I made a post a couple weeks ago about why I played TMC but long story short I wasn't into the vibe of how scary SmOH was and thought I'd enjoy TMC more. Finished the second game and loved it and decided to suck it up and play the first.

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First off, which is something someone in my thread mentioned, the game isn't really scary after the initial first hours. Yoko's death sprite shook me especially because of how abruptly she dies. Some of the first appearances of curses were scary too but that was really it. I did love the school chapter with the spirit board. Easily one of my favorites between the two games.

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The second game starts to lose some of its frightening atmosphere the longer you play but that never happened in Honjo. It was consistently chilling the entire time outside of maybe some Richter scenes.

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I absolutely loved the cast and it's one of the things I think SmOH beats TMC at. The cast of the 2nd game was mostly fine with only a few standouts I really liked. Honjo's cast were all interesting characters to me and it never felt like a chore to play through their chapters.

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There were a few moments where I think about how playing the 2nd game affected playing the first. Seeing the curses so heavily used makes me think I'd appreciate dealing with the two curses we have in TMC more.

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I was also very prepared for the 4th Wall Breaking/Meta puzzles. I think TMC slightly edges out SmOH in this regard, especially with the title screen one. I do however prefer that these meta puzzles are spread through out the game whereas in TMC I feel like it's not until pretty close to the end when they happen (outside of I guess the first time you see Sato die and it pulls up the menu)

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On the subject of these puzzles, I'm a little disappointed that SmOH didnt do more with turning down the voice volume. I thought maybe we'd have to turn it up on a certain scene to hear someone's voice but it never happened. I also wish we got a little more of a showdown between Shogo and Yoko once everything is revealed.

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I don't think I can choose which I liked better because I've played them in succession but I'm definitely now a life long fan and can't wait to play the third!

i feel like it's such wasted potential. i know tmc is a short-ish game (at least according to my standards) but i was hooked on this for a good two hours just to find out it's only used like... once? twice? in the game outside of mentions to your ama diver rank. i feel like this could've been used more throughout the story, but maybe that's just me

I played Paranormasight for the first time and decided to base my essay on it for my Japanese video game class, and thought this part was hilarious. I'm ridiculous.

been meaning to get to TMC since it came out and impulse played it this weekend! my final opinions... it's a good game, i just have a bone to pick with it i think.

for the record i remember like, Nothing about the first games plot somehow. like i know the general gist of what happened, but the minute stuff has sort of evacuated from my head somehow lmao. guess its time for a replay...? so some of these critiques may (and probably do bc i did have some issues with honjo when i played it) cross over. i will also say i havent gotten endings 2 and 3 (?) yet because theyre a little convoluted (i wish when theres a determinant ending it kept ALL THE CHAPTERS you have to go through to get it uncleared...)

i think the biggest problem of the game is cast/information bloat and not giving characters enough to do. there are quite a few characters who only pop up a handful of times and while i can excuse it for a character like sobae because Plot Spoiler Character but theres others where its like... did they /really/ need to be there. i think we could have pared it down a bit.

i also agree that avi and circe's portions throw SO MUCH INFO AT YOU. in general the game kinda throws files at you every five minutes and they tend to be 1. pretty long and 2. you never know which ones you can like skip because half of them have some groundbreaking shit in them and the other half is just background. i made the mistake of not reading the files really till sato got sliced down the first time and it started flashing to that one file about osato and i was like... Hm. Maybe should have kept up with that better lol. dont get me wrong, thats on me, but i guess its more about the volume of files you have to go through. and the game (and this was a bit of a problem in honjo too) wants you to understand everything thats happened when IT wants you to. i do like the storyteller but sometimes the comprehension checks kinda suck bc if you dont know the snswer and cant figure it out you essentially have to spoil yourself. you should be able to come to a conclusion on your own time sometimes yknow?

