This game is an exceptionally moment for me. It was niether chosen because I was continuing a franchise, nor by the dice. Rather, this game was chosen by timing. In addition to my gaming hobby, I am also taking time to watch various shows and movies while I do my daily exercises, and this game takes place during the first season of the anime series Psycho-Pass. I have seen it before, but since I now have season 2, I chose to rewatch it, and this game would be played between seasons. I now put my mouse down and... well, I can't say I didn't enjoy the story, but I don't think everyone should bother with it.
Story: If you are playing this game before you have seen the anime, stop right now. Seriously, click out of this review and go watch the first 12 episodes. It is not ABSOLUTELY necessary, but the game assumes you know the characters and location and are playing as a fan, meaning without doing this, you will spend a lot more time reading the "hints" on things the universe assumes everyone knows, breaking up the pacing the writing will offer, and risking spoilers when you do get to the show. To this end, I have to also assume you have seen the show before I begin.
With this in mind, this game will follow two characters newly introduced here, asking you to play the role of either Enforcer Takuma Tsurugi or Inspector Nadeshiko Kugatachi. Both of these characters are new recruits to the Crime Investigation Department (or CID) with personal issues to resolve.
In the case of the enforcer, he was found to be a latent criminal and locked up for treatment before he could make the jump to actual criminal. But while locked up, he was offered the chance to join other latent criminals as the action-arm of the CID. So when things go down, he's one of the troops deployed. With his own reasons (in the form of trying to find out what happened to a woman he loved and just disappeared one day), he eagerly joined.
The inspector, however, is a bit more of a mystery. She has no memories of her past due to an accident in training for her roll, but a high aptitude to the work as effectively as the "brains" of this justice branch and desire to fill in the roll she finds herself in. Whether she is looking to find her past or not, I do not know, as I played from the enforcer's view, and this game literally offers nothing about either of them beyond the IDs you pick between after the opening actions of the as of yet unnamed antagonist who will drive the main story forward. You do not even get to know what their roll is (inspector or enforcer) until after you click.
That main story will be divided into three cases you will find yourself involved with in the hometown of Takuma Tsurugi, the first of which is the kidnapping of a young student. You already have a good idea of who she is, who kidnapped her, and why (an ex who never let go of his girlfriend when she left home for school in Tokyo). It's now up to you and the team to find her before (hopefully) anything happens to the poor girl. And that is where this game mixes things up in the writing: your choices will have consequences and will effect how the story unfolds down the line, both in the events before you as well as how your character is doing.
You see throughout the game you have what's called a Hue status which you can look at at any time when you open the main menu. It has a sliding line from white to clouded in complete darkness where the lighter the color your point on it is at, the better you are doing and the darker, the more stressed and troubled you are. In this universe, this hue is a snapshot to check on how mentally stable a person is and how likely it is they will basically do something stupid and illegal. This too, will effect how the story plays out, but what details effect what I do not know. I only know I tried to keep it as light and clear as I possibly could through the game.
As for the writing involved, expect it to make sense and flow very well. Each case is very well contained, whatever resolution you get, as well as the time between events. However you will find the most interesting stuff really only happens in the second half of the game as you finish the second case and finally meet the antagonist of the story face-to-face. Do not get me wrong, Takuma is a very sympathetic guy and Nadeshiko is interesting for how much she has to rediscover about herself, but the really interesting character is this third who's unique perspective makes him perhaps both sympathetic and absolutely horrific at the exact same time. I won't explain as this will spoil things, but his mindset makes way too much sense from his view, even if from the outside it makes him a straight up monster. I love characters like this and would love to see more like him.
8/10
Graphics: As a visual novel, this is a game that relies more then most on it's visuals and writing over the gameplay element since you are basically here to guide a story more then play through the events of the game. And to this end the game does a very serviceable job. You will play the game basically by watching cutscenes made up of various locations with pictures of the characters involved sliding into view as necessary. These rooms and locations are very well painted and could have come straight out of the anime without missing a beat (and in fact a few locations just might have). Be it the extremely clean feel of a hospital tech-room, a courtyard outside a campus, or even the just the roads that lead about the two cities the game takes place in, everything is professionally drawn and painted.
And then we get to the characters and I can say just about the same about them. Everyone who is in the show absolutely matches their look and feel from the anime, looking and feeling exactly as they should. Add to this a few scenes of action as well, and the game has a very nice overall look to it. But it's not perfect.
There are several scenes in this game that they chose to just not show anything, leaving you only to the text box at the bottom to explain what is going on, but could have benefitted from an additional drawing or two to show what they are describing. These thankfully happen less and less as you get further into the game, but it's hard to ignore a black screen when you are playing a video game... especially a visual novel where VISUAL is in the description.
7/10
Sound: While I can say a lot of great things (for the most part) about the visuals of this game, I can't really do the same for the audio department. There really just isn't a lot to talk about. Most of what you hear will be the voice actors for the various characters talking, provided the text is not either describing the events going on or in the head of whoever you chose to play. And while they sound good enough, I can't speak for how accurate they are. I watched the show with dubbing (yeah, I know people will frown on that) and this game's voice work is all only in Japanese, so I couldn't tell you how accurate the voices are to the original cast. They were easy to get used to, however, and at least from my perspective, fit their rolls very well.
