I have no idea if Paradise Killer is worth playing but good LAWD the soundtrack

[Alixsar]

I guess it's like...Dadangr...Dadangronpa? Danganronpa? Dandangrandpa? The anime game where everyone kills everyone and there's like...uh, a bear? He's like two colors? That one.

It's an adventure game where everyone is doing Jojo-poses and you interview them and try to find a killer. Apparently there's like...multiple ways to clear the game and solve the murder, and it's got this insane story with nutso characters with weird names.

But who cares?! Listen to the soundtrack, GOOD LORD

FUCK

I'm gonna have to play this aren't I?

 

[Fyonn]

There was a thread where a few of us played it, and we all liked it. I definitely recommend it. One of my favorites of the year so far. Also the protagonist is bisexual, and I'll take that representation wherever I can get it.

 

[4-So]

Someone inhaled a massive dose of synthy 80s and citypop. I approve 10/10, would listen again.

 

[Fyonn]

Fun fact: all the music is played in-universe. There are a few locations you can go where there's no link to the island's audio system, and you're just stuck with ambience in those locations.

 

[Isrieri]

YEEEEESSSSSSS

 

[Poster]

Pretty good.

 

[MJG]

Original Thread

This game is great, one of my three or four favorite of the year. If you think it looks interesting, try it!

 

[Alixsar]

Okay I now have an idea if Paradise Killer is worth playing and the answer is a resounding HOLY SHIT YES

 

[Fyonn]

heck yeah it is!

 

[Alixsar]

I beat this the other day. The trial at the end was a nice way to wrap everything up, I just wish the game would've let you corner people BEFORE the trial proper. Instead whenever you go to them with proof they're just like "lol no way I did that" and then when you present the same evidence in trial they're like "No!!! How did you catch me?!?!" It's a little awkward, but I guess it's a side effect of the "open" structure of the game and your ability to kinda shape the ending to be whatever you want it to be. It also would've been nice if there would've been some kind of commentary or resolution to the absolutely fucked nature of The Syndicate but it became pretty clear early on that the game was like "Yeah that's just who these people are, you need to accept that they're bad people". Early on someone pointed out that The Syndicate are kidnapping and enslaving people and LD's options are like "Yeah, it's important" and "Yeah it's messed up but we gotta". And it's just like...oh...cool, everyone is garbage. Also the Syndicate lost SIX PEOPLE from the trial in my game and SEVEN from murders before the game even started...the Syndicate is like less than half what it used to be! And from the lore, you learn that they've lost multiple members over the years too. And the game like...never addresses that? Again, due to the open nature of it but still...it's weird.

I was a good little boy and stuck to The Facts™ and ended up dispensing a helluva lot of justice. Anyway, despite everything , it's a really great game! I don't even LIKE adventure games or puzzle games and I ate this shit up. A+, buy it for Switch or PC, it's 20 bucks! Don't be cheap, we live in a pandemic hellworld, enjoy a weird adventure murder mystery neon citypop game

 

[KCar]

I'm playing this right now, and it's such a mix of incredible, confident design and aesthetics and objectively "meh" physical mechanics.

I've spent two hours primarily walking around, finding odds and sods and putting off key conversations. The platforming is hella clunky and the design of this gameplay layer - the collecting - is basically the worst of the N64. It's Bubsy Visits The James Turrell Retrospective. The wit and care that is evident in the writing is entirely absent.

Here's the twist, though - I love it. I'm playing on my phone via steam link while my partner watches TV, and there is something so immensely chill about strolling through a vapourwave graveyard listening to city pop. If I didn't know there was a compelling story waiting to be found I might not be into this experience, but for now I am immensely enjoying the collection of these bafmodads in the world implied by an Outrun track.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

lofi chill anime beats to solve murders to

 

[Cyrael]

I picked this up on sale yesterday and am mostly cataloging my thoughts on Twitter. However, as lost and confused as I am as to what I should be doing, the soundtrack does some amazing work to just keep me going in this fever dream of a game.

 

[Alixsar]

ONE OF US

ONE OF US

 

[Paul le Fou]

Also just grabbed this for the pile!

