Poisoned Paradise

"Nani the hell?"

"Paradise Killer"

This review comes nearly three weeks later than I had first expected. First time on this blog I was literally physically not possible to finish a work of mystery fiction as planned (due to motion sickness).

Welcome to Paradise! The tropical Paradise Island located outside of reality has been the home and experimental grounds of the Syndicate, a group which hopes to summon back the ancient gods through the completion of Paradise. However, the Syndicate's attempts at creating paradise has always failed in the past due to demonic powers corrupting the very fabric of the island and destroying society itself. Each time, the members of the Syndicate were forced to give up on the corrupted Paradise and "reset" everything by creating a brand-new Paradise and moving to their new home to once again attempt to achieve their holy goals. Paradise 24 too has failed and everything has been set into motion to move to Paradise 25, of which everyone is convinced that this time, they'll succeed. But just as the transition to Paradise 25 is almost over and only a few members of the Syndicate remain on the island to draw the curtain on Paradise 24, the unthinkable happens: all the members of ruling Council of the Syndicate are murdered in their highly-secured penthouse. Lady Love Dies, the "investigation freak" who had been banished from Paradise three million days earlier is summoned back to Paradise by the Judge, who asks Lady Love Dies to look into this crisis. While there is a suspect in Henry Division, a Citizen possessed by a demon who escaped his prison on the night of the mass murder, the Judge thinks there might be more to the case and gives Lady Love Dies carte blanche to investigate the Council murders and to bring the people responsible to the courtroom in the 2020 open-world detective game Paradise Killer (Nintendo Switch and Steam) by Kenzan Game Works.

As I'm writing this very sentence, I'm still not sure whether I really like Paradise Killer or not. Which is fairly rare, as I usually have a gut yay-or-nay feeling whenever I actually start writing a review. But Paradise Killer is in many ways a very unique detective game, one that's definitely worth trying out for its original take on the mystery videogame subgenre, but which at the same time (intentionally) does things so differently from conventional mystery games, it also feels unsatisfying at times. I can see why some people would see it as their game-of-the-year, but I can also agree with people who don't like the end product of Paradise Killer that much and personally, I'm probably leaning more towards the latter group, but if anything, I do think Paradise Killer is a game worth trying out if you're interested in mystery videogames, because it's undeniable it tries to take the mystery videogame in new directions.

The key-word here is of course open-world. The player takes on the role of Lady Love Dies and at the start of the game, you're dropped on the island and the Judge basically tells you "hey, people have been murdered, go figure it out." And from that point on, Lady Love Dies is free to do whatever she wants on Paradise 24. For a moment Paradise Killer reminds of those magic first hours of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, when you realize you can go anywhere and try anything you want. In Paradise Killer, you're free to explore the whole of Paradise 24 in first-person perspective: you're shown where all the suspects are on the island and where the crime scene is, but you can tackle everything on your own terms. Do you go to the crime scene first, or do you decide to speak with the Architect/interim leader of the Syndicate first? Do you just look around at the crime scene, or do you use your platforming skills to climb in and around the building to see if there are any other clues lying about beyond the normal pathways? The way the game allows you to tackle the problem in your own preferred manner right from the start reminds of how the J.B. Harold videogames start (allowing you to visit A LOT of persons at A LOT of locations right from the start), but Paradise Killer is far more ambitious as it features a whole island as its setting, which you can explore completely freely. This kind of freedom in a mystery game is really unique: most mystery games only allow you to move between small, closed-off locations that are always directly connected to the story, whereas Paradise Killer has a whole island with distinct areas like a residential area and a factory and you can explore every little corner on this island, even spaces which have nothing to do at all with the crime. It's quite overwhelming at first, though the game does help you out by showing with an AR-overlay where all the important characters/locations are on the spacious island. The open-ended approach also connects to the ending of the game: at any time of the game you're allowed to go the Judge and initiate the final segment of the game, where you accuse the culprit and lay down your evidence. So when you think you have enough evidence to back up your accusation of your suspect, you can just go to the courtroom even if there are still some parts of the story unaccounted for, if you suspect it has nothing to do with your main case.

Most mystery games work like a tunnel, forcing you down a set route, providing you with the necessary evidence and leading you down the path towards the one and only answer. Paradise Killer turns everything around by giving the player complete freedom to explore a 3D space and by allowing the player to miss evidence. At the start of the game, you're only tasked with the investigation into the murder of the Council, but once you start looking around, you'll soon stumble upon more crimes and mysteries (that are related to the Council murder). But if you choose to not explore the island, it's quite possible to miss these sub-plots completely or not find the evidence that help solve those other crimes. Paradise Killer rewards exploration of the island, not only by having clues lying everywhere, but also other collectibles that help flesh out the lore of the kooky background story of Paradise Killer and a special currency that is used for fast-travel options as well as the purchase of certain upgrades.

