Misao - 2024 HD Remaster

I played this game after buying and thoroughly enjoying Mad Father, so my hopes were high. The repetitive "punishment for exploration" gameplay did get a bit stale, but with quicksave and a log for each death it wasn't AS frustrating as it could be and could actually be a bit fun collecting every single possible way you could "drop out". That is not why I am giving a negative review, however. The writing is. You can tell by how one-note these characters are that Misao was clearly meant to be more comedic than scary because you will not get attached to ANY of these characters, they are all meant to exist to play into one generic character archetype and then immediately be killed off. The issue here is that because of this, I expected the tone throughout the story to remain darkly-comedic only to be given whiplash with an extremely disgusting, poorly handled [spoiler]rape scene[/spoiler] appearing not once, but TWICE (in truth mode) with absolutely no warning beforehand. Not only that, but in the aforementioned truth mode you are meant to SYMPATHIZE with [spoiler]Mr. Kurata, who is a pedophilic rapist necrophiliac who also brutally murdered Misao. To the point where our character hugs him and claims he is a 'good person' all while he's blubbering like a little ♥♥♥♥♥, and I'm meant to feel GOOD about this?? I'm meant to be satisfied by this conclusion and pleased that we gave this character a redemption arc? Really? The character who was forcing himself on women WHILE it was explaining his generic, whiny backstory to us?[/spoiler] I am not kidding when I say it is one of the worst endings I have ever experienced in an RPG horror game. TLDR: The only fun part of this game was naming my protagonist Gas Station. Just play Mad Father.

loved it until it [spoiler]made the player sympathize with kurata[/spoiler]

I was looking forward to this game after playing Mad Father, which I enjoyed. Unfortunately, I didn't get the same enjoyment as I was hoping for. For starters, the constant death traps do get quite annoying. This doesn't seem too big an issue with the quick save option, but sometimes you won't realize something is trapped and not saving at the right time can get quite annoying. It made it much harder for me to enjoy the gameplay and made puzzles much more frustrating. Second, the characters just aren't that enjoyable. They all feel like generic tropes with little to no depth except maybe Kurata (who I will talk about in a moment because man I have a lot to say). The plot itself is very interesting on paper but that's it. We barely learn anything about the characters through the game except for the fact we just know they were bullying/cold to Misao. Spoilers: [spoiler]The one thing that really grinded my gears was playing the Truth mode, where we can visit each of the characters’ graves and see they are being trapped by Misao. For everyone except Kurata, it's just brief sequences that last barely a minute. For Kurata, however, we get an entire flashback to his youth explaining his oh-so-tragic life and how no one likes him. Worst of all, Aki, whether you like it or not, decides to hug Kurata (you know, the rapist pedophile??) and comfort him but doesn't do the same for ANY of the other students who were tame compared to Kurata.[/spoiler] It’s a shame. I had high expectations thinking it would offer that same charm like Mad Father did only to be disappointed in the end.

More of a rage game than I remember it being. Everything kills you, but that's part of the charm. I loved playing through it again, great remaster all things considered. Sen the GOAT <3

I like the game for it's updated visuals but I still strongly prefer and recommend the original game. It's free and tells the gruesome story of Misao in a much better way. It might've just been on my end but sometimes the inputs aside from wasd and z just wouldn't work which sometimes hindered my progress. I still enjoyed it for what it was, but again, the free version is just the better game.

It's not a bad game, but there are just too many critical issues in it for me to recommend it. Mad Father is far superior to this. The good things: It's certainly horror. There's plenty of blood and gore and terrible ways to die. Sometimes it gets almost comedic, but I don't think that's a bad thing; this game has more than enough sadness in it, so I actually appreciated the break. The sheer amount of death traps can be frustrating, but as long as you quicksave before interacting with anything, you won't lose too much progress. The puzzles are fun and not too tricky to solve. The music was thematically right for the story. I liked how the main character's gender affects which scenes you see at times. It adds to the game's replay value. The bad things: Despite not being a direct sequel to Mad Father, there are plenty of references to it, which means you'll be very confused at times if you didn't play Mad Father first. But more importantly, this game's writing is atrocious. Most of the characters are very little depth and exist only to get killed off. We're not given any reason to care about their deaths, either, because they're so one-note and/or unsympathetic. They don't grow and change at all. The horror of the deaths falls flat because we see a victim getting justice for what was done to her and it feels fair. We root for the character who is supposed to be the villain for most of the game. The twist ending is confusing because there aren't enough clues to make the reveal feel realistic. And then there's Truth mode: the predominant issue here. The game encourages you to undo the justice done before and let the bad people off the hook. A couple of them seem like they regret what they did and could be redeemable, but the others are definitely not, and there's no option to just leave them there. One character in particular is the worst scum imaginable, and the game forces the main character to forgive him because he had a sad backstory. There's no remorse on his part, no regret or redemption arc, and no acknowledgement that what he did was terrible, so not only does it feel forced, it comes across as offensive and dismissive of a real, serious issue that many people (especially young girls like Misao) are actually facing. It felt deeply wrong to me, and that's ultimately what prompted me to write this review.

What a great game, the deaths are unique and one of a kind, the gameplay, graphics are so cool and the story is good. I definitely recommend! ;p

the plot is really shallow and the gameplay is alright. if you are tired of the "girl gets extremely bullied, assaulted, and tragically dies," trope that a lot of japanese writers seem to enjoy for some reason, steer clear of this game.. the only things that i truly enjoyed were the death gimmicks and the 'cheap' scares - someone described this game as more of like a death gallery, and it's true. death traps are everywhere, so you do die a LOT, but you are also able to insta-save basically the entire game. a good amount of them are pretty silly too; one of them is even called "bogus door" lol. just don't walk in expecting a good scare or a good plot. you're really just better off watching a playthrough video instead

I didn't play much, granted, but it's worse than mad father and its the same team so I'm expecting at the very least the same quality as Mad Father. The scare are pretty cheap, the game feels pretty cheap, its a death gallory and when you play games like the corpse party on PSP, the writing seems very weak in comparaison. The characters, the settings, it is so on the surface, so barely introduced, so bad that it does it a deservice and makes it so not engaging :(