Delicious Death for Detectives

「フージョン　はっ！」

『ドラゴンボール』

"Fu- sion! Ha!"

"Dragon Ball"

Aaand I managed to finish this game just in time for its Western release!

The whole country has been horrified by a series of murders caused by a mysterious figure calling themselves the Quartering Duke. With over a hundred victims across Japan and the police still unable to catch the illusive criminal after months, the Detective Alliance has decided to hold a special emergency meeting at their home base on Morgue Island, where the best minds of the Alliance, combined with the research and other support staff of the Detective Alliance will figure out who the Duke is and how to stop them. Wato is a young detective assistant who aspires to become a detective himself too in the future, but as a fledgling, he is far removed from the world of the Detective Alliance. Or is he? One evening, he's approached by the Senior Detective, one of the veteran detectives of the Alliance, and he informs Wato he has been recruited for the Detective Alliance. The old man basically abducts Wato and when Wato wakes up, he finds himself on Morgue Island, just in time for the important meeting on the Quartering Duke. Morgue Island is basically a giant caldera, with large cliffs on the edges of the island, protecting it from outsiders and in the middle stands the manor that serves as a base for the Detective Alliance. Wato makes his way there, but there he finds him confronted with a small group of the elite members of the Detective Alliance, like the Workaholic Detective, the Techie Detective and the Armor Detective, all in the possession of specific skills that allow them to be the best among the best. These detectives were not made aware of Wato's sudden recruitment, and are quite suspicious of this unknown boy who suddenly appeared at the manor, especially as it turns out they have been trapped by the Quartering Duke on the island: killer robots have been set loose on Morgue Island, targeting the detectives and the support staff has already been killed. The detectives are now all locked inside the manor with one of the robots roaming outside, with no way to communicate with the outside world. When they discover one of the detectives has been killed inside the manor, it's only natural they suspect 1) the newcomer Wato who was suddenly brought here by the Senior Detective who since has disappeared and 2) that Wato might be affiliated with the Quartering Duke. But Wato is trusted by the leader of the Detective Alliance, the Ideal Detective Holmes, and she allows Wato, who is now dubbed the Incompetent Detective, to investigate the murder to prove he's innocent. But how will the Detective Alliance escape this trap of the Quartering Duke and will they be able to catch them in the 2021 mystery adventure SRPG Tantei Bokumetsu ("Elimination of the Detectives")?

Tantei Bokumetsu was orignally released in the summer of 2021 for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, but is scheduled for a 2023 April release in the West with the title Process of Elimination: the game had been on my radar ever since it was announced and I even played the demo when it was released in 2021, but I only got the game late 2022, and still didn't really got started on it until March, just in time for the Western release. The game caught my attention immediately, because it was such an original concept: most mystery games are, understandably, adventure games, whether it's a classic command-style adventure game or a novel game or whatever. An SRPG (in western terms usually strategy role-playing game, in Japanese terms usually simulation role-playing game) is simply not a genre you'd usually associate with a mystery story. For those not familiar with the SRPG genre: it's a variant on the normal (J)RPG, where you move your own units, who all have character-specific statistics or abilities, on a grid-based map to do battle with enemy units.These battles are turn-based, and on the whole, the idea is very similar to chess. One of the better known SRPG series of the decades or so is of course Nintendo's Fire Emblem, but Tantei Bokumetsu's developer (and publisher) Nippon Ichi Software is of course also one of the best known creators of SRPGs with series like Disgaea. Interestingly, Nippon Ichi Software also has a few mystery adventure titles in its catalogue, some of them which are only published by Nippon Ichi Software, but others are developed by Nippon Ichi Software themselves (Hayarigami for example). So if there was one company that would go on creating a SRPG mystery adventure game, I guess it'd be Nippon Ichi Software, but how is the result?

