To be fair, I’ve always been a huge fan of the genre crime whether it’d be games or shows. There is just nothing more thrilling than trying to catch the culprit while you’re sympathizing with the protagonist. Actually, the only thing that would be even better than this is to catch the criminal yourself, which is possible in Detective Kobayashi which is a visual novel but with gameplay included. After playing and enjoying the [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/xTentacleBunny/recommended/787480/]Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy[/url], I was especially thrilled to check out a game with a similar premise, although I have to admit that my expectations were quite low in the beginning, I ended up enjoying several aspects of this game.
Detective Kobayashi introduces Kobayashi Masayuki who is a detective and is trying to collect enough clues to solve five different cases. He gets accompanied by Matsuda Midori, who is an investigator as well and helps him out. Kobayashi tries to forget his past that has been haunting him although he will get confronted by it quite soon. Together with his team, the main goal is to save the victims and make the culprits confess their crimes they’ve been trying to cover up.
First of all, I found the cast quite interesting as Kobayashi is the typical perverted guy you might find in anime as well. During serious cases, he manages to light up the mood by his weird comments besides putting the pieces together. This made him a very likable to me, but not because of his perverseness but because he manages to keep the team together as well as brings in some comedy as well, as the game already deals with sensitive topics such as death. Another character I found very refreshing was Matsuda Midori as she looks girly on the outside, but is actually very strong. I’ve always had a weak heart when it comes to strong female leads which she definitely is, although sadly there is no romance at all in this game.
Detective Kobayashi contains quite a lot of interesting features. The most significant thing here would be looking for clues. This is done in a similar way hidden object games are and thus, there are items spread around in a room you can interact with and get clues from. Not every object does contribute to the story, however, I liked that you could scan the area and know which item you already inspected as there will be a green checkmark in the magnifying glass. When there is an object left to observe, it’ll be red so it’s immediately visible even if it only shows up for a short while. An important hint here is that you can drag the screen to get access to the whole room. While this already got mentioned in the tutorial, I ended up forgetting about it and got stuck until I figured out that you’d have to drag the screen. Additionally, talking to different people to find more evidence is essential. When collecting enough clues, the investigation ends.
After completing an investigation, Detective Kobayashi moves on to the battle with the suspect. Here, you have to choose the right answer or evidence when trying to prove that the person on the other side is lying and concealing the truth. Sometimes, there are multiple suspicious statements the suspect makes but only one of them is disprovable so selecting the right one is necessary here. When selecting the wrong answer or clue, it’s a point for the suspect and eventually, you will reach game over if it happens too often although you can simply restart the confrontation. One hint here is that you can switch between evidence as well as character information, so the reader should pay attention to what the task actually requires. Lastly, the reader has to answer three questions as a conclusion of the case where the answers are floating around in bubbles.
All in all, Detective Kobayashi is very linear and there is no way to influence the outcome except for a single choice in one chapter. This choice, however, only changes the end of the specific chapter but has no influence otherwise. In another chapter, you’re trapped into a room as well and have to look for a way to escape here. There are a lot of puzzles spread here, but once again, the order you have to do for these are fixed and it’s easy to get stuck here when the reader misses out a step or doesn’t know what he is supposed to do next. In this case, there is a [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1644345467]Chinese guide[/url] I found which is quite useful, although you’d have to translate it first. Besides names, google translator worked fine for me and the steps were easy to follow.
Something unique here is that there are light bulbs during the dialogue that light up every time Kobayashi has a new thought. When it’s yellow, personal thoughts of him are getting displayed when the reader hovers over the bulb while there are new hints available when it’s red. These thoughts are, however, easily skippable and don’t necessary when you want to experience the story and I have to admit that I stopped using this function quite soon as I was too lazy to move my mouse during the conversation. Additionally, mobile phones have their own features as well where you can chat with your team to solve cases, as well as discover new random numbers and chat with strangers. To be honest, I found a lot of joy in Kobayashi’s phone and spent a long time chatting with multiple people and the conversation is so well made that you can tell a lot of effort was put into this feature.
I liked the artwork of Detective Kobayashi with sprites even having different facial expressions and although the style is quite simple, and there aren’t a lot of CGs available, I got used to it fast. It’s very charming and the background and investigation areas are detailed although it was hard to guess with which item I could interact, luckily we have the scan functions which can help us out in the worst case although it’s sadly not available during the escape room. That being said, I loved the Chinese voice acting. I just happen to find that Chinese is a beautiful language and despite being worried it might not fit at first, I even preferred it over the usual Japanese voice-over. Detective Kobayashi is, however, not fully voiced but only during the main story scenes.
Detective Kobayashi deals with murder and solving cases while looking for evidence a lot. I found some parts, especially the escape room’s puzzles, quite tricky and sometimes getting stuck or trying out random answers might very likely occur although it feels quite good being able to catch the culprit in the end. In fact, this visual novel is very linear, yet I liked that you have an impact on one of the chapters although it only influenced the end of this specific chapter. Additionally, the game hints that there is going to be a second entry of this visual novel and I can’t wait to know how the story will turn out. That being said, Detective Kobayashi implements a lot of refreshing and interesting features I had a lot of joy messing with, and therefore, this visual novel will very likely appeal to those who love crime-solving.
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