There will be a few sound effects to add to moments, but aside from that, what you will hear for the most part is just moments of subdued music (sometimes made of ambient sounds) and occasionally pure silence. These were used effectively and even add to the feel of the moment, but there is nothing here you would want to hear outside the game.
Overall though, it all sounds good, if limited due to the nature of the game we are playing.
7/10
Gameplay: This is sadly, if expectedly, the weakest part of the game. Mandatory Happiness is a visual novel and as expected, you will spend your time listening, reading and occasionally making choices instead of really playing a game: it is basically an interactive story. And basic is the word for this one. Most of the time you will just be hitting entre to between text boxes to proceed as your chosen character is interacted with throughout your adventure and occasionally you will be given a choice of what you wish to do, like a choose your own adventure book, where you will have to pick between a handful of options to decide how the story continues. If this gameplay sounds limited to you, it absolutely is. But that's why it's called a novel. What is here is not supported by the story, but here only to support your interaction with it. It really does nothing special with this, however.
6/10
Bugs: While this game overall ran great, it was not a perfect experience by any means. It wasn't so much buggy but really REALLY poor interface choices that lead to issues building into each other in the order I now have to talk about them.
- Escape = Quit no matter what: I cant describe the first issue any other way as it literally breaks the standards you see in just about every PC game since the days when we were launching them from a black screen with a command prompt. While the escape key should be to quit from the main screen, you would expect it to open up a menu to save or load games, quit to the main screen, and maybe even an options menu once you get into the game itself. You never get that here. Whenever you hit escape, it will always bring up the exact same window asking if you were sure you wanted to quit. Still this doesn't sound like a terrible issue until...
- You have no start menu: This is one of those games that, until you have a saved game you do not get a start menu. You just start right into the game. Combine this with the above and the game is effectively hiding all options (including that ability to save) from the user until they start screwing with the F keys on top of their keyboards to try to figure out what the game should make readily available. And in this case, it's even more obnoxious when you consider this game starts in a 720p window in the middle of your desktop until you change those settings the game is hiding from you. And furthermore when you do find it...
- Why the HELL is the main menu on the 1 button? The F1 key that anyone from the days of playing on MS-DOS (so us old guys) MIGHT think to try ISN'T the option menu. Instead, the game rushes past it and all you get is a keyboard and mouse diagram to show you the controls... and that the fucking number 1 key is the main menu. YOU CAN'T EVEN BACK UP TO THAT MENU AT THIS TIME, AS BACKING UP WILL JUST RUSH BACK PAST IT TO THE MAIN GAME AGAIN! And when you are done in EITHER screen, guess what button lets you back out? NOT ESCAPE like you would think. That asks you if you want to quit the ENTIRE GAME no matter where you are as noted above. Rather you can only use the backspace button. And this esoteric use of buttons gets even worse...
- God Help you if you want to use a controller: The ONLY half-way reasonable explanation of controls the game ever gives you are the buttons in the lower right corner of the screen at any given time (telling you to go to the next line with the ENTER key, toggle the autoplay option with E, or replay the current line with DELETE when not in a choice, or pointing out the arrow keys to navigate your choices and ENTER to select the one you want. (Don't even ask about the OFF button in the lower left.. I have no idea what it does). You can NOT change any of these buttons it uses, no matter how isosteric the choice. But hey.. at least you KNOW what buttons you are being asked to hit on the keyboard. If you play with a controller, even the Xbox controller the game's page claims to partially support, the game DOESNT TELL YOU WHAT THE BUTTONS ARE. It gives you effectively button numbers like we are in the old days without a standard to follow, making this completely unreadable without literally painstakingly reviewing in the windows screen for your controller to map which button goes with which number before you begin. And once again, you can't change ANY choices if they happen to be in awkward places for you. Literally useless.
Digital Rights Management: This game is a Steam exclusive and behaves like it. You will find all versions require Steam to run.
Score: If you look at the content of this visual novel, it's overall a very nice little game about horrific utopian future-world and being part of detective team in the middle of it where your actions and choices will effect what happens to your team. It's actually very solid. But the simplistic controls and gameplay backing this limits exactly what can be done with this experience. Add to this the interface issues that make up effectively a four-part rant in the bugs section of this review and I have to think there are better examples of this type of game than this. It's not bad, but its needlessly simple where some nuance would have been beneficial and needlessly complicated where simplicity would have helped it deliver itself infinately better.
If you are a fan of the series, it's worth taking some time (and frustration) to play through this at least once, but if you just want to play a visual novel, I would say look somewhere else.
5/10
System Requirements:
- Intel i3 (Haswell based)
- 3 GB RAM
- Intel HD Graphics 4000 (or any GPU with 2GB VRAM)
- Windows 7, 8.1, or 10
- 3 GB Hard Drive space
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (5700X) 3.4 Ghz
- 32 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB VRAM)
- Windows 11 (64 Bit)
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