Jisei: The First Case HD Review

"The Coffee Shop"

Campaign

July 26, 2020 at 3:39am
By Jason Stettner

This is a visual novel game with a number of dynamic choices in how you work through it. It’s definitely more complex than other straight forward offerings of the genre, but still is really on that level of dialogue heavy moments. This is also apparently the first entry in a series, it has yet to be determined if additional follow-ups will also be ported to various platforms.

The narrative follows a teenager that’s burdened by an extraordinary ability. He needs to prove his innocence while also finding who really is the killer in this situation. You’ll work within a coffee shop in order to search for clues, interrogate the various witnesses and then ultimately make choices in regards to whom you felt did it.

As mentioned, you do have an extra edge of inner thought, but that might not be enough. I did like that there were a variety of ways for this game to go. It was most certainly guided, yet at the same time offered various paths for how things could end up being completed. It’s a controlled narrative with some little twists along the path towards completion.

Gameplay

This is fairly straight forward. You pick a room to be in, there are a few of them present. You’ll then choose actions to either search an area, or to chat with the individuals present. There are a few of them, and you can make some slight branching choices along the way.

The choices you make dialogue wise will determine the direction of the story. I did feel that some of the voice acting was a tad stilted, though for the most part not bad with a good cast and it flowed well enough. The artwork was generally solid, there’s a varied group of individuals that make up this collective.

There are some solid customization options in regards to dialogue speed, game movement and also save points. I found that aspect to be fairly impressive, it’s important for this type of game to have a wide range of settings to tweak when it comes to how the text based elements are delivered.

The Conclusion

Jisei: The First Case HD is a generally solid visual novel featuring some branching stories and an intriguing selection of choices within it. For those Xbox Achievement hunters out there, this is a fairly easy completion. That aspect doesn’t factor into the scoring, but it’s most certainly worth a mention for those that are interested.

It’s not particularly long, yet it does have lots of depth to it when it comes to the choices at play. It’s a decent time, and you might find the style of story to be interesting. I found the artwork to be visually pleasing, and this did have some surprises in store.

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Jisei: The First Case HD Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by Ratalaika Games S.L.

Rating Overall: 7.2