An Imperfect Visual Novel Masterpiece: A Mystery Lover Review

By Manuel

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch

Mystery Lover is a Chinese visual novel that originally released on Steam back on Halloween 2020. While the Steam version remains a Chinese-language only release, it recently released on the Nintendo Switch exactly three years later with a full English translation. It's a visual novel that features a mystery club investigating an urban myth regarding a murder involving a popular VTuber. The surprisingly deep story then explores the relationship between the characters, and in particular the main character and his girlfriend, Persephone. It's quite the game to describe in a few sentences, so if you want to know more you're going to have to read on to the full review!

Reed is your average student, with average skills, and average looks. He's a student at Apple Lake High, and is part of the "Mysteria Club" alongside his best friend Charles and his self-imposed "sister" Layna. The trio decide to follow up on an urban myth that involves a murder and the popular VTuber Yumeno Hitomi. It seems Layna has come across some pictures that might prove the case to actually be real, and Reed sets off to investigate. He isn't alone though, as his girlfriend Persephone joins him and gets herself entangled into the entire affair. Actually, it turns out that Persephone often helps out Reed's activities in the Mysteria Club, even though none of the other members have ever met her. While the investigation into the VTuber Incident does bear some further leads, they all turn out to be rather inconclusive so the story shifts back to Reed and his friends as they are preparing for their finals. Following these tests the VTuber Incident, and Reed's friends' desire to finally meet Persephone, come to a head in a way that you least expect. It truly seems that the VTuber Incident might be real, but this revelation also comes with several sharp twists. It's here that the story shifts from a standard romance-story-meets-mystery-drama, and begins to enter psychological thriller territory when it turns out that Persephone isn't exactly all that she seems to be. Also, evidence in VTuber Incident keeps coming back up, and Hitomi's livestreams start to take on a more sinister bend. Where this all ends up going actually involves yet further twists and turns, but let's not go too deep into spoilers here. This is a review after all.

I wish I could've played like this...

Things start out crazy actually.

Before we come back around to the story, let’s talk a bit about the gameplay. Mystery Lover is a visual novel and that means you're going to be doing a lot of reading. While most visual novels just have screens of pictures and text, Mystery Lover changes it up by adding in livestream segments complete with chat, and cell phone conversations between Reed and the main cast. The other mainstay of visual novels are the branching paths that come from making decisions in dialogue options. Mystery Lover of course has these, but they all take place within the chats on your phone. Speaking of your phone, it's actually an interesting tool that you can bring up at any time to revisit past texts, previously viewed Hitomi livestreams, or even see "Tips" which help explain some of the lingo, slang, and references found in the game. The cell phone mechanic kind of threw me for a loop as I was not expecting my answers to affect the gameplay the way it did. It reminded me of the cell phone screens found in Tokyo Mirage Sessions, but a lot more low-key. The choices you make while texting might seem rather inconsequential, but they do affect the ending you get. So be careful what you say, or don't say, depending on what ending you are hoping to get. That pretty much sums up all the gameplay bits here, but before we move on I want to mention that I personally found the cell phone text screen too small to read in Handheld Mode. I actually had to find my dock to play it on my TV to be able to properly read these sections. And seeing as there are a lot of them, I pretty much had to change the way I played my Switch. This wouldn't be the only time I had to go beyond simply playing the game to get through it, but we'll get to those parts soon.

Hitomi's streams revolve around urban legends.

Yumeno Hitomi is Yumeno Hitomi.

Mystery Lover is separated into chapters, and the first few serve mainly to set-up what comes in the second half, with the Prologue actually detailing the VTuber Incident from a first-person perspective. From there on the chapters vary from investigative sections to slice-of-life romance or friend interactions. It's actually quite a bit jarring to go from those mystery-centric sections to romantic interludes between Reed and Persephone, but it somehow just works. The game also makes heavy use of flashbacks, so you have to be aware of the dates whenever the scene changes. It's best to pay close attention to everything going on though, as there are hints early on that things aren't quite what they appear. These hints subtle enough that they'll most likely lull you into complacency, but going back on a second playthrough is really eye-opening. Since the first half of the game takes things somewhat light-hearted, even when things do get grim, it takes you by surprise when things shift starting at Chapter 10. I'm willing to bet that few players will be able to predict what goes on from then, and it goes to some really odd places. From there on it rarely goes back to the carefree nature found in the beginning, but the story is no less compelling comparatively. I want to compare this other genre-shifting visual novels like School Days or Doki Doki Literature Club, but it's really quite different from either of those. That said, I guess that's still the easiest comparison to make regarding how out of left field some of the plot twists are. All in all, the story really drove me to keep playing in spite of some of the big negatives I'm going to discuss starting now...

If only this romance was real...

The Mysteria Club gets a real mystery...

I have to address the elephant in the room when it comes to Mystery Lover, and that's the translation. First off, I bet that a lot of players won't even find the English language option as the opens in Chinese by default. You actually have to navigate to the bottom of the title screen to change the language, something that I missed my first time through. Even with it on there are a lot of oddities when it comes to translation that I simply can't understand. There's the normal grammatical errors and typos, but there's a lot more to it than that. The translation seems to be done by someone fluent in English, but not necessarily American or Western English. There's a lot of errors in the text for sure, but it almost feels... unique in a way where it's more due to simple misunderstandings as opposed to a bad machine translation. A weird point about the localization is that some real world references are removed in game (like "Bad Kitty" for "Hello Kitty", or "NEOGAE" for "NEOGAF" for example) but they're left completely unhidden in the Tips section on your phone. Also, there's a lot of English-sounding slang terms in Chinese that are left as is. I'm sure this is due to the translators assuming that by being in English already, that means it's universal, but slang is slang and there are a lot of sections that are localized in a strange way due to this. Entire scenes are marred by the bad translations, and I don't know if they can all be fixed with a simple patch. This game pretty much needs a near entire re-write to be truly readable by those not willing to re-translate in their heads. It's just all over the place. Even simple things like line spacing and punctuation are inconsistent. That said, there is still enough here to definitely get by, and I was able to get through most sections only having to stop and sort things out a few times. Obviously this is probably a me thing, so keep that in mind if near constant translation issues are a no-go for you.

