Gonna be honest, this was not a game I was hyped for. I picked it up at some point as part of a steam sale which is how a lot of my backlog was built up. However it looked interesting enough so when the dice rolled it up, I was intrigued. Turns out, this was for good reason even if it comes with a bit of a downturn for the studio behind it. Come... step inside.
Story: Date (said Dah-Tay. Yeah, this name confused me, too.) and Aiba are investigators and partners on the beat, though perhaps a very unusual duo. They get along like a normal tag-team complete with friendly jabs and some "I can't believe you just did that" (usually from Aiba). Still underneath you can see the two genuinely care about each other. But they don't work for a normal bureau of investigation. Rather, they work for an investigative branch called ABIS and their job is to get into the heads of witnesses and victims to see what they think... literally. ABIS' big secret weapon is a device called a Psync Machine, and pilots of this device (known as psyncers) use it to enter the dreams of another person and try to unlock the secrets of the mind itself in a dreamscape known as a Somnium. And outside of being a descent detective, Date is a top-rate psyncer as well.
For her part, Aiba is no ordinary partner, either. For starters, she isn't human. Residing in Date's artificial left eye, Aiba is an artificial intelligence who helps him out in his cases by doing research on the fly, swapping vision modes for Date and herself or even suggesting new ways to look at things or alert him to danger... and that's just when she's literally in his skull! When she desires, she can disconnect and wander the world on her own, still giving Date a view of what she sees! But none of this is her main functionality. That is while her partner is psyncing up with someone. Being an AI designed around the process, she is essential to it, acting as his avatar to interact with the dream where all he can do directly is simply observe. Together, in the Somnium or in the physical world, this dynamic duo is among the top of the top!
But today, they are about to start a case that will shake their world. In an abandoned amusement park, a murdered corpse has been discovered. With her right eye removed, the ex-wife of one of Date's best friends was found tied to the carousel. And finding her 12 year old daughter on the crime scene holding the likely murder weapon in her hands only complicates the issue. What starts as a job to find leads has quickly become a mission to clear the suspicions off a young girl who just found the body of her mother and will see more horrific things before it is over. But where it goes from there will be up to you. This is one of those games that branches the story based on what you do, and has several possible endings, including absolute changes to who the possible killer is or their motive. I don't know how I feel about changing the literal facts of the case based on your actions when you should be reacting to the ones you find as a detective, but the story I got felt pretty solid, so this is not a huge issue to me (you don't have to go back and see other possible outcomes if you don't want to).
And while on my experience, I have to give this one special attention for the moment-to-moment writing. The characters you will interact with feel perfect for who they are. Most of them are a little outlandish in just the right ways for the anime feel of the entire thing and written brilliantly. Date in particular is absolutely amazing in his almost but not quite smug commentary with everyone he talks to, even as he clearly has his own issues with self control where if he's given the opportunity to flirt or stare, he generally can't help himself. He's not a character who you will roll your eyes at, but you will likely laugh at a lot at his antics throughout the adventure even as you acknowledge how stupid they are.
Playing off this perfectly is the other character you hear the most of in this game, Aiba. She knows everything there is to know about Date, being both connected to his thoughts when he is awake as well as able to wander his dreams like its a Somnium when he is asleep, and interacts with him as the perfect counter for a bubby-cop duo. And yet you can see she clearly cares for him, even going so far as to craft her image in the dreams to what she thinks he would like to see. If she were human, she might even have a crush. She might even be the most interesting character here, just because you wonder how human she really is in that matrix of code of hers at times.
Everyone else also stands up to this quality, quirks and all. You won't meet a ton of characters, but the ones you do meet really make this world feel alive like a good anime series might.
However, that is not to say the writing is perfect. In fact there is some very very ugly things going on in it from time to time. Unfortunately, this seems to be one of those studios where either the writers or the localizers have to shove their own ideology into some scenes whether they make sense or not. In my case, I stumbled into one late in the game where Date is taking the daughter of the murdered couple who came with him to investigate the various scenes you have before... including a bar run by Mama, a local informant who until this scene I thought was just a really fat and starting to border on sex-pest woman. (She explains it's a costume.) It's pretty clear Mizuki (said daughter) is not comfortable around Mama, which the lady takes in stride. But you are giving the option after this explanation to ask Mizuki if she's afraid of gay people. At this point I figured we were going to see Date making fun of her (as he does) and her turning on him in a way that makes him be more defensive (as she does) with Mama adding a bit of to the humor of the moment. It's kinda formulaic, but at the same time it's exactly what you would expect as you get to know these characters, so I was waiting to see it happen in some form. Suffice it to say, this is not what happened.