 

[Pajaro Pete]

i bought it yesterday and intended to play it today but for some reason this game that's 2.5 GB is taking 12 hours to download
but wtv it's cool, i've got a bunch of other stuff to do anyway

 

[Pajaro Pete]

some thoughts:
i've met most everybody except Witness to the End and i haven't gotten around to interrogating Lydia Daybreak yet. Bear-chan and Shinji remain top tier characters.
love the cosmology of the game's world, the elder scrolls wishes.
the platforming is a little finnicky and there are some things where i just accept i will never obtain whatever that item is.
i wish the map were better.

theorizing, which is not me asking for anyone to confirm or deny my theories, just me posting so i'll be able to reference it later when i finish the game:

Spoiler

the doctor seems incredibly sus since his interrogation was mostly him going "i don't know and have no opinion, also let me flirt with you", and also the backdoor to his clinic was busted/he was the one prescribing henry the inhibitors. but then that feels a bit too convenient given this is the first round of interrogations.

it feels like the game also wants yuri to seem sus, but that felt so blatant it had to be a misdirect.

of course, since i'm inside the council building, i've found: Lydia's tire tracks on the room beside repelling gear, and flowers from Yuri's hat inside, so maybe, like, everyone was in on it because they all collectively had a "are we the baddies?" moment? but then i've picked up a couple of bottles of whisky and seen the flash forwards from Perfect 25 which indicate they still abduct Civilians?

 

[Pajaro Pete]

also it's bonkers that the game isn't set to auto-run because imagine trying to traverse paradise with the default walk speed

 

[Mightyblue]

There are two mobility upgrades locked behind Blood Crystal purchased interactables in the game, I would highly recommend you seek them out.

As far as narrative stuff goes, using the facts you gather to forge your own truth is the point; there are several interconnected series of events and actions that would form an easy narrative, but you're not constrained to follow those event chains to get your conclusion. The Syndicate has already mostly moved over to Perfect 25 anyway, so whatever challenges your convictions would produce wouldn't mean the end of it. There are no "true" endings here.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

oh so the footbaths must all do something different than! i got meditation from one, so i should probably go do the rest. i visited the danger zone and it's like, ok, when climbing up some of the apartment building stairs, the music would hit just right was already giving me 90s Shin Megami Tensei Vibes, but that sort of sent it over the edge.

i'm surprise by seemingly how few ghosts there are in the game. i guess i assumed since they talked about it being an open world game in the tagline that there'd be a bit more side questin', and i guess i shouldn't be mad there's not more fetch quests going on, it feels like a slightly undeveloped concept.

every new piece of information about every character:

some more thoughts, which again are mostly for me to check back on:
Crimson is the only character who doesn't seem suspicious at all. Doom Jazz and Carm are also characters who are so unsuspicious that they feel suspicious - it's that thing in bad whodunnit stories where you can tell who the culprit is because the character otherwise has no reason to be in the story.

Witness, Grand Marshall, Lydia, and Sam all seem like they could be in on it together - Lydia and Sam have the skill set to murder a lot of folks, whatever Sam was brewing in the Danger Zone seems to be explosive, which would have destroyed the bars to the prison and the space helmet seems to indicate that Lydia has been to the second seal. Grand Marshall's sword was seemingly used to kill the first seal, and Henry says he remembers seeing a statue of the war goddess but it's only in the military barracks, which only she has access to.

So I'm thinking: Witness sends his text at midnight, which causes Yuri's cell service to black out, giving Lydia and Sam a window of opportunity to go pick up the Grand Marshall and Henry. I guess Doom Jazz could have given him heavier sedatives than usual to produce the "my memory is a blur" effect? Anyway, Sam stays behind the blow the bars up to make it look like Henry escaped, while Lydia and GM stash Henry in the barracks, then go to the council building to do assassinations.

Of course that just leaves motive, and none of the motives presented thus far really seem to be good enough.

 

[Mightyblue]

You can Hang Out with people multiple times, which will get you more information. I forget exactly what the trigger is, it's either spending a small amount of time running around in the game world or talking to x number of other people.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

yeah i've been kind of running a circuit around the island so i can Hang Out whenever i talk to someone.

now if only i could get a relationship increase with shinji....

 

[Pajaro Pete]

well, that's over. some thoughts, featuring massive ending spoilers and whatnot:
can the judge actually proclaim people not guilty, because i got carm convicted for conspiracy on like three pieces of evidence, none of which i had had before the trial started. and if so, i wonder if i can reload and figure out a way to keep lydia and sam alive.

i definitely fucked up and accused crimson acid of killing k.hx, but looking back both at her reaction and the carm conspiracy, it must have been yuri who did it to assist carmelina (it would also make sense that the only two not guilty parties are the ones that lady love dies can bang, i suppose). i also never figured out how to actually explore the barracks, which seemed like a stealth mission at first but then it just seemed like if i landed literally anywhere inside the guards would catch me so.

still need to hunt down one last kiss and see what all that was about since i met her literally once at the beginning of the game and never again.


anyway, cute game. great shinji. there was a lot of collectables in the apartment sections that required platforming skills i do not possess.

 

[Mightyblue]

FP: You can totally do it without incriminating either Daybreak (and you can exile them in the wrap-up conversations on the island to give them their happy ending). There are two simultaneous conspiracies to kill the council, after all.

