This was an amazing instalment in the Detective Grimoire series, probably the best one! The main aspect of the game that held me in awe throughout all of it was that every single character had unique lines of dialogue for every single clue, interaction, suspect and so on. There were basically no filler lines, everything said was lovingly hand-crafted to fit the character saying it. The game looked and sounded as pretty as ever. I cannot remember exactly, but I'm fairly certain it used more animation and art styles than Tangle Tower (the 2nd game,) but again, I can't remember exactly cause it took a long while for the game to release... Well worth the wait though! More on the music: it was absolutely enchanting and immersed me into the setting, but even then it had that iconic Grimoire game musical flair that brought back memories of the previous games, and for good reason too, because you could call this game the continuation of the last one. Even if it is a different place, different case and different people, it's still intertwined with the events of Tangle Tower. Talking about the people, the characters were as great as always. Unique designs, perfect voice acting, interesting wrinkles in their life stories that relate to the case, all of it built up a beautiful picture of the entire cast. I am quite biased in this regard, but I really enjoyed the mystery alongside the story. A submarine deep in the ocean, a mysterious being calling lost souls to find it, the fear and the allure of the unknown? It's pure eldritch horror, but wrapped around in this games whimsical style and design. Not going to go into any more details on the story, but I will say that it's a well told murder mystery and fun to solve too! The puzzles are refreshing and fun. In lesser puzzle games or visual novels of the same ilk the puzzles can drag down the game heavily, but Mermaid Mask did not have any duds, every puzzle was engaging, not too hard or too easy and always fun to solve. There we're maybe a couple that I got stumped by for more than 5 minutes, but even then the hint system gracefully nudges you in the right direction without overtly telling you the answer, so you never feel guilty for using these hints. If I had to critique something, it would be that some dialogue does not catch up with the story sometimes. Sometimes we figure out a clue or get new information, but talking to a different character about the same info makes the detectives act like they heard these things for the first time which makes them appear silly. I imagine customizing every single dialogue line depending on what info/clues you have or don't have would have been an insane amount of extra work which would have pushed back the games release even further so I think it's a worthy sacrifice. This issue didn't affect the game that hard, only that I sighed at some lines, because I knew that the protagonist already knew that info. Anyway, I cannot recommend this game enough, of course alongside the other games in the series, because the storylines are somewhat connected and besides, every game in the series is great. I imagine it's gonna be a long long time before the next one releases, if there will even be a next one, but I'm hopeful! I really wish for this series to continue, I love these characters dearly and I want to go on adventures with them forever.
P.S. Madame Tadpole should be my wife and I'm happy that the wayward lesbian girl polycule is expanding with two new members <3
