The Murder Hotel

Hours played at review time, across 46 reviews with recorded playtime.

positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up

A unique mystery-adventure game sure to appeal to fans of Umineko, Ace Attorney, and other similar mystery games. TMH is a great collection of interactive murder mysteries with thrilling argumentation segments that stand out due to an interesting premise that has you not necessarily searching for the truth (with the exact goal varying by chapter). The courtroom segments are easily the highlight and I loved how you were given multiple ways to approach them with different theories and counterarguments (though sadly you have less of this freedom as the game progresses). These are clearly inspired by the logic battles from Umineko, with a bit of Ace Attorney contradiction-finding and it hits the same great highs as both of its inspirations. Coming out of this game, I'm honestly dying for more of this and would love a sequel for this part alone. The game has fun characters with a ton of referential dialogue sure to get some laughs out of fans of all things mystery (whether it be book, game, film, or TV), but also has some genuinely heartfelt moments that manage to work despite the usually comical tone. I also enjoyed how the cast came from a variety of European cultures (for the human characters) or folklores (for the supernatural ones). I was not very familiar with a lot of this subject matter going in, but I still found it all to be very interesting and makes it stand out from other stories in this space. The overarching plot is complex and fun to untangle with some great twists and reveals, though most of the supernatural aspects of the story are clearly part of a much larger narrative planned for a greater franchise that I hope we see come to life in the coming years. [b]My feelings about this game are overall very positive[/b], though I can't help but note a few things that I had mixed feelings about. Across the game I found several typos, as well as numerous examples of awkwardly constructed sentences. For the latter issue, I'm not sure if it is intentional or not (many of the characters don't speak English as their first language), but it does hurt readability a bit. The investigation segments are perfectly functional for setting up the mystery and are at their best when providing interesting side objectives, but can be tedious otherwise. Aside from interrogating witnesses, you're oftentimes moving from one end of the hotel to the other repeatedly, scouring every unlocked room looking for clues. This is normally fine, but it becomes a problem if you're a completionist because there are also (optional) missable collectables which can seemingly show up and disappear without warning, so you have to scan through EVERY room again to be sure you aren't missing something after EVERY major scene. Additionally, replaying these segments can especially be a chore due to how much walking around is required, with no way to speed up movement or fast travel (and you'll likely want to replay them because they contain choices that affect the narrative). The game does include a fast forward for dialogue and cutscenes, but it requires holding down the shift button for several seconds which feels awkward on its own, but becomes even more annoying when you're trying to use it in conjunction with the rest of the game's controls (pressing shift is also mapped to certain types of interactions, for example). The skip also doesn't consider whether you've seen text before, so you have to be careful not to skip too much which leads to a painful cycle of releasing shift, skimming to see if the text is different, and then holding shift for a bit to get the skip going again. Combine all this with the limited chapter select system that will require you to replay large segments to get to one or two choices that you care about, and it makes replays feel like they aren't respecting your time. Another aspect of the investigation segments that I'd like to touch on is the interrogation system, which the developer clearly put a lot of effort into. With this system, you're able to get information from witnesses by compositing questions from a set of sentence fragments, and it's a very cool idea. However, it's only used in the first two cases and then is discarded for the endgame. In the first case, it's honestly a bit overwhelming with how many possible questions are allowed and how few are actually relevant, but it was still an enjoyable albeit stressful balancing act since you only have a limited number of questions you're able to ask before you run out of time. The second case has a much more simplified set of possible parameters and felt more manageable as a result. But after that, the system is just gone which felt disappointing. The gameplay system that replaces it in the final segments is a much simpler adventure game-esque "find X, bring it to the X-shaped hole" style of information gathering which is fine, but lacks the uniqueness and stakes of the original system. Lastly, the character writing, particularly in regards to romance. The dialogue is overly packed with innuendos and flirting, with far too many random romantic subplots shoehorned into the story in a way that feels very unnatural. Characters are constantly flirting and falling in and out of love with each other like hormonal teenagers (the female characters especially, which doesn't feel like a great way to write women). This is even true of characters who really shouldn't be so quick to jump into relationships, given what we learn of their backstories. The story tries to provide some justification for why the characters behave this way, but it doesn't really work at dispelling the awkwardness of how unbelievably lovesick and desperate the majority of the cast behaves (especially towards our main character, which ends up feeling like hollow wish fulfilment). I saw another review talk about this before I played the game and I honestly rolled my eyes at the complaint. But after playing, yeah, I get it. There is one romance that feels somewhat earned and thankfully it's the one most focused on.