Well, before we get there, let's address the other elephant in the room first. Yes, Tantei Bokumetsu feels very similar to Danganronpa. In fact, I can easily imagine the planner and writer of this game, Joubana Kento, going to his superiors, literally just pitching "Danganronpa, but made by Nippon Ichi Software." It's not only the idea of a group of detectives with very specific fields of interests or having a defining character trait and the often comedic banter between them, but add in the closed circle situation, the idea of a murderer lurking among this group of detectives, the Quartering Duke who as a mysterious force who toys with the detectives and even appears in post-episode segments addressing the player directly, an overarching story that deals with the past of several of the main characters and the overall light banter-focused approach of the game, and you have a game that isn't shy about its inspirations. I imagine that a lot of people thinking of trying this game had already noticed the similarities and if you're looking for something close to Danganronpa in terms of tone, you're close: Tantei Bokumetsu is, in comparison, a lot more subdued, and not as crazy and meta-jokes-reliant, but the somewhat outlandish detectives like the Mystic Detective and the Bookworm Detective certainly feel like they woudn't stand out too much if they were ever to appear in Danganronpa. There is also a slight supernatural/occult theme to Tantei Bokumetsu, though I didn't think it was too intrusive in regards to the mystery part, though it didn't add much either. The game is also apparently set in the same world as another Nippon Ichi Software game (from the same writer): 2020's Bokuhime Project, though I have absolutely no idea what the connections are.

Tantei Bokumetsu is divided in several chapters, and in basically all chapters you'll eventually investigate a murder. The set-up of each chapter is also usually the same, starting with a long visual novel part where the characters discuss the events of the previous chapter, the story delving deeper in the mystery of the Quartering Duke and how and why they are being held on Morgue island and focus on their attempts trying to escape. Occasionally, the player is asked to make a choice in these segments: usually these choices have no bearing on the story, but in few rare cases, making the wrong choice here will lead immediately to a game over.  But most of the time, you'll just be reading text box after text box until inevitably, a murder will occur. Similar to games like the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney and Danganronpa series, the game then moves to an investigation phase, where you have to gather evidence. This is the SRPG part of the game, the unique, defining element that sets Tantei Bokumetsu apart from other mystery games.

It is also the worst part. 

In the SRPG parts, you have a limited number of turns (usually 5-10 "hours") to find all clues on the map and analyze all of the evidence. Evidence can only be obtained by examining a spot, and often an obtained piece of evidence also needs to be analyzed to understand it completely. In gameplay terms, this means sending one of your detectives to a spot to examine a clue ("defeat an enemy unit"), and once you've obtained that clue, another detective can analyze the evidence. However, not all detectives are equally good at these core skills like Analysis: a detective with Analyzation stats (2), won't be able to analyze a piece of evidence that's worth (5) points for example. As you find clues and analyze the evidence, you'll also encounter Mystery Points: these are big pieces of evidence/clues ("bosses"), and detective have to tackle these MPs with their powers of inference. Here detectives can cooperate, so even if a single detective's Inference stats (the "damage" done to an MP) are not sufficient, a detective (with good stats in Assistance) can act as support, allowing them to "defeat" (solve) a Mystery Point more swiftly. Once you have collected all the evidence and solved all Mystery Points, the story moves on to the finale of the episode, where you have to explain who committed the murder and how.

Only... why did this need to be a SRPG? There's literally no reason gameplay-wise that makes this a better or more interesting mystery game by turning the 'clue gathering' phase of the game in an SRPG. First of all, there are no customization options whatsever in regards to the RPG-elements. Characters don't level up, they don't learn new skills, and you can't select a team yourself for each episode, you are always given a selection. So everyone's stats are always fixed, with some being able to move further, and others being better an analysis or inferences, but they don't level up, and because of the tight deadline in turns for each stage, the SRPG parts basically are nothing more than optimization puzzles: how do you use your units as efficiently as possible to gather all the clues and solve all MPs within the turn limit? Because you can't customize your units in any way, or for example decide where their starting position is or anything, these parts are basically... very slow segments where you just have to gather evidence. Which, in a normal mystery adventure, would be done in a more streamlined manner, and often in a manner that allows for a bit more freedom in storytelling. In Tantei Bokumetsu, all the relevant evidence for a case has to be found within the SRPG parts, within a turn limit, and because there's no freedom in terms of the units you use anyway.... it just feels very meaningless. Even the few times where something like an enemy unit appears (which you have to defeat or avoid) don't really change much, because the tight deadline usually means you don't have that much freedom to decide how to use your units: these segments with the instant game overs feel even more like puzzles, having to figure out the best path to collect all the evidence without triggering the game over flag. 

