Hermitage: Strange Case Files

I will only say at this point that the whole introduction appears to depend on the viewer clicking and clicking and clicking the mouse to advance the narrative line by line on the screen. In case it is not obvious, this is a very tedious process. Is this really the only way this introductory material can be accessed? Is this narration method used for the entire game? If it is, I may abandon it.

In short: A good Lovecraftian mystery/horror visual novel, with beautiful art and likeable characters! Hermitage Strange Case Files is a Chinese mystery/horror visual novel whose creators' appreciation for H.P. Lovecraft shines through. The game originally released a few years back and in October 2021 was finally released again on Steam in English. I didn't know anything about this game, before finding it while browsing through the upcoming titles in Steam. But since the art was nice and the premise sounded interesting, so I bought it upon release. The setup of the game is as follows: The main protagonist of the game is quite a mysterious figure, only called "The Store Manager". The store in question that he manages (and lives above) is Hermitage, dealing in antique, obscure and rare books with a focus on the occult and supernatural. Due to his entanglement in a supernatural incident appr. one year prior the manager is apparently unable to leave the building. The game opens with a teenage student seeking out Hermitage in the hopes of gaining insights into strange phenomena that are happening to her. The store manager decides to use is research and practical expertise in occult matters to help her. This is kicks of a series of a handful of supernatural cases that the store manager and a growing cast of old and new friends investigate over the course of the game. There is also an overarching plot that remains in the background for much of the duration, but comes into focus towards the end of the game. It's also worth noting that this is a linear visual novel. While you can sometimes choose between answers or actions, they do not alter character relationships, story paths or the ending. (At least as far as I can tell.) There are bad endings, but only one correct path. The narrative is arguably the most important aspect of any visual novel, so this is where I'll start with my thoughts on the game. In terms of plot and atmosphere, horror and the mysteries/cases that the Hermitage crew solve, I had hoped the game would grip me more overall, although it wasn't bad by any means and certainly had some suspenseful, intriguing, disturbing and emotional moments. It's not bad, but on the whole too familiar and tame to be considered great, either. I was, however, surprised by how quickly the characters grew on me. They are not free from cliches, but rose beyond them and I particularly enjoyed their interactions with one another and how these fed into their characterizations. Going into the game, one should also know that it is decidedly slow-paced and might also be considered verbose at times. Personally, I didn't mind much, but I can see how it might turn players off. I also do have to say that the game did have one real stand-out moment for me, where it does something towards the end with a twist/resolution - perhaps, I feel, also a meta-commentary on society, the medium of games and this VN's specific genre - which I didn't see coming, haven't seen often in games or visual novels (at least not quite in this fashion) and found intriguing and throught-provoking. The translation isn't perfect, but decent enough for the limited budget of the game. As a non-native English speaker I barely noticed any outright grammer or spelling errors and, even though the syntax and vocabulary used did sometimes feel a bit unnatural or roundabout, I had no trouble understanding the text and following the story. While the game is no Ace Attorney or Danganronpa, there also are some interactive gameplay elements beyond simply reading the text. For one, the game emulates the research the store manager does by periodically giving you the option to browse through books and online forums or watch TV. In a similar vein you can interact with your phone's messaging app, listen to the manager's thoughts on the latest events and look at a detective-pinboard that, e.g., gives you basic information on characters and also acts as a tool to skip back to prior scenes. Don't expect any actve deduction elements or dialogue choices from this, though. For me, this aspect of the game mostly helped build the atmosphere, especially because only a small portion of this is actually needed to progress with the story and much of it is flavour. (E.g. you can browse through updating forums discussing the works and legacy of Lovecraft.) There are also a number of interactive elements where you have to put a number of hints you collected together, decide on what to do or say in a given situation (or at least the order in which you go through the different options) or use opportunities to make special observations about your dialogue partner. Some of this doesn't seem to make much of a difference at all, but in some cases there are fail conditions that can lead to bad endings. I have to say that much of this seemed rather arbitrary or trial and error to me. (Perhaps this is because of nuances lost in translation?) However, the game does autosave, sometimes specifically before critical decisions, and you can also save manually at any time, so even on the few instances where I did fail, it didn't get frustrating. Lastly, I think the art of the game is really beautiful, particularly the characters portraits. The soundtrack is nice, too. There are some good tracks and those that aren't actually my kind of music still fit well in-game and added to the atmosphere. (Should a dev read this review - any chance of either releasing the soundtrack as DLC for the English version as well or changing the one for the Chinese version from DLC to Music in terms of Steam product categories so that it can be bought independently?) All in all, this is far from the best visual novel I've ever read/played, but I did like it, do not regret spending appr. 20 EUR and 20 hours on it and wouldn't mind seeing more adevntures of the ragtag supernatural investigation team of Hermitage in the future.

