation instead of thier whitwashing garbage. A pity that Night of the Sickle Weasel also fell to their whitewashing.

A lot of frustration in this game is the back and forth between places you have to do. The “tutorial” camp episode is one of them.
People telling you to go or hinting at places to be at only for you to go there and nothing is there. No you were supposed to go elsewhere first. You will also find the place only to talk to one character to get a sentence of text before rushing off to the hunt down the next place you are expected to be at.
I feel at one point in the camp even the devs got tired of talking to all three of the kids, adding nothing to anything, where they just make an excuse to get rid of them. Really they shouldn’t have been there as much as they were to begin with.

Another thing is that you have to look at items multiple times. Even when you get the info you need. There’s also a “SEARCH” you can use that will cause these glass shards to illuminate what you can view. Only it doesn’t work if you’ve viewed the item before. See above as you need to view them multiple times. There’s also sometimes an order you need to view them in. Lest to say lots of time was wasted.

The character is told in the news clipping that Daedalus means “DEAD ‘O blood LOSS” yet he goes around asking over and over what it is. I get that DAEDALUS is supposed to be a code word, but the fact the kid can’t read that it was just made up in the news clipping and it wasn’t even commented on it… WTF. He could have gone around saying “The news said this… but does it mean more.

Lots of misplaced labels and wrong names (Good job Aksys). A bar counter for example is called the Circulation Desk.

Yoko, the one that ends up being the office slave to Saburou is introduced as being cool and levelheaded. later however she’s dismissed and rendered completely useless “would only get in the way”, becoming a damsel to be saved later. Melissa, Dan’s mom, has her boobs hanging out for no reason. This is even lampshaded by Dan. She also gets damseled despite being a “super assassin”. She at one point “cries like a little girl”. Because the male writers see women as children.

The character designs are off too, if this is set in New York. Marie for example does the very Japanese female character design of chest clutching with her broken ankles stance. She is also written in her bio that she has a personality stronger than she looks. The design is very out of place with the pesudo-realism they have going on.

There are a few times you can comment on women’s chests. This is in there. Why? Why do these men hate women so much that they want to further normalize sexual harassment.

This isn’t a good game.
The ending that the whole game builds up to is a big disappointment. Even after that the game keeps going and overstays it’s welcome.
Totori’s teacher is Rorona. If you know fansubs from the 90s you know how bad a copy of a copy is and Rorona is no different. She still acts like a child (for all the pedotaku) and is honestly a bad teacher. So Totori just ends up as Rorona 2.0. Her personality is almost carbon copy.
Another problem I found with the game is that if your on PC and pay for the Cici/Iksel characters you won’t be able to use them until the end of the game. The PS3 version however doesn’t have this problem. So what’s the point of them?
Also the homonculus system shows up way late in the game and requires pies to make work. Both taking time an resources away from your other tasks since you can only buy 10 pies at a time and you can’t register pies. Also the 5th Chim is locked behind an event that hasn’t even triggered for me yet.
The character storylines are honestly boring and you really only learn what you see.
Sterk isn’t that scary and is still searching for Gio
Marc likes robots… that’s his whole thing
Melvia is a crappy adventurer that wears gross clothing because “it’s easy to move around in!” yeah none of the men wear stuff like that so it’s just a garbage excuse. Also for how strong she is, she has no muscles. She’s just wank fuel for cumbrains.
Gino hits Totori after she’s stronger than him so I just cut him off. Fuck an abuser.

The other characters I didn’t bother with. Either because I couldn’t get to them in time Cici/Iksel or that they were just uninteresting.

SPOILERS***
We find out that Totori’s mother is dead after she fought with the Evil Face in the tower and lost twice. This of course is because women can’t do anything without men and is punished for even trying. It’s a fucking downer of an ending and also gross. Thi just tanked whatever interest I had in the game at all. They try to make up for it by have a “cute girl” that stows away on the ship but I didn’t give a flying fuck about her.
***END SPOILERS

TL;DR: Disappointing ending. Easily skippable in the series, will also take your money and not let you use the characters you bought until end game.