Quality achievement
The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story tells us the story of the family... Shijima, who, in charge of a fruit that would give eternal youth, nevertheless sees a lot of its members die prematurely in a violent way. We therefore follow the history of this family through the eyes of the writer Haruka Kagami on various periods from 1922 to 2022. A peculiarity of the game is that most actors embody several characters from the various eras, this being justified in a fairly malignant way. Going further in the description would already be spoiling part of the pleasure, because the scenario is the strong point of the game.
The videos are of quality, whether in terms of image (even if I would have liked to be able to download a 4K version) or in terms of realization: the natural sets are very beautiful, the lights adapted to the eras and the costumes are very credible. The music, too, fully participate in putting us in the mood.
The point that can make the most debate is at the level of the actors' play. First of all, because by being used mainly to American or French achievements, the pace and style of play of the actors is not necessarily very usual, which can be weird. Then, the actors embodying several characters, I found that they were not all similarly successful according to their roles. However, nothing that makes you get out of the story if we opt for the original Japanese dubbing which allows you to stay in the mood. The only other dubbing, in English is absolutely excruciating. The French translation seemed to me correct even if through rare questions, I think there may have been some approximations (and a sentence in Spanish towards the end of the game).
Original mechanisms
The game has six major surveys on which the whole principle of gameplay is organized (even if some variations can occur): - We start with the script with video sequences - We chain on the assumptions with reflections track - We end on the conclusion with video deductions
The first video sequences can last tens of minutes. The Centennial Case takes its time to put things in place and that's a good thing. During his sequences, the player is led to make some choices of answers which guide certain exchanges and lead to different assumptions. You can also react by pressing a button to discover certain elements.
The reflection mode consists of hexagons placed on a track. A red hexagon is a "mystery" with which one or more clues can be associated which then leads to the appearance of one or more assumptions in essence not always true. Besides, one of the forces of the game is at this stage to offer us assumptions of which we would have thought, which gives rise to doubt when we could be full of certainties.
Once a number of mysteries have been treated, we can enter into conclusion mode, but nothing prevents continuing to treat mysteries that would remain available. Difficult to know how our rare choices and actions during videos influence this step, even if I have seen clues not having any use.
but perfectible
In terms of playing pleasure, I am quite mixed, because the associations, indicated by geometric shapes, have only one possibility. I would have found it interesting that we can be wrong. Besides, we can activate a mystery to highlight the clues to associate it so that their research is less painful than formal comparisons, but this functionality is limited by a gauge that fills with each association made. Finally, the big interest of this sequence is to summarize everything we know and everything we can suppose so that this is well arranged in our mind.
Finally, in conclusion mode, we are led to decide who accuse of the mischief by justifying this choice. As in a Phoenix Wright, it is the most exciting part, especially when the mystery is resolved in our head and that we feel like a Sherlock Holmes of the big days. On the other hand, things are more problematic if you are wrong. Errors are not annoying from a video point of view, on the contrary: the scenes often saw the burlesque according to the level of stupidity of the response that we could give and sometimes we feel very bogus. Nevertheless, errors refer to the track of reflections which turns out to be an unnecessary step when you have completed everything unless you really want to read everything. The option of being able to choose another answer just after the error would have been interesting as much as for certain specific errors, this is what happens and this bizarre choice of Game Design breaks a little rhythm especially if we chain the bad choice.
Once you reach the resolution of the current survey, the player is noted according to his mistakes, but that does not influence the scenario.
FMV from another level?
The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story is ambitious. When most FMV consists of about 3 hours of video with an economical achievement, the budget of The Centennial Case brings dozens of hours of video and a realization well above what the genre usually offers. Obviously, this is felt at the higher price level of the game, but nothing shocking for me.
This also allows you to have a rich and complex story, but suddenly not very replayable, because obviously so that all the pieces of the puzzle come together, the puzzle can only have a form.
As for replayability, I do not believe that the motivation to see the effects of the different choices is sufficient since the frame of history is very frozen. Unlike a super seducer where we want to see all possible failures, in The Centennial Case we are rather motivated to make as many mistakes as possible and make the best deductions at any time.
For the general public, I fear that beyond the FMV style which is not for everyone, the very Japanese anchoring of the title poses him problem and it is a shame, because it is much more interesting to live the History of The Centennial Case than watching certain series Netflix & Co.
On the other hand, I think that any fan of play in FMV must play it, because in its style it is a good game, which takes certain risks and tries to bring new proposals to the genre and I hope that its sales will be enough to motivate other projects of this level.
Tested by Aragnis on PlayStation 4 with a version provided by the publisher.
_ Official screen screenings, the game blocking the catches in play. _
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