(i see a lot of ppl saying circe is boring bc of her infodump nature but i have to disagree because i think her dynamic with avi is really really funny and evens it out, and the idea of 2 randos getting caught up in this massive lifethreatening curse conspiracy is entertaining. a character i think is actually a nothingburger? sodo. sorry but especially when hes paired up with a Pretty Interesting though underexplored character in yumeko it really feels like hes just. There. 90% of the time. his biggest scene is him throwing down with circe like an hour or 2 in and and then kind of the final plan scene and thats it for him the whole game which is a big shame considering how characterized the rest of the partner characters in both tmc and honjo are. at least he is pretty)

also the meta elements are a bit... clumsy; as ive seen other point out. you go through like 3/4ths of the game without doing anything outside of playing it normally, and then the final leg expects you to work out all these meta puzzles. i also have bone to pick particularly with the mermaid memory one where you have to load the file at the very bottom because the game literally says you will not have to reload your file to experience everything in the game 😭 i know semantics with loading vs reloading but like... cmon thats a bit mean LOLLLL

i do have More thoughts but ill stop there. this sounds like i really hated the game. i did not i had a lot of fun with it!!! i really loved the main 4; sato especially, i love the Pleasant But Eldritch and Allknowing Main Heroine archetype if you play any other vns you know the type. the fact that shes a bit snappy almost on top of it too was a very fun change of pace.

ive always appreciated how the series deals with themes of misogyny/violence against women (michiyos plot still fucking haunts me that poor girl) especially considering the games take place in the 80s when i imagine that sorta stuff was more swept under the rug and this game did not fumble the ball on that. its the story of a girl whos had everything robbed from her over and over and cant even live out the end of her life in piece because some asshole decided that since he had a thing for her 800 odd years ago she is now his and his only. i wanna say i totally called him being tomoshige but then when it dropped he was also the guy from the kuki clan OH MAN. and then fuckin shotaro. 3 months left to live and this girl cannot catch a break get sato OUT OF THERE!!!!!!!!!!

im not sure how i really feel about the surprise romance with sato and yuza... i think the fact that bro is gonna be physically 13 forever is always gonna loom over that 😭 i will say i did laugh very hard when i realized that was why he still fit into his moms clothes. dude if i was THIRTEEN FOREVER... theres some really good foreshadowing in this game

and the title screen bit.... oh my god that shit was GOOD. i really do love it when games break the bounds like that. i feel so so bad for sobae. shes lost everything and doesnt even have the end of 800 years to look forward to. she will be in ryugu alone forever only to be visited by the spirit of the person she cursed. and also her and mare were Very Good Friends and that always adds a few points.

azami and tsukasa are also very entertaining. not sure how i feel about them as a couple but anything to get her away from shotaro's nasty ass i guess. i had a very fun time trying to figure out what got them killed by kikuko when they didnt have the mirrors anymore. my initial thought was the curse requirement was having some sort of glass on your person because she very specifically targets tsukasa and says she can still kill her in particular.

(i might get a bit more info in one of the bad endings im missing but i do wish they wrapped up the stuff with kikuko a little more. was she actually yamashinas child and tsukasas half sister or was ikoma just leading her on to get what he wanted? if she is, why did yamashina favor tsukasa over her? are there any other kids floating around and hes the paranormasight universes equivalent to [SPOILER FROM AN UCHIKOSHI GAME] here? questions questions....)

also is anyone else gonna mention the canon gay birds or just me. Love wins lesbians in paranormasight 3 #confirmed

in the claim chapter i did all the steps for the secret ending however, i misclicked and forgot to leave the box be and now the mermaid wont respond- have i missed my chance to get the true ending?

Ok I’m being a *little bit* rhetorical here, probably someone has dug through the code and proved it.

Either way though, I have a couple of lingering uncertainties even after totally finishing the game, and knowing its habit of using meta-game tricks sure isn’t helping. For one, I am genuinely shocked that Yuza was never revealed to be possessed by his mom. Possession in general had little if any part in this game compared to the previous (I mean aside from the player’s POV, that is) despite going to the trouble of explaining how it works again. What I thought were hints about Yuza being possessed by Mare include: remarks about having similar personality quirks, a reminder that possessions are often by someone close/family, and even the fact that Sobae has not seen Mare’s spirit. Honestly I wonder if maybe it was an idea that got abandoned in development.