While the open world is what makes Paradise Killer unique and a refreshing game, I have to admit it's also the main reason it didn't quite manage to convince me. The island is lusciously designed, hiding secrets in every nook and cranny and the geography includes a lot of verticality, making for an interesting setting: you can explore the moats and sewers beneath the living quarters, but also find your way up to the rooftops of the many flats on the island or explore the mountain cliffs looking down on the island. But I absolutely hated having to go down twenty staircases, through three districts and cross half the island and take another elevator there just to talk with another person. Every time I wanted to do something, it'd take ages to get from point A to point B because of the labyrinthine design of the island, combined with the horrible map which doesn't show any paths or convey the verticality of the island (a compass would've been wonderful!). Talking with the completely bonkers characters like Crimson Acid and Doctor Doom Jazz was fun and you actually learn a lot about them and the overall backstory as you spend more time with them. But the time spent traversing between these great characters is not fun. There are a few movement upgrades to be found that allow you to travel across the island more easily, but you can only obtain those upgrades by... exploring the island and finding certain collectibles. I get the idea of wanting to reward the player for exploration of the island, but if a player just wants to focus on the solving the mystery, it's very vexing that something like a double jump, which makes the game more enjoyable to play, is locked away. Occassionally, the spatial design of the island does become relevant to solving the crime, for example by allowing you to find secret back doors to search otherwise locked houses or by having clues hidden in places that aren't directly visible from the ordinary pathways. Yet personally, I think I'd have preferred more intricately designed compact locationss with deliberate purpose for each and every detail, instead of having clues spread too thinly across a location that is just far too large. The way the 3D space was used for the mystery plot was barely any different to how you usually see it in conventional, single-path mystery games.

For example, at one point I accidentally fell off a cliff near an important crime scene, all the way down to a beach beneath a cliff, only to stumble upon a clue that had fallen there. Apparently, someone had dropped this clue down from above. At first sight, you might think this is clever use of the 3D space, but when the game barely gives a reason for that clue to be hidden at that location ("Character A must have dropped it here. And never bothered to retrieve this damning piece of evidence despite having ages to do so"), it becomes clear the developers just placed the clue there because the 3D space was there, but not because it made much sense plot-wise. That happens a few times, and that's why I think a more deliberate design to the 3D space to suit the story would've have been better. If it's going to be choosing between haphazard design that also requires you to use a lot of time just to explore it or more linear, focused design for a mystery game, I'm going for the latter.

Oh, and you might remember me mentioning how I got motion sickness from this game. I'm pretty prone to that with first-person perspective games, so everyone has to find out for themselves how they'll handle Paradise Killer. Later updates did help a lot with the motion sickness for me, which is why I was actually physically capable of finishing the game now in the first place, but still I have to admit I was glad the game was over, because I simply couldn't look at the screen too long. Paradise Killer reminds of Danganronpa's investigation modes with its 2D characters in a 3D space which you explore in the first person, but I never felt that nauseous with those games. 

The focus of Paradise Killer is completely on exploration, and it does reward players who like to check out everything a lot. If you stay on the beaten path, you'll miss a lot of the more crucial clues and often, taken the unconventional route will guide you to a clue that will perhaps implicate a character you hadn't suspected until that point. Exploration will definitely give you a more satisfying experience, as more and more of the mystery becomes clear. As you wander around Paradise 24, questioning suspects and looking for physical evidence, you'll gather clues and testimonies which are recorded in your handy computer Starlight. It's here where you probably start to realize that as a detective game, Paradise Killer does things very differently. For Starlight and Lady Love Dies basically do all the thinking for you. Each time you find a new lead, Lady Love Dies will comment on it, and Starlight itself will connect each piece of evidence to the related parties. For example, if you find out that the alibi of a character is faked, that piece of evidence will be automaticaly filed to the profile of the corresponding person. Leads that haven't been connected yet will be left unsorted, giving you an idea where to focus your investigation on. Never in the game do you need to think yourself about the evidence you find, because everything is done for you: evidence and testimony is explained in detail by Lady Love Dies, who will automatically explain who it'll implicate and why and who you should tackle next to learn more about this lead, and Starlight will also file the new facts away in the correct manner. In most mystery games, the story will usually test the player to see if they really got the story, for example by asking you to prove that A was at the crime scene, and you then have to present the piece of evidence that proves that. In Paradise Killer, you only collect evidence, but you never have to think about it. In a way, it's the complete opposite of Return of the Obra Dinn: in that game, you were tasked with identifying the victims on a ghost ship, but none of the clues presented in the game were ever recorded in a special menu. The player had to make the connections and interpretations themselves, and for example recall that the uniform a character was wearing indicated a certain rank or something like that. In Paradise Killer, all the clues you find are interpreted automatically in the correct manner and you don't have to think about them at all. Most of the clues are also very straightforward, like a phone record that directly contradicts a character's supposed alibi or even blood samples left on the scene. The most actual thinking you'll be doing throughout most of te game are the few minor environmental puzzles you come across, but they are very simple and not really fun at all, like "hacking computers" by matching pictures.

