Even though I consider a few visual novels to be all-timers, it’s a genre that I have a hard time motivating myself to play most of the time.
I love a good story when playing a video game, and that is what a visual novel is all about, but I also struggle with the genre justifying its existence as video games sometimes. To me, gaming enhances storytelling because of the interactivity it provides and because it generally allows you to experience extra context from the main path through environmental storytelling, “codex entries,” or side content. When a visual novel is just a novel that I’m clicking through, it can be amazing, but it doesn’t always feel like a great *video game*.
Perhaps that is why my eyes glossed over Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse multiple times when I was looking for new games to play in the past month. However, a mix of a slow release schedule and some hype from friends pushed me over the edge, and holy crap am I glad I pulled the trigger.
The Mermaid’s Curse is one of the best visual novels I have played in quite a while. It has a fantastic story and several incredible twists. But maybe most importantly of all, it really uses being a video game to its advantage. It’s a visual novel, but it’s also a video game ass video game. And I really love it when my video games feel like video games.
This Is The Most Plot Twists I Have Ever Seen In Any Story Involving Mermaids. It Easily Blows Away The Little Mermaid In Plot Twists. The Little Mermaid Gets Manhandled By This Story
The Mermaid’s Curse flips between four different perspectives and mostly centers around a small and secluded island called Kameshima. You start the story off as Yuza Minakuchi, a young man who has returned home after some time away and wants to now become an “ama diver,” which is a common profession on this island. From there, the story also flips to Sato Shiranami, who has recently shown up on Kameshima and seems to have a mysterious backstory. You also play as Yumako Shiki, a housewife who is somehow also with the police, and Arnav Barnum, who is a tourist. Through these four perspectives, you eventually uncover several mysteries that center around supernatural occurrences happening in the area. You also slowly learn a lot of things about each of these characters.
In order to keep this review spoiler-free, I won’t be talking about the plot any further. But I was pretty riveted by the story most of the way for several different reasons.
First off, I just love the structure of the entire experience. The Mermaid’s Curse is able to constantly surprise you, in part, because of the way the story is told. It continuously flips between perspectives and points in time over a roughly two-day period. You select each episode you want to play next on the “story chart,” which also shows you the order of events. This order of events isn’t super clear, so it can shift over time, which adds to some of the surprise. Most of the time, you can select between at least two or three episodes at any given point, so you can experience the story in the order you wish. I personally always picked the earliest episode chronologically, but you can do it in any way you want.
A lot of the biggest revelations in the game hit hard because you will think you have a grasp on things, and then a new episode that takes place the day before will suddenly change everything you thought. Despite all of the flipping around, the story never gets too confusing or tough to follow. Each episode you complete has a nice recap you can look back at, and each new episode has a small text intro to set you up a little bit for what is to come. These little quality of life features always kept me on track.
My one issue with the way the story is told is that if you are in the middle of an episode, you aren’t able to go back to the “story chart” until that episode is done. Because of all of the flipping around, there were a few times when it would have been nice to remind myself exactly where in the timeline the episode I was playing was, but this is a minor complaint.
The story being told in a cool way wouldn’t mean much if the plot itself wasn’t great, and luckily, Mermaid’s Curse more than excels there. This is a story designed around shocking plot twists, and the game delivers time and time again with them. There is one moment pretty early on that made me realize that I had to prepare myself for anything with this game, and yet, I was thrown off guard by shocking revelations constantly during this journey.
More than anything, I love the twists in this game because they are all set up in pretty fair ways. The Mermaid’s Curse is devoted to sprinkling in small hints for its biggest revelations. Every time a twist came, I would think back to a scene from earlier on that I thought was strange in some way. All of a sudden, that scene would make perfect sense.
There were multiple times throughout the game that I thought I had spotted a plot hole of some sort. For example, there were a few instances where I thought a character was doing something that didn’t really make sense. Pretty much every time this happened, I would end up being proven wrong. Something that made little sense or that seemed off 30 minutes ago was now incredibly logical. The beauty of every twist in this game is that you’ll have the “aha!” moment of the surprise, but you’ll also have the same “aha!” when thinking about some of the hints that were given that you probably missed earlier on. One twist in particular absolutely blew my mind and answered pretty much everything that I was questioning up to that point. It genuinely shocked me and was one of the coolest plot reveals that I’ve seen in quite a while. When it comes to surprising and delighting me with its revelations, Mermaid’s Curse is about as good as it gets.
