April 11th, 2023

DAEDALUS – Review


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.

ADVDAEDALUSDetectiveMisogynyPCSexismSwitchVisual Novel