Paradise Killer (Switch) Review

 

Paradise Killer (Switch Review)

Release Date: 31 March 2022

Date Played: 3 August 2022

Paradise Killer is a really good murder investigation game that feels a bit like a hybrid between the Danganronpa Series and the PC classic Myst.  While it’s a bit difficult to describe, I would call it a whimsical, vaporwave, cosmic horror, investigation adventure game.  It leans heavily into its over-the-top crazy world building, characters, lore, and story.  But, it still has the gameplay and fun to back it all up.  

It was developed by UK developer Kaizen Game Works and met with pretty decent reviews from the critics and public alike.

  

Story/Gameplay

I’m almost at a loss for words on how to describe the world of Paradise Killer.  Uh…, the Earth has been visited by god aliens from across the cosmos, and a group of people called the Syndicate have created a pocket universe in which to create a perfect society on an island in order to entice and awaken these alien gods.  The syndicate kidnaps humans from Earth and teleports them to the island as “citizens” to act as slaves and worshipers for the gods. The big problem is that the island keeps getting corrupted by demonic presences.  This forces the syndicate to scrap and destroy the island and start over. When this happens, the syndicate murderers all of the citizens and uses their psychic energy to make the next iteration of the island. They are about to unveil the 25th, and perfect, island… but the night before the destruction of the 24th, the governing body of the syndicate called the Council were all mysteriously murdered.  

All evidence points to a demonically possessed citizen of the island.  However, the Syndicate Judge believes there is more than what appears on the surface.  He calls for the Syndicate investigator named Lady Love Dies, to be released from exile to solve the case.

You play as this Lady Love Dies, and you’re let loose on the island to find clues, question suspects, solve puzzles, and build your case for the impending trial.  Unlike the Danganronpa games, that are split into several mini-murder mysteries, Paradise Killer is just one giant 12 hour long investigation of the same crime.  Don’t worry, it never gets boring as you explore the intriguing and unique open world that the game provides for you.  As you meet the extremely weird and memorable cast of characters, gain their trust, and take their testimonies, you’ll uncover more and more about what happened on the night of the murder.  Each of these characters have great personalities and feel very different from each other.  They all have strange names like Carmalenia Silence, Grand Marshal Akiko 14, Witness to the End, Dr. Doom Jazz, etc..  It’s intentionally quirky, but the game’s tendency for oddball terminology can make things a little tricky to remember sometimes. There are a lot of bizarre concepts and rules in Paradise Killer because it’s a weird mishmash pocket universe created by a bunch of insane people, and you’ll have to adapt to their way of thinking and immerse yourself in the world to be able to make sense of what’s actually happening.  In line with the other confusing elements, navigating around the island can be very unintuitive at first as it’s so tightly packed and full of strange landmarks.  There is no compass as far as I could tell, so while you can look at the map to see where everything is in relation to everything else, there’s no good way to figure out which way your character is actually facing.  Personally, I didn’t feel like I really knew my way around the island until about ¾ of the way through the game.  Since navigation takes place in 1st person mode, it can be a little tough to get your bearings, and there seem to be a lot of doors, gates, fences, water reservoirs, hills, and such in your way a lot of the time.  Luckily, once you learn where the landmarks are, you can zip around the island pretty quickly. To help with this, are payphones placed all around the island that serve not only as save spots, but also fast travel nodes.  Sadly, you need to pay 1 blood crystal, the island’s currency, to fast travel.  They are scattered all around the island, but they do seem to have a finite number, so use them sparingly. This is obviously a mechanic built into the game to force you to explore every nook and cranny in search of more blood crystals, clues, and other things to help you piece together the evidence to convict the murderer.

As you meet the game’s characters and ask them questions, this will open up new dialog options for other characters.  You can hold the left trigger button, and it will show you a waypoint for all of the characters in the game and also notify you if they have a new dialog option.  This is immensely handy and takes away a lot of the guesswork of the game, but you’ll still be spending most of your time walking back and forth between the different characters while trying to build their trust and unlock more information.  Luckily, they have pretty good dialog, so it’s not that tedious.

