BURIED STARS

I always liked mystery games and this one is amazing. Love the relationships between characters.

My review is going to go into more specifics about the scenario than the steam page, so if you want to go in fully blind you should skip reading this. But these were the details that got me interested in the game in the first place. Buried Stars takes my favorite parts of games like Danganronpa and the Nonary Game - the character drama and tense mystery - but combines it with a grounded, adult cast and tighter pacing and themes to deliver an outstanding narrative. I had some doubts about how engaging the conversation system would be, but the mechanical investment in how characters would react to different conversation topics really let the writing shine. Throughout the game, I found myself torn between whether I wanted to continue to ask the characters questions or move on with the story, weighing how I thought characters would react to certain topics instead of just deciding based on my own curiosity vs impatience. Other choices made throughout the story were similarly engaging, with usually no obvious "correct" answer as I felt like I had to balance everyone's drive to find answers versus the need to keep the peace to survive. Unfortunately, the choices for going into different routes are less well sign posted than I'm used to with the Nonary Games or AITSF. I really enjoyed the Korean dub, but the English translate was clunky at best. This would range from minor word choices that seemed to come from a misguided translate (eg. characters will describe their feelings as ambivalent when that feels too passive for the moment described) to choosing between options that didn't make sense to me until after I picked one and saw how the conversation went. Still really enjoyed the experience, even if a lot of it was spent fast-forwarding and following a guide after the first few runs to make sure I got all the endings. The well-realized characters made it worth it to me. Excited to see what's next from the director now that he has the backing of studio8!