Before I played the game, I had hoped this game would be closer to for example Sakura Wars, which incidentally is also an SRPG with visual novel parts. But there, there was interaction between the two parts: picking certain choices in the visual novel parts, would make certain units in the SRPG parts stronger (stat boosts). And that combined with leveling, and the fact you'd be rewarded for using certain characters often, by for example getting exclusive scenes with them, made Sakura Wars so fun, as the visual novel and SRPG parts were connected in terms of gameplay. But none of that in Tantei Bokumetsu. You get a group of detectives to control each time, but it doesn't really matter who you use or who get to work together or anything: as long as you get the job done and collect all the evidence within the time limit, all's fine and you won't get punished, or rewarded for that. But because all you do is literally just collecting evidence, it feels like they might as well have made a normal mystery adventure game, because they give me no reason to feel like this SRPG part is in any way vital to telling this story and in fact, for the most part, I felt like the SRPG segments got in the way of telling the story the game wants to tell.

For there are lot of "standard" elements usually found in mystery adventure games that are missing here, and it's just incomprehensible. There's no evidence inventory for example, so you can't read up on the evidence you found once you're done with the SRPG segment in each chapter. I absolutely don't understand why, but you'd better have a good memory or not stop playing between the SRPG segments and the conclusion of each chapter, for there's simply no way to take a second look at all the evidence you found in the SRPG parts. A lot of the deductions are also made for you in the SRPG parts: because the gameplay there revolves around "beating" the evidence and Mystery Points with the detectives, the inferences in this segment are always made by the detectives themselves, leaving little room for the player to consider the evidence, or for example to really lay out red herrings. When you arrive at the climax of each episode though, in the denouement scene, the player is tested via a series of questions to see if they solved the mystery, but because you 1) can't look up the evidence anymore and 2) you never were asked to really consider the evidence yourself in the SRPG parts, if you really have no idea about how the murder was committed and by whom at that point, you're in big trouble. Had the game allowed you to at least check the evidence again in the finale of each episode, that would've made a world of difference, but it certainly doesn't help that all the inferences made in the SRPG part are a passive experience, which then is suddenly changed in an active testing in the segment immediately following it, but there's no point in between to test whether you really think you understand what has happened. Because the evidence is all found in the SRPG parts, it also feels like you just get a box full of evidence dropped on you at once, so there lacks a good build-up going from a piece of evidence to the logical conclusions based on it, and ultimately the truth.

Strangely enough, there are parts in the story where you'd think using the SRPG presentation would've been great, like when the group is first attacked by a killer robot on the island and they try to fight back. Why not present that in SRPG form and have you try battling the robot only to see in gameplay you can't defeat it? 

