2026-3 - PARANORMASIGHT The Mermaid's Curse - ★★★★★

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2701440/PARANORMASIGHT_The_Mermaids_Curse/

★★★★★
Playtime: 14 hours (on my own, not counting the Updated Autopsy Report LP)

The Mermaid's Curse does the thing I wish more sequels would do (and I know there are many reasons most sequels don't do this, you don't have to tell me): keep the most basic elements of the original and go for a completely new story, with a scant handful of callbacks as a treat. The JP title of the first game has "File 23" and this one has "File 38", so they're clearly shooting for some kind of anthology format, and that's perfect for the structure of how these games work.

The first PARANORMASIGHT game focused on its eponymous Seven Mysteries of Honjo, actual local folklore from Tokyo's Sumida City, and spun that angle into a whirlwind supernatural horror murder mystery. The Mermaid's Curse takes much broader mermaid folklore and uses that to tell a in some ways "grander" but ultimately lower key story. The plot still gets fairly dark, people still die, and curses and generational resentment are still major themes, but I wouldn't call it a horror game in the same way.

Short version: Japanese mermaid lore holds that consuming their flesh grants immortality, and something that really looks like a shriveled up mermaid has washed ashore in Ise Bay. Throw in some actual Sengoku Period and Heike history and we've got a mystery to solve. Many characters wish to investigate this for many more reasons than you might think.

I love pretty much the whole cast. As with the first game (the cast of which I also loved), the main characters move around in pairs, ensuring there's always a chance for some fun back-and-forth dialogue. In a clever maneuver, this time around the actual playable characters always portrayed as the more capricious of a given duo to mirror the player tendency to click on everything or otherwise get distracted from the matter at hand. I also have to give props to the way the cast teases and hints at broader worldbuilding and sequel potential without either feeling too coy or too blatant.

The standouts are for sure the middle-aged fantasy writer Arnav "Avi" Barnum and teen psychic Circe Lunarlight, both foreigners from abroad. Avi's the closest the series has so far to an outright comic relief character and his rapport with the usually level-headed Circe is consistently charming even when they're in life-or-death situations. Runner-ups are the Definitely-A-Normal-Housewife Yumeko and her beleaguered assistant Sodo, who manage to have a similar dynamic but presented differently enough as to avoid too much overlap.

As for the more game-y parts, I'm pretty much wise to PARANORMASIGHT's bag-o-tricks at this point. I'm just also the kind of person who enjoys having my suspicions confirmed and my ego massaged. The final multi-step puzzle gating the true ending has gotten some understandable flak for being difficult to figure out, so I must sincerely apologize folks. I figured it out with minimal fuss.

Like the first one, just a surprise delight from start to finish. If a new PARANORMASIGHT crops up in a few years, I'll buy it on launch day sight unseen.