What I got instead was a wall of text from the localizer voiced by the voice actress of Mizuki which no 12 year old (not even this 12 year old who just the year before was dealing with normal bully problems in school) is going to spend the time explaining about all the good things she sees in them with cheesy sources like TV shows to explain her reasons. It sounded frankly fake as hell, and took me right out of the scene, especially as when you look at her, the text says Mizuki is STILL watching Mama nervously.
I have heard accusations before that Spike Chunsoft was one of those companies that changes games over ideologies, but I hadn't given them much credit until this scene. It was only one, but it was REALLY bad and smelled of ham-fisting a message as more important then the scene in the story it happened in. I can only hope it's the only one, but it shakes my faith further in the studio (not that the last game I played from them didn't do a number on it). If the writing throughout the rest of the game didn't give everyone real depth and or if I had confirmed there were more moments like this, I think this would have sunk my score for the game. Yes it took me out of the moment that badly, which is a HORRIBLE sign for the writing. But as it stands, it is the absolutely blatant low point to warn you to avoid.
7/10
Graphics: It seems when you play a game by Spike Chunsoft, you are going to play something that takes on a very anime-looking ascetic and AI: The Somnium Files is no exception. As you guide Date and Aiba through the case, you will generally see the world from Date's eyes as he takes up his position on the various investigation scenes. There is no free movement but you can swing the camera to get a look from where you are at will and see just about the entire area you are in, and that area will in general look pretty damn good!
You will find the game taking full advantage of the aspect to show a well detailed and crafted 3D scape of what can best be described as a "near future" world. For example, the amusement park you start in is a well lit and modeled pocket of space surrounded by a holographic "police tape" around the carousel the body was found in. The is rain pouring down, the shadows from the moon clearly light across the ground, and even the tiling shows variation of how dark the dirt around the individual parts are. It's not photo-realistic, but it's clear the artists put serious work into the world around you, and that effort is felt through the entire game.
The people also show a lot of effort to keep both the anime motif and use the keep everything fully animated, taking advantage of everything being models rather then sprites or still pictures. Each character has a drawn look that makes them stand out from the others, but not be outlandish to the world around them. The boss, for example, is a brown haired hazel eyed young woman in a red jacket over a black lowcut sweater and a black skirt that is detailed enough I would half expect someone to try to cosplay it. She's pretty easy on the eyes if I were to be honest, but to the point of her looks, she and everybody else in this game looks their part brilliantly. And also to the point, when talking to anyone, it's clear the models are good enough they are also used for the closeup in the corner of the screen while they talk. Even the expression between the model as you look and that portrait matches, giving away its the same asset all the more, so on a technical level I have to give them a lot of credit here. Hell even Date, who most of the time you are looking from and not at, is up to this level of detail, too.
Once again the stand-out, however, is Aiba. Not being human, she has two such models she uses (as noted in the story section): Date's eye and a human form when in the Somniums. I use the term human loosely, however, as it's more human shaped and faced with more artificial details, but considering she's an AI just representing herself rather then an actual physical form at that point, she could have picked anything... so being a humanoid girl with quasi-transparent hands may be weird, but it still fits somehow. No it's her physical form that gets much more out there. When she desires, she can eject herself from Date's skull and inflate a transparent a kind of hamster shaped balloon around the eyeball that is now her body. I have to be honest, it looks kinda cute, but just strange enough to to be a little alarming the first time she does this. I suspect this is by design, so once again, great job!
9/10
Sound: Much like the visuals it's clear a lot of work went into the audio-scape of the game as well. You will not get a ton of sound effects during the game, but that's more due to the nature of the game then anything else. Most of the time, you will be looking at things and talking to individuals. As such, most of the time the sounds you will here is the click and selection sounds when you choose who to talk to, what to say, or even what vision modes you will use. When not in investigations, things can get more intense and varied bringing anything from a gunfight to just the regular kookiness that happens in a dream. All the sounds at these points are solid recordings and perfect for what they are supposed to be, though. It's just this kind of thing has such a high bar, that it won't really stand out much against most games.
The music, too is absolutely perfect for this game, and with a strong variety based on what's going on and where you are. It's not going to stand out as music you would want to hear outside the game, but designed to fit the moment to moment, no matter how benign, action filled, or even just for the motif in the case of a few dreams. In short, it's exactly what you would expect for the soundtrack of an atmospheric game, whatever that atmosphere happens to be at the time.
