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.

There is no harem anime that is good. By it’s nature of being about a man collecting women as sexual suitors it’s misogynistic garbage from the beginning. You can try to rationalize that one is “good” because it doesn’t have this or that, but it’s still shit. I will say there are shows can “do it better” bit it’s still a shit pie.

There is no harem anime that is good. By it’s nature of being about a man collecting women as sexual suitors it’s misogynistic garbage from the beginning. You can try to rationalize that one is “good” because it doesn’t have this or that, but it’s still shit.
Also reverse harem/man harem doesn’t have ecchi. Period. Because none of the men are sexualized or objectified. Ecchi (H) -> Hentai -> Requires sexualization. Women are taught to not objectify men and to even avert their eyes of the male form. They are fed abs up “sexy” art. And because men have an aversion to dicks, women are taught not to want to see the dick because then that would mean art featuring possible outlines of dicks. “Nobody wants to see that!” Except fooor gay men.
You want to see men being sexualized? Look at gay art. The most I see of gay art out in meatspace is…. abs up “sexy art”. To see the “good” stuff you have to go looking for it. It is otherwise suppressed.

Two women with large breasts pressing themselves against each other, glancing sideways at the camera? On the cover of that anime over there. Multiple women wearing lingerie leaning against and even wrapping their arms around each other.. Victoria’s Secret has you covered.

So why is it the lesbians I know more or less want to see the exact same thing straight men want to see, but straight women somehow want a more chaste looking man compared to gay men? The answer is right there!
(“But straight men don’t want a tall built woman!!!11” *points to lady Dimetrscu who was quick to be called the “Steppy Weppy Dommy Mommy”*)

This also ties into the face that female characters even if they aren’t human, has to look always look human. There are very few female characters where the face is covered, and in those cases you can believe the body is going to be of a 20 something year old woman. That is if it isn’t looking YOUNGER.
On the other hand women are taught to love male characters that don’t even look human at all. Beauty and Beast is a good example. It’s like a training fable for young women because most were married off against their wished because women are property. Harem anime keep that fact alive by making women “collectable” and “interchangeable”. Tsundere, Kuudere, Yandere, are all flavors of women (girls mostly let’s be real hear). Yes men come in those flavors, but remember men are people so the story is going to center the man. In harem anime the story… centers the man and the women are just there to help it along in some way.
Our world is fucked and things associated with women are tailored to serve and not upset men.

This game just love to force things on the MC that she never asks for, but of course accepts it because she’s such a doormat.

Of course the MC has convenient amnesia and needs a MAAAN to fill her in on what happened.

I was hoping that it would be a decent game about MMOs and stuff like Sword Art, but not here. The MC is completely useless unless the plot calls for it. She can’t do anything herself and needs men to save her. Even the 14 year old boy is stronger than her and it’s pretty bad.

Like she rationalizes because he was trying to keep his promise it’s OK that he’s a murderer/rapist. When you look at it, it’s basically what Shiki wants and nothing about what she wants at all, but she just goes with it for no real reason.

The ending is of course a “reset time and none of this stuff ever happened” bullshit. Almost like what was the point of playing the game.

Let’s also talk about the incest going on. It’s stated he loved her the minute he saw her. At the end of Shiki’s route you can see they meet when she’s not even old enough to form words.

And the ultimate insult is the harem ending is the BAD ending. Women can’t even have an ending where they get all the guys and are happy like males are catered to all the damn time. The MC is then punished of course by being raped by her own brother.

THe best routes out of all of this are Libera, Radius and to a degree Astrum. The rest go way over the line. Zain was a good candidate for being a good one, but the writers decided to toss in the Demento shit and make him evil.