Great atmosphere and art. Its scary but no jump scares. Theres info to absorb and consider. Too bad there might be a bug atm which doesn't let you progress. Utimately 3/5 of the remaining chapters can't be explored. I have tried two walkthroughs thinking I just needed to use the right clues but what was correct in walkthroughs was wrong in the current version. I would play it again if it gets fixed.

I'm pretty picky about what visual novels i play ,so i'm so glad this turned out to be good as it is(not done yet but i think im close?).Great characters,story and super great soundtrack! Do you like jazz? theirs some persona sounding jazz, deadly premonition discordant saxophone, death note anime rock songs and unique electric themes, and more probably.And the music always so perfectly enhances the story, especially the ending action scenes feel so intense. so this is definitely a H.P Lovecraft inspired game and well researched one at that,( but it will always be my head-cannon that store manager your main character was inspired by black books the British comedy show where Dylan Moran as Bernard who owns a cramped bookstore who goes out of his way not sell anything and smokes a lot ) although you have a couple of characters that you switch between which is nice and makes things interesting.at certain points you can do research in a forum and it impressive how much it like really reading a Reddit forum with random comments. sometimes the puzzle parts of the case files are hard. figuring out what piece of evidence they are asking for ( like in a ace attorney game) but its doable. i'm excited to finish, and then get all the bad endings achievements . edit I finished it -great ending had me giggling at its cleverness ! tldr its a cozy supernatural mystery game with great characters,story and soundtrack.

Translation's pretty good. Will dig more. IA! IA!

I've finished this and only ever only noticed 1 bug - on ch 4 [spoiler] during exploration if you save before you choose, the bg bugs out and goes back to hermitage essentially erasing the map. [/spoiler] Nothing a save and re-load doesn't fix though. Typos and errors are minor and can be glossed over. The controls are ♥♥♥♥ on deck though, had to use mouse/keyboard because controller set up doesn't do it's job. For the story, 🥰 chapter 1 but I disassociated somewhere between ch 3-4. Chapter 5, my mind is just floating in the void. I liked a bit of chapter 6 but the convo is so—I don't know, sounds like a monologue to me. That's what it sounds like when you talk to yourself LOL I can't see any personality in the dialogues, it's all so monotonous. I could use a joke or two. BUT ok so, while it seems I have a lot of issues LOL I overall liked it, maybe give it a 3/5 rating. I'm replaying it on skip now because stupid me abused the 'Thought' button even though I didn't read what it says and now I missed one achievement 🥶

Very absorbing game! Each new customer that comes in the store brings a very different and interesting supernatural situation with them. My favorite part of the game was the book shelf: going through the books and gaining their knowledge really raises the level of anticipation and dread for the creature you're going to face. The last two chapters weren't my favorite (they felt a bit confusing and thrown together, and there were relevant books in my possession that never came into play which bugs me), but overall I enjoyed it and would recommend it if you like supernatural and detective games. It was a nice hats off to Lovecraft.

È un vero peccato che Steam non abbia messo un Nì tra le possibili scelte per consigliare questa visual novel di vaga ispirazione lovecraftiana. La buona volontà c'è, così come una buona dose di tensione e di orrore cosmico (perlomeno nei primi capitoli). Il vero problema di questo titolo è l'eccessiva lunghezza, a momenti ho avuto come l'impressione che si volesse allungare inutilmente la minestra. Alcuni personaggi sono al limite del cringe, per cui non mi soffermerò su di loro. Non metto un giudizio negativo perché mi pare troppo ingeneroso e immeritato, ma sotto diversi aspetti mi sarei aspettato di più e di meglio da Hermitage.

Other than a few typos and a sadly linear last 1/3 of the game, it's a good set of mysteries with deductions to be made along the way.

Good game. Has typos, but I didn't find it to be a major issue. I thought the story was fun, but some of the game play elements needed more work.