The Great Hotel Murder

'My favorite is Detective Conan. Especially that girl. The sister of that darker-skinned boy.'

-- 'Sh-she's not his sister, she's his love interest!'

"Satako & Nada"

I suddenly recalled this game when I was writing my review on some Detective Conan episodes last time...

Most of the mystery games I review for this blog are, unsurprisingly, developed in Japan. Lately, many of them have also seen Western releases, or will soon see them: I wasn't that surprised when it was announced WorldEnd Syndrome would go west or a franchise like Danganronpa, but the original announcements of Western releases of for example 428, Rei-Jin-G-Lu-P and Daedalus: The Awakening of Golden Jazz, those I hadn't anticipated. One common point linking these games however is that these are game-original franchises. I have also reviewed games based on an existing manga or anime licenses, and while certain licensed titles (especially action games) tend to come to the west, that's often not the case for mystery adventure games. I doubt the games of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo or Tantei Gakuen Q will ever be officially released outside Japan, nor the entertaining Detective Conan & Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo crossover game, but I know of at least one game based on an extremely popular mystery anime that made it to the West.

As far as I know, the Nintendo Wii title Meitantei Conan - Tsuioku no Mirage ("Detective Conan - Mirage of Remembrance", 2007) is the only Detective Conan game to have been released in Europe, where it was released in 2009 as Case Closed: The Mirapolis Investigation in English and other language market-specific titles like Detektiv Conan: Die Mirapolis-Ermittlung in German (it was never released in the North American region). Kogorou has been invited to attend a pre-opening event of the Mirapolis, an amusement park and adjoining hotel set on an island in the sea. Conan, Ran and the Detective Boys have come along too to attend the ceremony and at the hotel, they also run into Hattori and Kazuha. The Mirapolis is the dream project of the ambitious businessman Kai Tadaki, who is known as the modern-day Oda Nobunaga. During the opening ceremony speech, Conan notices a suspicious woman who is seemingly trying hiding her face with a pair of sunglasses, and later discovers the body of the same woman, killed in the hotel pool. Some suggestive newspaper articles among her belongings suggest she was up to no good. Kai wants to keep things quiet as his amusement park hasn't been opened yet, but when more murders occur and the hotel is cut off from the outside world, it's up to Conan and Hattori, and the player, to solve the murders and apprehend the murderer.

At least, that's if you choose to struggle through this game, as while it's the only Detective Conan game to have seen an official release in the West, it's probably also the worst of the mystery adventure games based on Conan, and obviously, most of the Conan games are mystery adventure games. When you first start the game, you might think it looks sorta okay: it uses music from the animated TV show and the original voice actors also do a good job of recreating the familiar atmosphere. The player controls Conan directly, and while the graphics weren't that good back in 2007 either, it was pretty funny to run around (or use Conan's skateboard to roam around) the gigantic Mirapolis hotel, a massive building with twelve floors, an annex building and garden. That is: it's fun until you realize most of the game is spent on wandering around said hotel. 90% of the game, you'll be walking around the hotel to find one of the suspects or one of your allies to talk to in order to collect information and clues. Each time a significant event happens, all these characters end up somewhere else in the hotel, so the character that might've been in the hotel lobby, might suddenly be wandering near the restaurant for no apparent reason. There's almost never a reason for a character to be at their specific location at that specific time, so you're basically playing hide-and-seek each time, trying to find all the relevant characters in a GIGANTIC hotel for that specific act of the story. It's boring, mind-numbing and the fact that the ONLY background music track used here is the Detective Conan Main Theme doesn't help: I love the theme and always look forward to the newest remix when a new movie is released, but it isn't really a track that should be put on repeat forever and ever and ever as you wander around the hotel.

What makes this an awful mystery game however is the fact that the mystery solving aspect of the game has some severe design problems. Like most of the Detective Conan games, you are faced with specific questions and mysteries as you progress through the story ("How was X done?"). The clues and testimonies you collect throughout the game can be used to answer those questions. While Detective Conan games are always also designed for children to play (so never insanely difficult), The Mirapolis Investigation goes even one step further. Or back. For some reason, the player seldom really needs to answer the questions. What trips up most players, is that when for example Conan asks "Why did that woman hide her identity with sunglasses?", the answers you have to pick aren't the clues and testimonies that actually answer the question, you have to pick the clues and testimonies that say basically the same thing as the question, like the remark of a character that "it appears that woman is hiding her face." This happens all the time, where you as the player aren't trying to solve the mysteries, but just reiterating the mysteries and questions asked by the game,  by picking the clues and testimonies that say exactly the same thing as the question posed. It's really difficult getting the right answers, exactly you're always one or two steps ahead of what the game wants you to pick, and that's even when you know this is happening. The result is a game that is frustrating to say the least, as first you have to spend most of your time lost in the hotel, hoping to come across the one person you need to provide you with the last clue that allows you to proceed to the next act, and then you're constantly asked to answer questions, where they don't want to hear the actual answer, but some factor of two or three logical steps backwards. The Mirapolis Investigation is always several steps behind and while sure, it's a game for children, all Detective Conan games are, and none of them go throug the logical steps in solving a mystery as slowly as this one.

The story itself isn't particularly interesting either. There's a part where someone is killed inside an ice maze (one of the attractions), which sounds amazing in theory, but err, yeah, it's not really that impressive here. It's the type of story you'd expect from a standard, anime original episode, but nothing that truly impresses. There are also a few minigames you can play in the arcade in the hotel, but they are even worse than the main game. I guess that one interesting thing about this game is that Kai is voiced by Koyama Rikiya: he would become the second voice actor of Mouri Kogorou in the anime, so both the first Kogorou (Kamiya Akira) and the second Kogorou (Koyama Rikiya) co-star in this game. There's also an important secondary character in Moe, a maid working at the hotel who's an aspiring detective. While she doesn't appear in any consequent Detective Conan games as far as I know, she does remind of the college student Gotou Akie, a game-original character who's an aspiring detective appearing in three of the later "music-themed" Detective Conan adventure games: Kako Kara no Prelude (DS/PSP, 2012) and returning in the two 3DS games Marionette Symphony (2013) and Phantom Rhapsody (2014).

If you choose to play the game in English by the way, it defaults to the English dub translation, so Case Closed, Jimmy instead of Shinichi etc. I remember I played the game in German to get the original Japanese dub and names.

Anyway even if you're wanting for a Detective Conan game, I really can't recommend Case Closed: The Mirapolis Investigation. I played it when it was first released in Europe, and again a few years back, but that second playthrough only confirmed my first experience with the game: it's simply a bad adventure game. You can easily skip this one and if you're really curious, I'd say just watch some playthrough on the internet (preferably by someone who knows how to properly edit a Let's Play video and has trimmed all the boring stuff). To close off with a somewhat more positive note: Anyone played a mystery game based on an anime/manga that you really liked and want to mention?

Original Japanese title(s): 『名探偵コナン　追憶の幻想（ミラージュ）』