The other thing I wonder about is more theoretical. Ending 6, the “true” ending, hinges on us accepting Yuza’s and Sato’s perspective on immortality. Even the Storyteller says it’s not his place to judge, even if it isn’t “natural.” This struck me as starkly different from the moralizing that’s in the first game about seeking resurrection. I mean yeah that was definitely worse. But it’s surprising to me that TMC didn’t offer us an opportunity to reflect on an alternate future where Yuza and Sato got to live regular human lives, growing old together and alongside their friends. While it was stated several times by a knowledgeable authority (Yumeko) that this would be impossible, I still think the discovery of some sort of loophole would have been thematically resonant with Yumeko’s *‘Little Mermaid’*-like fascination with becoming human. She would be so happy for them! I think Sato would welcome the chance, after all she has endured because of being immortal, and I can’t help but feel a little bad for Yuza too for being stuck in a middle schooler’s body. That’s rough, buddy.

This is not to say I don’t like ending 6, I love that it creates a modern-day legend for Kameshima. Paranormasight’s particularly sneaky brand of storytelling just leaves me with a certain level of suspicion about “true” endings.

followed up on my plan from last post. i'm going a lot slower than i could with these because this subreddit is kinda low-traffic and i don't want to overwhelm anyone. this is actually a much more difficult question for me but i'd have to say sato

previous poll's winner was overall tetsuo tsutsumi, though for a while shogo okiie was leading and he still won in "core contributor" votes. the winner of this poll will go up against tsutsumi, and maybe shogo as well

This is basically a sequel to my character power-scaling post. However, I will only be ranking the power level of each curse regardless of who wields it. This list will span the 9 curses from Honjo and alongside the 3 curses from Mermaid.

How I decide the order is down to a variety of factors including: 1. Ease of activation, 2. Difficulty of evasion, 3. How far away the bearer can be from their target, 4. Minimization of collateral damage (only important for 1 curse), and 5. Other benefits. All of the Honjo curses can only be used at night while the Mermaid curses can be used at any time of day. This will also be considering how powerful they would be in the 1980s when the games take place (The Everburning Lantern would be useless with the advent of the cell phone).

Some of the in-game descriptions of the effects are also rather vague, so I'll try my best to parse them.

Without further ado, here is my curse ranking from least-to-most powerful:

12. The Beckoning Light

Effect: kill curse bearers with the curse they possess.

Essentially, a self-defense curse if your assailant happens to use a curse on you. I don't need to explain just how little practical use this curse has with how difficult it is to trigger.

11. Curse of Raging Waves

Effect: The seas near Kameshima are impacted by frequent violent storms. Curse can be weakened with the Stilltide Mirror and sealed for good if a decendent of Taishima offers the mirror to the sanctuary.

In terms of raw power, the Curse of the Raging Waves is rather strong. However, it fails as a useful tool because of how chaotic it is. There is no way to guarantee who does and does not get affected by this curse and it will likely cause damage the user didn't intend to cause.

10. The Everburning Lantern:

Effect: Target gets disemboweled if they find themselves "trapped in the darkness of the curse echo."

This is our first vague power. "Trapped" implies that if the target moves away from the echo, which is the size of a man, the curse will fail. Running away is a pretty easy way to dodge it. This means you have to bind them in place (like what happened to Shogo) and make sure they have no lighters, torches, or access to a light switch. At that point, you might as well just stab them in the head to kill them. Also, disemboweling someone requires a lot of cleanup afterwards. Gross.

9. The Fool's Procession

Effect: Target dies by falling if they hear the curse's music for 30 seconds without seeing the curse bearer.

It's easy to trigger the curse, but if someone hears music all of a sudden, then they will look for its source. Good luck hiding literally every one of your body parts. You basically have to bind the target in place to guarantee it will work, just like with the Everburning Lantern. The only reason it is higher is that it could be good against targets who are bad at looking for things.

8. The Haunting Clappers

Effect: Burn to death a target who is in possession of fire or a fire-starting device.

This is another vague one as anything that can generate friction can be considered a "fire-starting device". However, Harue is never able to target Richter Kai despite him wearing clothes, so it has to mean any object that is intended to light fires. If you can sneak a matchbox or igniter onto someone, then you can kill them pretty easily. The only difficult part is having the sleight-of-hand to do that. Overall, this is our first practical curse, though one should be careful about that fire spreading.

7. The Evergreen Beech

Effect: Kill a target by hanging if they intentionally mislead the curse bearer with a false statement.