Unfortunately, as strong as the story is, especially in the back half, there are some stretches in the first half of the game where the pacing drags a fair bit. The history of Kameshima and the general surrounding area is very important to the plot, and there are pretty long stretches where you are hit with long lore and exposition dumps that are just not done well. I think they could have found better ways to space out these sections. Two episodes in particular in the Arnav Barnum section of the game are just brutally long and dull because of this. Worst of all, because of all the different perspectives that you play as, sometimes the game will hit you with the same backstories multiple times. This can be good for making sure you really know everything that you need to know, but it definitely took me out of the story a few times.
My one other nitpick with the story is that it does a lot to hide certain characters’ motivations throughout the experience. This does a great job of setting up big surprises, but it also made it hard to fully connect with a lot of the characters until I was closer to the end of the game. It’s hard to feel attached to characters when you don’t understand their motivations, and almost everyone hides those ambitions until you get pretty far into the experience.
Oh My God You Put Gameplay In My Visual Novel
As I talked about in the intro, as much as I enjoyed the story in Mermaid’s Curse, a big part of the appeal is that this still properly utilizes video games as a medium in order to enhance that story.
The aforementioned story chart is a big element of this. The way the game gives you the ability to experience the plot in the order you want (in a limited capacity) is a video game type of thing. But there’s more to it than that. In each scene, you are able to look around a lovely environment and investigate different areas of the map, as well as the characters, which gives a little extra flavor to the story.
This is also kind of a detective game at times. There are multiple puzzles that you have to solve to advance the story. Several of these puzzles involve identifying who the culprits in the mystery are as an example. These puzzles are a lot of fun, and genuinely made me feel smart even though they aren’t overly complicated. Unfortunately, the amount I was enjoying the puzzles ended up getting a bit overshadowed by how much I hated the last several puzzles of the game, which are required to unlock the “true ending” (which I view as pretty much mandatory). These puzzles are genuinely bullshit. Even the guides I ended up using to solve them call them out as being pretty unfair. Once you know the solutions to these puzzles, they are kind of brilliant, but they are so out of left field that I think it would take several hours of tinkering around to solve them. I’m not sure if I would have ever figured out two of them in particular without help. If you play the game and get near the end, feel no shame in just consulting a guide for these puzzles. They are not well implemented.
The one other true “gameplay” portion of the game comes during the diving sections. The Yuza storyline has one episode where you do the aforementioned “ama diving.” This involves diving into the sea to find loot of sorts. It’s incredibly addictive. You have to go into the water and extract as much loot as you can before you run out of air. With each dive, you can gain exp, which then allows you to go underwater longer, collect loot faster, and get back to your boat more quickly. It’s a really fun loop, and I invested a full 30 minutes or so into maxing out my level even though I didn’t have to. Unfortunately, the game did almost nothing to reward me for my devotion to this mini-game. This was disappointing and absolutely could have been done better, but I still enjoyed it, and it helped mix things up nicely in a few of the early portions of the game when the story was dragging a bit.
Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse CHANGED MY LIFE???
The Mermaid’s Curse is also enhanced by strong production values. There is no voice acting in the game, but it is more than made up for by excellent music that consistently captures the mood the game is trying to evoke. The sadder music, in particular, really hit and had me in my feels during the big moments. The visuals are also strong thanks to the game’s excellent art style. It really has some striking character models and pretty environments. My only issue with the visuals is that some of the facial animations are a bit too over the top and can look silly in serious moments. Other than that, the visuals and music are both a real treat.
It all comes together to create my favorite visual novel since the original Phoenix Wright. The Mermaid’s Curse is so good that I plan on playing the original Paranormasight within the next month because I have not been able to get this game out of my head since I beat it. I also feel much more open to experiencing other games in this genre now.
Basically, The Mermaid’s Curse might have just changed my life. There aren’t many games that have that kind of distinction. If you have any interest in the genre at all, you should absolutely play this game. If this genre isn’t always your thing, this could still very well be the one that wins you over to it.
Score: 9.0/10
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