SP: Assuming you get both mobility upgrades, check the roof of the cursed area enclosure (and then the roof of the barracks).

TP: She's on the hill by the Syndicate mausoleum, and she provides a lot of hints and info for crimes both past and present.

 

[Alixsar]

I really wonder what playing the trial is like if you don't even know about Carmelina's child, let alone found him.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

I really wonder what playing the trial is like if you don't even know about Carmelina's child, let alone found him.

I didn't have official evidence of her child (though I did know about her disappearing for a year 25 years ago, and that's the only reason women in fiction disappear for a year), so it just... doesn't come up at trial, and her conspiracy hangs on Akiko's outburst in court with her motive being that with the old council dead, the new Perfect 25 council would be timid because of the murders and inexperienced and look to her as a leader.

 

[Alixsar]

That's kinda how any evidence works. The game just like...doesn't acknowledge it, and makes the narrative work around the evidence you do have.

I'm more just like...what if you didn't know that spoiler and walked away from the game content with the ending,, and then like 2 years later find out that not only did Carmelina have a now-grown child, but you can find him and talk to him and he confesses to murdering the council. And that's only, like, half of ONE conspiracy in the game. This game rules

 

[Pajaro Pete]

That's kinda how any evidence works. The game just like...doesn't acknowledge it, and makes the narrative work around the evidence you do have.

I'm more just like...what if you didn't know that spoiler and walked away from the game content with the ending,, and then like 2 years later find out that not only did Carmelina have a now-grown child, but you can find him and talk to him and he confesses to murdering the council. And that's only, like, half of ONE conspiracy in the game. This game rules

wait, so is the crime scene different in that case? in any case, that's a lot more thought put into the trial than i expected, although it makes it especially weird how little there is to the post-trial sequence where you can walk around and talk to the survivors. also imo it's maybe not great that with all the focus on collecting evidence to prove your case in court, you're then given free reign to just go murder anyone you couldn't convict. a bit to american for my tastes tbh!

in the post credits i got a special image of Lydia and Sam, and I don't know if that's always there or if it's some relationship values thing (which would mean I was super nice to Sam, I guess, before I shot him because I kept accusing Lydia of stuff)?

 

[Alixsar]

The crime scene is the same AFAIK. There's two conspiracies; Witness/Sam/Lydia planted the demon in the box beforehand and it broke out and was stopped by Monserrat. It's unclear if the demon actually killed anyone. At the same or nearly the same time, Carmelina's son Dainonigate used a system of weird magic doors to enter (that's what the weird wall to the left right before the council chamber is) and kill the council; Akihiko made it look like Henry did it as cover. Dainonigate says that Monserrat shot him too but he lived (for a while, he dies shortly after confessing/revealing all of this), and the scene makes it look like Monserrat killed the demon...again it's not clear who killed who and who was successful. It's up to you to determine if some of this stuff was evidence that was fake and planted, or if both of the conspiracies are real. You could argue that Yuri's flowers being in the chamber meant that he planted the demon to implicate Witness or something and cover for himself/Carmelina/Dainonigate/Akihiko (a bit of a stretch, but still). Basically, pretty much everyone is in on SOMETHING in some way. The only "innocent" ones are Doom Jazz and Crimson, but Crimson was also doing some shady shit with K.Hx. Doom Jazz is hella weird, but he's the only one who seems to have not really done anything outright wrong aside from being a himbo.

Also because of how the game works, pretty much whatever you decide is what happens...there's AFAIK only a few things the judge won't back you up on. That's the whole MAKE YOUR TRUTH concept in action. The game kinda compensates for the evidence you have and what you put forward. I made sure to get absolutely every single thing in the game, so now I feel like I can never replay the game again lol

I got that image too; apparently you get it if REDACTED and REDACTED both die as a result of the trial.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

ok. got back into this to find More Evidence re: things i did not find initially (with helpful hints from mightyblue) some thoughts:

For as difficult as getting in the barracks is, there sure isn't much there. Unless i can get Akiko's blood vial to open all the locked doors to investigate, it seems largely pointless and all i really got out of it was some flavor text about the God of War, which i mostly already knew. Maybe if I'd be more impressed if I hadn't already done the trial and seen how easy it is to get convictions?

I'm kind of happy I didn't find One Last Kiss's thing early on, because I feel like a lot of her tips and advice are a bit... well, easy mode. Like instead of me finding things and putting information together, she's like "go here and do this"? Unfortunately, since I did find her after I'd basically exhausted everyone else's dialogue trees, it's making getting her relationship to max a bit tedious.

Not sure how I feel about Carmelina's spawn. I'd probably have enjoyed it more if it didn't involve Secret Passage Hacks? But pursuing this (+ One Last Kiss) has given me a lot of new facts to consider re: how the Trial will play out.