The game thus rewards players for exploration with clues and evidence, but the game fails at rewarding the player for actually contemplating on the found clues and evidence, because it will connect all the dots automatically for the player. There's never that satisfying "Aha!" moment when you suddenly see what the connection is between the various cryptic clues, nor any moment where you feel triumphant for using your brain to solve the mystery. The game also never has you truly act on the evidence you find, and there are no mid-story developments that drive the plot in another direction, even when you have found evidence that implicates certain characters and you confront them with it. This lack of interaction with the evidence and clues is also reflected in the game's final segment, when you go to the courtroom and accuse people for the various crimes you'll have uncovered over the course of the game. When I say trial, you might be tempted to think Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney or Danganronpa-esque gameplay, where you corner a suspect by picking their testimonies apart and presenting damning evidence, but that's not the case here. At the end of Paradise Killer, the Judge just asks you to accuse a character for every seperate crime you have discovered over the course of your investigation and to present the evidence for your case. The thing is: Paradise Killer is ultimately not about finding the truth, it's just about whether you found enough evidence to implicate the character you're accusing. You're actually free to accuse anyone you want for any of the crimes, though it's harder to get a conviction if you don't have any supporting evidence. Still, you can choose to accuse one character, while also being in possession of more decisive evidence pointing toward as a diferent character. The game is not as much about figuring out the truth, but about building a case with evidence against a suspect, and in the courtroom all you have to do is just dump all the evidence you found during the game on the table and then just sit back as the game will explain everything for you. The game will also not tell you what the real truth is behind the Council murder: while finding all the evidence will definitely give the player a clearer idea of what probably happened, never is anything completely confirmed. Due to the open-world design, where it's possible to completely miss evidence or lines of investigation, the story also becomes a bit weird if you have found all the evidence. Because the game is mostly non-linear and you can find clues in any order, the story is written in a way that for most crimes, you'll find evidence implicating multiple characters to varying degrees. It's ultimately up to you to decide which of these suspects you'll actually accuse of what crime (or who you'll want to let go on purpose), but if you find all the evidence in the game, you kinda end up with a story where everyone apparently tried to do similar things at similar times, because Paradise Killer tried to sell you multiple red herrings at the same time.

Style-wise, Paradise Killer is great by the way. I remember when I saw the first reveal trailer of Paradise Killer earlier this year and was quite intriqued by the visual style, which seemed like mix between JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (half of the cast's names could've been from JoJo!) and Danganronpa. But the quirky designs with idols with a goat's head do sell the weird, alien world of Paradise Killer, as does the music. A lot of the aesthetic might scare off mystery fans, especially the fantasy-like setting, though in general, most of the "technology" seen in Paradise Killer is just fanciful decoration. Locks and security systems that register character-unique blood vials might sound weird, but functionally, they're the same as fingerprints. There are more of these instances where the technology sounds really crazy, but not that weird when you think about it more closely.

I don't think Paradise Killer is a dividing game per se, as I certainly see a lot of potential in the idea of an open-world mystery game, but at the same time, I do think that it shows a lot of the weakness of the basic concept, and as presented in the form of Paradise Killer, I don't think the open-world design makes up for the loss of direction and focused plot design in more conventional mystery games. Players who love exploring a world freely to find clues themselves will have a blast, but I myself really missed being able to think about the evidence and clues myself and being tested by the game to see if I got it. Those instances where you cry out "Aha!" or where you are asked to prove that X was the killer and you smile because you know exactly what innocent-looking piece of evidence to present that will decisively prove their guilt. Paradise Killer lacks these segments where you solve the mystery in your mind, and only focuses on solving the mystery on your feet. In the end, the game even tells you that it's not really about solving the mystery, but just finding enough evidence to support an interpretation of the events. As a fan of puzzle plot mystery stories where everything falls in place perfectly in the end thanks to a long, detailed chain of reasoning by the detective, Paradise Killer isn't exactly what I look for, though I'm definitely interested to how developers will further build upon the ideas and concepts explored in this game, and it's definitely worth a try for any fan of detective games.