The tale starts in present-day Japan, as upcoming crime novelist Haruka Kagami accompanies buddy and medical adviser Eiji Shijima on a consult with to his circle of relatives house, hoping to take on the riddle of an unidentified skeleton lately found out at the grounds. Ahead of Haruka can poke her nostril into that conundrum, then again, a contemporary homicide happens, adopted through a landslide that blocks off get admission to to the property. As tensions surge and the police stay bring to an end, it falls on Haruka to unveil the killer.
To know the whole image, although, Haruka now not most effective has to unravel this newest murder however rummage throughout the circle of relatives’s historical past, consulting journals describing murders that return a century and seem to have hyperlinks to the Shijima title. Probably the most recreation’s six primary episodes happen in flashbacks, relaying occasions in 1922 and 1972. The average issue between them, you’ll quickly uncover, is the mythical “Tokijiku,” a fruit that supposedly grants everlasting adolescence to those that devour it.
All however one episode revolve round a unmarried homicide and spread like a vintage Agatha Christie tale. In each and every episode’s first section, “the incident,” you’ll be able to just about simply sit down again and watch the display. The scene is about, and a small accumulating of archetypal characters — the intimidating uncle, the formidable singer, the henpecked husband — information in, armed with hid motives and grudges. Then one turns up lifeless, and Haruka (or her previous equivalents performed through the similar actress) habits an investigation.
The tale then pauses, and also you’re whisked off to an summary house for the “reasoning” section, the place you lend a hand the detective get her ideas so as. Right here, pertinent questions and doubtlessly important clues are represented as hexagonal tiles, and also you fit them in combination on a grid to shape hypotheses, which cause a brief animated collection imagining how occasions will have transpired. Chances are you’ll attach the query of the reason for demise, for instance, to a rock discovered mendacity close to the frame, which induces competing hypotheses — most likely the killer snuck up and intentionally smashed their sufferer’s cranium, or most likely the sufferer slipped and hit their head all the way through a scuffle.
Whenever you’ve generated a wealth of such theories protecting manner, cause and alternative, the motion resumes with the “resolution” section, that conventional climactic scene the place suspects sit down in combination obediently in a room whilst the detective exposes the murderer amongst them. With a bit of luck, through now you will have a good thought of whodunnit and howdunnit, for the reason that detective’s large disclose speech will pause periodically for the participant to respond to a a couple of selection query as it should be to stay heading towards the reality. Make a mistake, and also you get some other take a look at, however take a success in your ultimate episode score (and more than likely your ego), a metric that doesn’t have an effect on the remainder of the sport.
To start with, this department of episodes into discrete stages turns out dangerous for “The Centennial Case,” because it frontloads each and every one with as much as half-hour of near-passive viewing (you get to make a couple of noncritical discussion alternatives, and press a button when a clue suggested seems), so the live-action parts successfully need to rise up as compelling TV.
Thankfully, the standard of writing and performances is a reduce above the ones in lots of live-action video games, which might be regularly hampered through low manufacturing values. Positive, you will have to steer clear of the English dub, the place makes an attempt to lip-sync the Eastern performances result in staccato supply, and the tone is extra “Homicide, She Wrote” than “True Detective,” nevertheless it makes use of that hokeyness deftly to attempt realizing winks at style tropes. Specifically, there’s a tongue-in-cheek tone to the performances, helped through a call to redeploy most of the similar actors as other characters in each and every length, as they truly appear to relish switching from suspect in a single episode to sufferer or killer in some other. All come supplied with their greatest suspicious expressions, exhibiting furtive glances and exaggerated surprise on every occasion their names arise in an investigation. Particularly scrumptious is the collection of lingering excessive close-ups you’re introduced as you in spite of everything come to a decision who to accuse, the place each and every actor gulps, sweats and blinks nervously underneath the highlight.