Okay, so it took me a long time to finally get to the important matter of the story of Tantei Bokumetsu, or to be more exact: the mysteries. But I felt I had to explain first I thought the SRPG segments didn't really help the storytelling of the mysteries, because the evidence are all found in those segments. In general, I do like the individual chapter mysteries of Tantei Bokumetsu: the middle chapters have cases that are interesting, with semi-locked rooms and other impossible situations, but I do feel a lot of these stories are held back because the way the gameplay loop works, they had to place all evidence and clues in the 5-10 turn-long SRPG parts. Had these stories been told in a more classic adventure manner like in Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney or Danganronpa, they could've spread out the clues a lot more across scenes and events, and deepened some parts of the mystery much more. The third chapter in particular is one I think that is quite amusing now, but could've been much better had it been presented in a different manner, allowing them to make things just one step more complex. Extremely few mysteries within the game also benefit from the fact the one thing the SRPG segments show so much potential for: visualization of the crime scenes! Each crime scene (and its surroundings) are shown as a map, so you can really see how every room is connected to each other in a clear way, but there's basically only one moment in the whole game where this is relevant (it's a good one though!), but otherwise, the game makes criminally little use of how it so clearly presents each location almost like a diorama  (especially as you don't get to see a map in any other segments of the game or even as a floorplan as evidence...). So on one hand, it seems to me the SRPG segments limited the way the core mystery plots could've been deepened, while on the other hand, the potential the SRPG segments *do* have, are hardly ever used. Which brings me back to the question of "Why an SRPG?" again.

The overarching story has a few interesting points with the way it lays out its clues. Large parts of the large mystery, involving the past of some key characters and the role of the Quartering Duke, are less 'fair-play' mystery and more, 'just roll with what is revealed to you as things develop' I did like the clues that ultimately point to the final culprit of the game. I do repeat the fact this part of the mystery would probably have felt a bit better if we had some kind of database to easily look up previous events and evidence, as some parts here basically rely on your memory of things, though I guess that's "helped" by the fact the (very long, tedious) final confrontation is an extremely passive experience for the player, as Wato basically solves everything for you (because all the player had to do was collect the evidence in the SRPG parts...). Some parts of the story also feel very undeveloped, like certain characters who die far too soon, or how in the end, we learn very little about what the Detective Alliance exactly is and how things work. 

I don't think Tantei Bokumetsu is a bad game by the way, but it's a game where it's so easy to see the untapped potential, but it never seems to go beyond the concept phase, beyond the basic pitch of "hey, what if we made an SRPG mystery adventure game!" and if they didn't quite know what to do with this pitch. The result is a story that is interesting, with chapter-mysteries that on the whole are okay too and at times show very clever ideas, but at the same time feel underdeveloped because for some reason, this had to be an SRPG too. I can easily imagine how this would've been a better mystery game, if they had not gone the SRPG route, given them more freedom to focus on the presentation of clues and the resulting chain of logic leading to the climax. And at the same time, they don't use the SRPG parts for anything meaningful either. If you had been able to level the stats of your detectives for example, allowing them to take on bigger mysteries as the game goes on, or forcing you to use certain character-specific skills ("only the Techie Detective can analyze this") or any of that, and you'd have a more engaging SRPG segment, but now it's nothing barely anything more than a Professor Layton puzzle. Square-Enix's Sigma Harmonics on the Nintendo DS was a mystery RPG and the effort was hardly a perfect product, but at least there was meaning to that game being both a detective game and an RPG, as the difficulty of the chapter bosses would scale according to how well you'd solve the murder of that specific chapter. In Tantei Bokumetsu you have segments where you make choices, but those never influence the SRPG parts, and in the SRPG parts, you only gather evidence, but the way you do that there is not reflected in any way in the denouement scene of the chapter.

So overall, Tantei Bokumetsu (or Process of Elimination) is a game I don't quite know what to think about. It's not a bad game and on the whole, I did have fun with the story and mysteries of Tantei Bokumetsu: I certainly do not regret buying the game or spending time on it. But there are just so many missed opportunities and factors that just don't seem to make much sense, because they don't really make for a better mystery story or gameplay experience for the player. As if they had a very detailed outline of the story finished already, but never considered what kind of game it was supposed to be until very late in the process, because there are just too few moments where you feel there was much meaning to this being a partial SRPG. Even as an attempt to cross the audiences of Nippon Ichi Software, to bring the fans of their mystery adventure games together with the fans of their SRPG series, this seems like a rather weird attempt. It's certainly not a game I would recommend without reservation, but as I did, on the whole, think it was an interesting, if flawed attempt, I'd say it's still okay to try for those still curious about this experiment.

Original Japanese title(s): 『探偵撲滅』