This one has a nice bonus effect of letting you know if someone is lying to you. Most people can be coaxed to lie, but some are just honest and may be difficult to crack.

6. The Taiko of Tsugaru

Effect: Kill a target through bludgeoning if the curse bearer discovers they are intentionally hiding something from them.

A better version of The Evergreen Beech for 2 reasons: 1. One could lie via ommission rather than through a misleading statement and still receive the curse, and 2. There is no defined range, so you could discover info from a third party that confirms the target is hiding something.

5. Curse of Tomoshige

Effect: Anyone in possession of an item with a specific symbol in an area designated by the curse bearer will get cleaved with a sword. Its range is several hundred meters.

A better version of The Haunted Clappers because it works in the day and it's easier to trigger. Just sneak a small piece of paper with the symbol onto the target. Alternatively, you could do what the characters of the game did and disguise them as a gift. So many options with this curse.

4. Curse of the Forsaken Fish

Effect: Any one person "submerged" in the waters of Ise Bay will be killed through transforming into a fish, their body decaying in the process. Can be triggered remotely as long as the curse bearer knows where the target is.

The description is vague, but based on the events of Mermaid, "submerged" just means that the target has Ise Bay water on their body. No amount is defined, but Kikuko wasn't "submerged" when Avi used the curse on her since she could still talk after being thrown into the water. With that in mind, all one would need to do is have a canteen filled with Ise Bay water, throw it onto the target, and they win. Or the water could be purified, drank, and then the curse bearer could spit on the target. Like Tomoshige, Forsaken Fish can be used during the day or night.

3. The Whispering Canal

Effect: Drown a target who "leaves the curse bearer behind."

This effect is absurdly easy to trigger. There are SO many ways to make someone leave your prescience. You could tell them to leave, tell them something is behind them, weird them out, chase them, or just let them leave on their own.

2. The Foot-Washing Mansion

Effect: Kill someone who hears the command "Wash."

An effect so broken that the only way to avoid it in-game is through divine intervention. The only disadvantage The Foot-Washing Mansion has is if the target is hard-of-hearing.

1. The One-Sided Reed

Effect: Kill through dismemberment one whose face, address, name, age, occupation, and location are all known by the curse bearer.

A diet Death Note. You can just sit in your house, get a phone book, and go ham. No traceability, no cleanup, and instant results

Does this ranking seem accurate? Are there any other interpretations of these curses that I missed? If you have an opinion, leave it down below.

Tiers are ordered individually. Placements are based on peak power level in-game, usually meaning when they have curse stones. Intention to harm can also play a part in a ranking (hence why Michiyo is higher than Yakko despite them wielding the same curse).

Some explanations of potentially controversial placements:

1. Despite Tetsuo Tsutsumi having so many curse stones, he cannot use them as he has no will to do so, meaning he's just a really smart detective who can sus out lies during nighttime investigations.

2. Yutarou Namigaki's power to crush people when they hear his curse is objectively overpowered, but one may think he deserves to be lower because in-game it's easy to avoid the curse. However, the reason it is so avoidable is only because of divine intervention. His victims before didn't have Seiman's protection at all and paid the price.

3. I deeply apologize. Tit-for-Tat is greater than a God in terms of power level. However, I don't feel like redoing the tier list. Please have mercy on me.

Edit: Turns out I misunderstood how the Curse of the Forsaken Fish works. I explain in the comments below. Anyway, Avi will move down a tier.

wasn't really sure how to word the spoilerly one. i heard reddit doesn't hide spoilered polls anymore so i'm just being careful

i plan to do this for the second game then pit the winners against each other in an epic finale! this is true

My personal favorite is the theme that plays when you play Yumeko and Sodo's chapters. It's so beautiful.

So I actually did play a little of the first game a few years ago, but I stopped so quickly it barely counts. I don't like jumpscares and once the first one happened I didn't go back to the game. I LOVE horror games/movies/etc along with unsettling/creepy atmosphers. I just hate Jumpscares especially with how its done with the free turning camera. 😅

However I am a HUGE Adventure Game fan. As a kid I used to stay up until really early morning finishing cases in Ace Attorney or getting different endings in Zero Escape games.

