A Very Good Year for Murder

「すいません、キムチ丼大盛り、ご飯抜きで」

『クビシメロマンチスト 人間失格・零崎人識』 

"One extra large kimchi rice bowl please, hold the rice."

"Strangulation: Kubishime Romanticist"

Two game reviews in one week!?

Sometimes, it's just the mention of a setting that is enough to lure me in. Case in point is the topic of today's review, the visual novel Suhoshin (PC, 2022), released by developers No More 500 earlier this week. When I first saw the artwork a few weeks ago and noticed the description said it was a mystery set in the medievel Joseon period of Korea, I knew I had to keep an eye on it, because it seemed just such an original setting. I will admit right away I know very little of pre-modern Korean history in general: due to the East-Asian Studies courses taken in university, I have dabbled a little into pre-modern Korean history and literature, but those were very, very brief trips away from my Japanese major, but still: I have read quite a few mystery stories set in medieval times of various locations from Europe to Japan, which were awesome, so why not one Korean peninsula? Interestingly enough, this is not the first time I have discussed mystery set in Joseon Korea: in the past I've discussed the 2011 film 2011's Joseon Myungtamjung : Gakshituku Ggotui Bimil ("Joseon Great Detective: Secret of the Wolfsbane Flower"), which has the international title of Detective K: Secret of the Virtuous Widow and the novel Arang-un Wae ("Arang, Why?"), which featured literary research into a famous folktale set in the Joseon period, but still, it's far from a common setting, so I decided to try out Suhoshin when it was released earlier this week on PC.

Suhoshin starts with the return of protagonist Yuri to his home village of Yangdong. He was sent to capital Hanyang (Seoul) three years ago and after passing the national exams to become a civil servant, was trained as a guard and learned to conduct criminal investigations. Now his training has been completed, and to his surprise his first official posting is back in his home village Yangdong, a peaceful place quite far removed from other cities. Yuri longs to see childhood friends Soo Ah and Yun Bok, but is also happy that once in Yangdong, he'll be able to thank his patron Mr Kim, a local yangban (gentry) who sponsored the orphan to be able to be educated in the capital. Upon return, Yangdong seems as serene as the day Yuri left and after relaxing with his old friends, he prepares for his new tasks as a guard, but the following day, the village head informs Yuri that a murder has taken place in Yangdong, a crime which hasn't happened in the village for decades! The poor victim was brutally mutilated in her home, where she was discovered. Because of Yuri studied criminal investigation in Hanyang, he's given the task to find out who the killer is. Yuri starts out with confidence, as he has seen quite some crime in the capital, but more and more people in the village are killed almost each night and not even the walled-off segment in town for the yangban is safe. But who is this cruel killer who is able to get into each and every corner of the village without raising any suspicion of its victims? Time is running out for Yuri with each passing day, and perhaps he has to learn that some times, it were his own actions that led to more tragedy.

Some people might recognize the art style from the screenshots right away, though I myself only realized it when I read the description and went: "Oooooh, that's right!". Yep, Suhoshin features character designs by Kageyoshi, who also did the designs for the neat novel game Raging Loop (stylized in Japan as Rei-Jin-G-Lu-P). That was a game that cleverly used the Werewolf/Mafia party for its story structure, but it also told a very interesting story with deeply fleshed out folklore which was fictoinal, but still borrowed a lot from actual indigeneous Japanese nature religions and mythology and the anthropological side to those subjects. Suhoshin is quite different from Raging Loop in many ways, but it has a similarly "educational" side to it, as the game does a lot to explain its historical setting. Key terms in Korean are highlighted in red and recorded in an index, and these terms do a lot to "sell" the historical setting of Joseon to the player. Some words you probably have heard of, like kimchi, but there are plenty of other words that will not ring a bell, and it's a great way to present a setting a lot of people will simply not be very familiar with. 

Gameplay of Suhoshin is what you'd expect of a mystery novel game with a flowchart function. For non-gamers, few games will be as easy to play as these kinds of games, as you are just reading the text and once in a while you'll be presented with story-changing choices that allow the narrative to branch out in various routes and endings, basically the same as a Choose Your Own Adventure book. In a way, the set-up in Suhoshin is also similar to Raging Loop in how it sometimes forces you down particular routes first, before allowing you go back in the flowchart and offering you a new, unlocked choice that gives access to a different route. This means that ultimately, you do read the various routes and endings in a fairly set manner, which is a shame, because it kinda takes away the illusion of actor freedom in this game. Take 428 Shibuya Scramble for example, a similar novel game that does force you to take certain routes first to allow you to proceed, but because that game presents the player with a lot more choices throughout a game of which you are never quite sure which one will be an important, story-changing one or not, the illusion of actor freedom is much greater. Suhoshin is of course a game of a much smaller scale (I finished it within 5 hours), but it would have been nice if there would be a few more bad ending/optional ending branches a player could reach, just so the player doesn't feel like they are just doing all these endings/routes in a set order.

As a mystery story, Suhoshin has a lot of the right building bricks ready, and ultimately, I did enjoy playing this game, but I feel like it could have been much more if they had fleshed out the core plot. The first half of the game feels a bit slow, with Yuri investigating each crime scene but often not being able to come up with very interesting theories simply because each of the murders is fairly "open" and the conclusion is basically "well, anyone in the village could've done it given the opportunity". It's only in the second half of the game a very, very important clue is introduced, but the way the clue is presented is fairly cheap (the equivalent of random person showing up the clue), and from that point on, basically the whole mystery is solved. Once that clue has been presented, even the game doesn't pretend there's much left, because the narrative basically moves on immediately to theorizing on that clue and identifying the killer on its own, without any player input. But what I think is such a shame is that I think there was so much potential to make this a more engaging whodunnit, with the exact same clues/foreshadowing the game already has. Some scenes are really cleverly laid out in hindsight, but a lot of these scenes stood out like a sore thumb because of the limited playtime of Suhoshin, and with only a handful of viable suspects in the game in the first place, it felt like the events of this game were not laid out evenly: very little happens in the first half of the game besides people dying, and then when a genuine clue is discovered, suddenly everything moves at mach speed. If the mid-section had been fleshed out more, with more suspects/a more comprehensive view of Yangdong and more theorizing by Yuri too, Suhoshin could have been a much more engaging whodunnit even if it had ultimately used the same clues. I mentioned before that I would have loved to see more minor branching storylines in this game: this would have gone well with a more fleshed-out mid-section allowing the player to choose more angles in the investigation, introducing more suspects and also a better way to introduce the scenes with foreshadowing more naturally in the narrative. Some might not like the direction this game ultimately took in terms of the mystery by the way, but I think it fits pretty well with the setting, and I myself didn't mind the concept at all, though as mentioned, the decisive clue could've been introduced more steadily I think.

Though I have to repeat, I did have a lot of fun playing Suhoshin, it's just that I think the plot held a lot more potential than the end product, especially as the clues etc. are already fine as they are in the game now, but missing just a little bit more time and space between the planting of the clues and the finale of the game. But overall, I think Suhoshin was an entertaining experience. People who are looking for a mystery game set in Joseon Korea probably don't have much choice anyway, but Suhoshin is definitely worth checking out if you're looking for something in that direction.