Additionally, you’re given a fantastic notebook that records all of your clues and organizes them in a clear and concise manner.  It even gives you objectives and hints as to what you should be investigating next.  It can be a bit overwhelming a lot of the time, but eventually everything starts to come together and make sense (well as much sense as the island’s crazy rules allow).  

Once you’ve gathered enough information, you can initiate the trial.  Once again, unlike the Danganronpa games, the trial mainly just presents the evidence you’ve collected and strings the reasoning all together for you.  There’s not much thinking involved once you get to this point, and once you finger the suspect, the game just gives you the evidence you’ve collected for them, and you just click through it to present it to the judge.  You don’t have to overcome any objections, or poke holes in the suspect’s testimony, it’s pretty much all done for you.  This really puts the focus on gathering the evidence rather than presenting it and acting as an attorney at the trial.  It’s a bit of a disappointment, but it goes far enough to basically lay out the murders and exactly how they happened.  Due to the complicated nature of the investigation, there were several times during the trial that I was actually thankful they were laying it all out for me… because it’s a lot to piece together.

Presentation:

The biggest draw for Paradise Killer is its vapor wave aesthetic. There are tons of bright colors like pink, blue, purple, and red.  Mixed with these is an almost Egyptian black onyx and gold theme.  It seems very disjointed, but manages to work together in a way I wouldn’t think would be successful.  The island itself is also very interesting and laid out in very distinct and thoughtful areas that remind me of the classic adventure game Myst. Just like in that game, you can feel that the island and its locations were designed and manmade.  It has a familiar, but unworldly feel, that is unique enough to make you want to keep exploring. 

In addition to this is a very subdued and relaxed acid Jazz soundtrack.  It’s primarily designed to be background filler music, a la elevator music, but keeps everything from being too quiet.  Don’t expect to fall in love with some catchy hooks or memorable parts though.  It really is for the background.

The game ran well and I didn’t encounter any bugs or serious framerate drops or anything.  The only complaint I have about the gameplay is that your character has a strange sense of momentum when running around that can be a bit annoying at times.  For example, if you jun and then jump, you’ll almost shoot yourself several meters like a projectile.  However, if you’re standing right up against a waist high fence, and attempt to jump straight up and forward to clear it, you won’t have enough forward inertia to bound over it.  You have to back up and get a running start to clear a lot of objects.  It can make the controls feel a little clunky at times, but since it’s a slowly paced adventure game, the controls aren’t that important. I never really felt like I got the hang of it completely and oftentimes, my traversing the island was brought down to a crawl as I had to walk down some long sidewalk and through a gate because I couldn’t get up enough speed to leap over a waist-high barrier.

Conclusion:

Paradise Killer was a surprisingly fun game.  I really liked the game’s lore, mythos, story, characters, setting, and aesthetic.  Collecting all of the clues for the game was also a blast.  There were a couple of times where I encountered a bit of an esoteric puzzle that required me to get a hint online (and often caused me to roll my eyes because they were so unintuitive), but it wasn’t very often.  I’ve come to expect these in most adventure games, so I wasn’t too miffed.  The trial at the end of the game was a bit of a disappointment.  I was expecting more interaction like in the Danganronpa games, where you had to actually recall the evidence and poke holes in the suspect’s testimony.  Instead, the judge just asks you to present your evidence (which is done by just clicking through it in order) and it’s all automatic. If the game had put more into the trial, which it spent the entire game building up, it really would have elevated the game into that rarified air of the best games out there.

The game did feel like it was starting to drag on a bit too much due to the fast travel mechanic relying on a limited supply of blood crystals. Luckily, it was never too off putting, and I finished the game between 10-12 hours or so.  

If you like games like Phoenix Wright or Danganronpa, you should give this one a try.  It’ll be right up your alley.

Final Status: Completed

Final Score: 8/10 (Great)