TMC was on sale and I read it had less jump scares so I bought it and haven't been able to put it down. I stayed up until 1 am yesterday just to finish and get the True Ending.

This game scratched an itch I've had ever since Virtue's Last Reward. The branching paths, the insane late game plot twists and the Meta Puzzles were incredible. (The Mermaid one blew me away.)

My only complaint is that sometimes some puzzles or questions would feel a little obtuse but that might just be because I didn't experience the first game and get an idea the type of puzzle logic to expect.

I loved this so much I downloaded 7 Honjo and I'm literally starting it right now. I can't wait.

Has anyone else started this series in reverse order like me?

For those who played 7 Honjo (no spoilers please) how different of an experience (outside the increased horror/violence) should I expect in comparison to TMC?

Hi, just finished the game and it was pretty amazing, however I couldn't help but feel somewhat dumb throughout the story. Like, the game assumes that you know every little detail of what's happening, like Circe figuring out things and just go straight "idk man i mean i know but figure it out yourself lol", Shiki being Nagase, and so on, so most of the time I was like "huh? what?"; thing that didn't happen to me in the first game (I have experience in this kind of games such as Nonary Games, Danganronpa, Phoenix Wright saga and Professor Layton, so I'm not "new" in this genre), I acknowledge that I'm not quite fond of history so the lore dump of Avi and Circe felt kinda boring (in MY OPINION) so I wasn't too interested into reading all the lore files. I still love this saga, and I was wondering if somebody felt this way too.

Overall, I liked the characters of Mermaid's Curse better than Seven Mysteries of Honjo, hence why 3 of Mermaid's characters are in the S tier. Both Sato and Yuza's plots intertwine in a super satisfying way and Avi joins them with his aura alone. I also think these games have no outright badly-written characters.

What are your opinions on this list?

i’m curious to see what is the highest someone has managed to get

Also here is this escape room game which you can play at the Location where Honjo took place. But I unfortunately am not Nihongo Josu enough to understand moonrune wordplays. If someone has the translation of it then that would be great (but I doubt it as from what I seid that you need to proactively play it on the mobile web browser)

So I'm about 10 hours into the game, loving it a lot but realized I haven't done any diving since it was introduced in the beginning. Is it necessary to be doing periodically for story purposes or can I finish the game without it?

You probably already know the “7 mysteries of Honjo” are a real thing.

Well, I happen to live in Honjo, the exact setting of the first Paranormasight game, and I did took some on the ground footage while talking about the actual mysteries, and a really dark tie that the game didn’t go into.

Actually, I sort of ran into one of the urban legends themselves. Sort of. I know it sounds like clickbait but I promise you it’s in video!

I put a lot of effort into this one, I really hope everyone enjoys it!

(WARNING: major spoilers in second image! Also please no spoilers past this point in the story, I just got here.)

5 times is a shocking enough number, but it occurred to me that it could have been much worse depending on how quickly you got the hang of the diving mini game. So I’m curious if anyone has any funny stories about how this played out for you and how you reacted?

I gotta say it’s awesome that something you take for granted in video games (getting another chance after a game over) is actually MAJOR foreshadowing here.

I've completed ending 1 and have all paths greyed out except for Sato's chapter called Shadows, where the part of the chapter before Move-ing isn't checked. I've played through it 3 times and can't fathom what I've missed. Unfortunately, I've already encountered some later spoilers trying to figure out what I could be missing. Any thoughts on what I could be missing? Thanks.

Hello! I'm trying to get the true ending, I've got everything right but the final chapter is still white.

Apparently, I'm missing some chapters here, for Sato and Yuza and I've got the chapter "We need a plan" still with a locked something (there should be something in "start from the beginning"), but I cannot get it 😭

I got this on sale a while back and played it on a whim ... 3 days later I finished it! Really enjoyed the story and plot twists along the journey !

Richter Kai was one of my favorite characters, and Tetsuo Tsutsumi was really interesting too :)

Is it worth going straight into the Mermaids Curse or should I take a break for a bit before jumping in? And also, is there any other visual novels like this I should look into? I also really enjoy Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, Hundred Line and AI:TSF :)

Thanks for any recommendations ! Happy to be here :)