The pick out of the forged, then again, is Nanami Sakuraba as Haruka (and the detectives of the previous), taking the lead as a central personality who’s playing her likelihood to play investigator, pointing palms with the gusto of a Phoenix Wright objection. Her righteous bulletins within the resolution section are delivered so with a bit of luck, it’s all of the extra a laugh when your alternatives ship her down a blind alley, and she or he realizes she has not anything to again up her declare. Cue quizzical appears to be like and an embarrassed halt from the triumphantly ascending backing tune.
The plotlines, in the meantime, are proficiently arranged, replete with guileful twists and partitions of misdirection. Sure, some revelations stretch plausibility, however regularly after I idea one thing didn’t upload up, I quickly discovered there were indicators pointing in that route in the end. Even clues offered early on that appear to steer nowhere might resurface and disclose their importance in next episodes.
One large impediment “The Centennial Case” faces is easy methods to make gamers really feel concerned, since its heavy reliance on dwell motion limits your enter. On that depend, it’s much less a hit. It carefully guides your hand all the way through, even in a past due bankruptcy that resembles one of those break out room puzzle and switches to a three-D recreation engine so you’ll be able to freely go searching. Connecting questions and clues is made more uncomplicated through patterns at the tiles that experience to compare, which is welcome whilst you’re now not positive of the solution, however can flip reasoning into one of those jigsaw puzzle.
What can truly make or spoil the equation, then again, is how a lot you click on with the sport’s “considering.” The detective’s catchphrase in Haruka’s novels is “the trail of good judgment traces up,” however the questions truly is whether or not her trail of good judgment traces up with yours, and I discovered the consequences to be hit or miss. Every now and then a clue that I assumed required in depth deliberation was once slightly discussed within the reasoning section, or conversely, a sequence of questions wasted time on main points I discovered self-evident. Will have to it now not move with out announcing, for instance, {that a} sufferer mendacity in a pool of blood with a ferocious gash in her neck wasn’t clubbed mindless with a small picket field?
Mismatches passed off in dwell play greater than I anticipated too. In a single example, Haruka is requested how she may inform Eiji’s mom was once his stepmother quite than organic mom. The solution staring you within the face — she’s too younger! — isn’t a number of the choices, for the reason that plot needs to force at one thing else. On different events, I selected a solution believing there was once proof to toughen my considering, most effective to be informed I used to be fallacious as a result of I assume the writers hadn’t considered the similar attitude. And whilst most often I controlled to spot the right kind wrongdoer, now not as soon as did I totally comprehend the “trick,” i.e. the convoluted means used to devote the homicide a l. a. Sherlock Holmes, they’d used till I landed a couple of fortunate guesses within the resolution section, and it’s irritating whilst you’re all the time partly resulted in the solution.
Even so, I feel it is sensible that the finale of a homicide thriller will have to maintain a degree of, smartly, thriller, and it’s a testomony to the intricacy of the plots that they don’t prise open very easily. The entire clues you want are there in some shape or some other, nevertheless it was once most effective in hindsight that I may see how the few items of proof I couldn’t slightly give an explanation for had been key to slotting the entirety in position.
Most significantly, regardless of its obstacles, “The Centennial Case” is a extra compelling mystery on account of its interactive components. I used to be prepared to find the place each and every tale ended up, now not most effective because of the forged scripting and cinematics, but additionally for the reason that reasoning and resolution stages inspired research, asking me to query the assumptions I would possibly make when simply looking at TV. As soon as the idea that of in search of hypotheses is planted to your thoughts, you’ll be able to’t forestall producing them, even all the way through incident stages.
Possibly, in the end, it’s important to settle for with “The Centennial Case” that you just’re now not such a lot Sherlock Holmes as Dr. Watson, providing up concepts that may well be taken on board through the actual big name, or given brief shrift. When you don’t thoughts taking part in 2d mess around to its tremendous forged and weaving plotlines, there’s masses right here to stay you gripped. As with every just right TV homicide thriller, the intent is to stay audiences guessing. “The Centennial Case” will have to stay you guessing all the way through.
Jon Bailes is a contract video games critic and social theorist from the United Kingdom. He’s writer of Ideology and the Digital Town (0, 2019), and may also be discovered on Twitter @JonBailes3.
