PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid's Curse

Played the whole series back to back, this is the ultimate video gamification of tightly written mystery novels. I am left feeling bereft after finishing in the best way and I wish I can play it all over again for the first time. The Mermaid's Curse has a much slower start than the Seven Mysteries of Honjo, mostly because the earliest hook of the mystery is very easy to miss if you tend to be thorough. It's also attributable to the fact that the sequel leans less on the horror genre and more on the mystery/investigation aspect of the first game. It's a slow burn, but the pace will pick up and everything comes together at the end. Without major spoilers, I would say other than the sequel taking place in the same world as the first game, this game does its best to contrast the first game's mood and narrative structure in major ways while retaining that classic Paranormasight formula. The puzzle difficulty ramps up suddenly near the end, but they did alleviate this somewhat by making the Storyteller easily accessible at the pain point with better hints than at release. But if this is your first Paranormasight game, what the game is asking you to do may feel like a blind, wild leap since it isn't as good as Seven Mysteries of Honjo (SMOH) at introducing that type of puzzle early and consistently into the story. If you have played the first game, I think the final puzzle is a significant step up, and the narrative ending also a major step up from Seven Mysteries of Honjo. The artwork is (at times slightly) better than the first game, there are more locations, there is new music (and repeat tracks from SMOH), but it's pretty easy to go either way on if the story and characters are less engaging than the cast from the first game. I would attribute it to the fact that they are trying to tell a larger story with what feels like a bigger cast, resulting in a lot more very minor characters. If you were a fan of the first game, I highly encourage you to play this game to the end because of how good that final puzzle is, if nothing else. If you're a new fan, I highly encourage you to stick through with this game without looking up hints/spoilers as much as possible, and pay very close attention to the different ways of interpreting the Storyteller's hints. And then play SMOH when you finish, of course. There are some flaws in this game that doesn't show up in the first, which a lot of reviews likely touch upon, but I would draw short of saying that The Mermaid's Curse is a bad game. It's just that Seven Mysteries of Honjo was such a bombastic introduction to Paranormasight that it's hard to reach the same highs, especially if you are removing that pivotal urgency present in SMOH. In summary: if you loved the first game, you'll at least like the second game. If the first game was too scary for you, this is a great entry point. If you want to play a great visual novel adventure game with tight writing (absolutely insane amounts of foreshadowing) and mindbreakingly insane puzzles, look no further.