Parascientific Escape: Cruise in the Distant Seas

Genre: Visual Novel / Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

Parascientific Escape: Cruise in the Distant Seas, released on Nintendo 3DS in 2016, is a game with Visual Novel and Graphic Adventure elements. This is the first game in The Parascientific Escape trilogy, with this game having players take the role of Hitomi Akeneno, a high school girl with secret psychic abilities. Upon receiving an anonymous invitation hinting at revealing secrets about her family, Hitomi and her similarly psychically-gifted friend find themselves trapped on a sinking cruise ship and rushing to try and find a way to unlock an explosive collar attached to the young heiress to a large corporation.

Yeah, this game’s story is kinda’ all over the place, and it doesn’t seem to have any understanding of the sort of tone that’s appropriate for the situations it concocts. You’d think that these characters would freak out at discovering the bomb collar, but they’re surprisingly calm and composed about the whole thing. In fact, Hitomi seems far more concerned that someone will discover that she’s a psychic than she is about being trapped on a sinking ship with a bomb.

Mirroring this odd and conflicting tone, the game’s soundtrack is oddly lighthearted in scenes where characters are talking about mortal danger orchestrated by some mysterious figure with seemingly malevolent intent. At the very least this game’s visuals work well enough for the game, using anime-style character portraits in front of reasonably-detailed 2D backgrounds.

The gameplay in this game is split between Visual Novel-style sections with a lot of talking and Graphic Adventure sections where you’ll be investigating the environment, grabbing useful items, and using those items to solve puzzles and get past obstacles. These puzzles seem fairly sensible in their design, and they’re made somewhat more interesting by the occasional use of Hitomi’s psychic powers, specifically a limited form of clairvoyance and telekinesis. What this amounts to is the ability to tap on a surface hiding something underneath to reveal what’s behind it, and then alternately moving and rotating objects remotely. It’s a nice change of pace that sets this game apart from others in the genre.

Still, with a plot that’s difficult to take seriously, I don’t think Parascientific Escape: Cruise in the Distant Seas is a game I can give a hearty recommendation to. If you’re looking to add a Graphic Adventure to your Nintendo 3DS collection, some of the mechanics here may amuse you, but as a Visual Novel it falls flat.

tl;dr – Parascientific Escape: Cruise in the Distant Seas is a game with Visual Novel and Graphic Adventure elements that puts players in the role of a high school student who discovers she has psychic abilities, and must put them to use on board a sinking cruise ship. The way this game uses these psychic abilities in its Graphic Adventure sections is novel and interesting, but the story is so poorly-written and tonally nonsensical that it’s hard to take seriously. The result is a game that has some good qualities, but is overall a game I don’t recommend.

Grade: C

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