No the real star here is, as always, the voice acting, and this is actually really good too. Pretty much everyone is on point with their character, from the rather smug and in control Boss to the classic (but still somehow know-it-all) idol fan Ota, everyone's voice work flavors the picture to bring the character to life: for better or worse about the character themself. And there is a good trio of regulars in this game I found myself not really liking, Ota being one of the worst.
But the best of the best was clearly Aiba herself. As noted, Aiba is an artificial intelligence who knows Date perhaps a little too well. Her commentary on any and everything varies from inciteful to oblivious at the drop of a hat, and leaving you to wonder sometimes just how much she gets and how much she plays dumb to get under Date's skin. She even drops her own jokes which probably made me laugh more then most of the characters here. (Leaving the talent agency the first time would be one to set the tone for her sense of humor.) But she's not just commentary, as she actively takes hold of what she can do both to help the investigation and Date survive in a pinch (whether he appreciates her methods or not). Overall, she might just be the best written character in the game and her actress works with it brilliantly.
9/10
Gameplay: When playing this game, you will play two basic modes: investigation and somnium. Most of the game will be played in the former as you travel around the city collecting clues that will push the story along, talking to characters at various scenes and looking for what others might have missed. You do not have an inventory so much as finding things can unlock further interactions, leaving little room for actual puzzles at these points. However this will allow you to put together a picture of what happened, but not a complete one, as the player.
Furthermore, these scenes can get dangerous, and there will be times the game will switch to a sequence of quick-time events, requiring you to respond to prompts before Date and Aiba pay the price of your failure. These moments are never all that hard, but they can be amusing as Aiba pulls stunts of future prediction to make even most meticulously detail orientated gamblers jealous... as well as uses a certain weakness of Date at a whim to increase her odds.
The last mode, however, is the big feature of gameplay: the somniums. In these portions of the game, you are no longer limited in your perspective as Date. Rather he takes a back seat as you control Aiba as she wanders the location of the dream interacting with various objects. Her goal is to unlock the parts of the dream under the guidance of Date so ABIS can record and interpret what they find. However there is a catch. Date and Aiba can only stay psynced with a person's subconscious like this for 6 minutes. Any more and they risk losing themselves, being absorbed into the host mind, and forever destroying that mind in the process.
This doesn't mean you have only 6 minutes to complete the puzzles in the dreamscape though, since time can be flexible. When Aiba is standing still, time moves exceptionally slow, only moving in real time when you get her moving. When you interact with an object, you will be given 3 choices for actions, each with a cost of time you will have to pay if you choose to have Aiba do that action, making for a kind of divide the clock right aspect to complete these portions of the game. In fact this time management will be your main job as you these options also include a time modifier you will collect when you complete the action. This token can be used to either replace or reduce the time any future action does. But of course not everything can be a benefit and there are times you will run into actions with a token that has a skull and crossbones on it. This is a negative token which will take effect on your next action, costing you more precious time then the normal action might. Overall this is the part that will force you to think more then anything, not so much on how to finish the puzzles (they are dream-logic and paper thin) but how to manage just how long it will take Aiba to complete the tasks to solve the somnium and make sure you're under the wire. Not that difficult, but really the only offer of challenge the game will give you.
6/10
Bugs: Once again, we have another game that ran absolutely perfectly. No muss, no fuss, and no issues.
Digital Rights Management: You are only going to find this game in two stores: Steam and the Windows store, and both will use the store itself as your DRM service. There is nothing external to that.
Score: I walked into this game expecting an out-there visual novel of sorts since that seems to be what Spike Chunsoft is known for. However, I walked away from something that felt more grounded then the fair I'm used to seeing from them. This is not a bad thing and in fact for the most part I found myself enjoying my time with it. I even went out of my way to try to do every conversation bit I came across and was rewarded for the most part with that little more detail of the world or the character I was talking to. However, this is also how I discovered what is a very serious flaw in the team itself. Whether it was the original writer or the localizer I couldn't tell you, but good writer should be able to exit themselves and live in the soul of their character to make them truly live in the mind of the player. Someone along the line here failed this test.
As such while I enjoyed it overall, I can only recommend this game cautiously, not knowing if you will find more such moments that will completely take you out of the game like one such did me.
7/10
System Requirements:
- Intel i7-3770 running at 3.4 Ghz or better
- 4 GB RAM
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 (2 GB VRAM)
- Windows 7 (64-bit only)
- 20 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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