Layna is quite the character by the way.

Why haven't they met her yet?

The story of Mystery Lover really shines through in spite of the translation errors. It's so good that I played through most of it in a single night once things started moving. It's feels a bit cliché to say that it really does have a slow start, and takes a while to pick up, but it's true. Once you've met everyone, and have gotten to know Persephone and the Mysteria Club, everything starts to flow. While some of the unique elements the game tries to bring to the table probably don't work as the developer intended, the story definitely pulls the rest through the occasional rough patch. It's truly mind-blowing where the story goes, and while it seems rather horror-centric at points, the way it wraps up is even more of a shock than what came before. It's rare that a game can pull off a well-written narrative and genre shift, and Mystery Lover manages to do it several times within a pretty concise experience. While I obviously can't rate this game as high as I would like due to problems I've mentioned, and those I haven't even touched on yet, I must say that this is one of the better visual novels I've played in a while, and maybe that Halloween release wasn't exactly a coincidence.

Graphics are one of the strongest elements in Mystery Lover, but there's a few things that keep them from being perfect. First off I felt that some of the character designs seemed a bit off. Layna looks like she was designed in a completely different art style than Persephone, and obviously Yumeno Hitomi is animated using Live 2D and never gets a flat image like the other characters. Speaking of Yumeno Hitomi, she really stands out due to the fact that she actually moves. The problem is that sometimes those movements clip and repeat in a way that looks extremely glitchy. Imagine the visual version of a record skipping and you'll probably understand what I mean. I'm not sure what causes this, but I'm fairly certain that it's not meant to happen as it often occurs during regular livestream moments. There's also long stretches of the game where there is nothing to see but location backgrounds, and these backgrounds are often repeated. This is obviously because Reed spends much of the game alone, but the lack of enticing visuals can make some of the internal monologue sections a bit boring. And that's the biggest factor actually, barring some of the more mystery/horror scenes, everything can often feel rather bland. Except for Persephone, who seems to have had the most effort put into design-wise. She is central to everything going on, but it still feels unfortunate that the other characters apparently got the short end of the stick. Anyhow, I don't want to make it sound like I don't like the visuals; they're great. My gripe is that they feel rather rushed, and not as good as they could've been.

This is it, this is the question.

Who even is Persephone?

Another strong aspect of Mystery Lover is the sound, and it's for a rather odd reason. Once again I'm not going to give away the plot too much, but it really goes places. It's slice-of-life, it's romance, it's a mystery story, and it's a psychological thriller. One of the things that helps mesh together these seemingly conflicting story elements is the music. The music skillfully weaves in and out of all the scenes, and even switch sounds and genres as needed. I was impressed by how the music helped shift the emotion, especially since the dialogue itself could be a little hit or because of the wonky translation. It's happy and cheerful when it needs to be, it's spooky when the scene demands, and it's intense when things start to unravel. It's just perfect. There's even a music player too you can check out in the options, and I spent a lot of time there listening to music in-between playing. Music aside, the game is also fully voice acted, but in Chinese. I wasn't expecting a dub, but hearing a game voiced in Chinese might be a different experience for players used to either English or Japanese. The only reason I'd probably want a dub of this game is that it would probably force a better translation, but I guess that might be asking too much for a release of this size. That aside, I have to say that all the voice actors do a great job, and all the voices match their respective roles. I honestly have nothing to complain about when it comes to sound, so let's move on.

There are some light-hearted moments.

Lots of boob talk.

I didn't think I'd have to talk about controls in a game like Mystery Lover, but there are some surprising issues. You'll notice that most of my screenshots have a HUD display that appears to outline buttons for backlog, quick saving, quick loading, etc. Well, none of those button prompts actually work. I'm not sure if they're a holdover from the Steam release and are meant to be used with a mouse or keyboard, but they do nothing here I could figure out. If you press the "+" you see the actual Switch controls, and it begs the question as to why that overlay was left as is. You can actually remove the HUD overlay, but it's on by default so I didn't bother. And before you ask, there is no touch screen support so those aren't meant to be touch buttons. It's also hard to see what you're selecting within menus as the highlighting is very faint. Once again everything seems optimized for a desktop setup. I'd go on a bit regarding controls, like how the backlog button is also the button that stops the current piece of dialogue, but most of it is just stuff you'll eventually get used to. It's by no means a game breaker, but it adds another layer of the general wonky presentation that keep this game from perfection.

What's the deal with the uniform?

Is the VTuber Incident real?

Mystery Lover is your typical visual novel that has multiple endings, and lots of CGs and stuff to unlock. The clunky controls do make it a bit hard to go back to the game to get new/alternate endings, but dialogue skip options are there and there is a decent amount of game to experience. Depending on reading speed, and if you're interested in seeing everything the game has to offer, you can complete it in about 10 hours. This is actually a decent amount of content for a game of this genre, and it's just the right length for the story it seeks to tell. Also, seeing as it’s priced at a very reasonable $9.99, you really do get a lot of bang for your buck here. I have yet to fully replay the game, but I think it'd be an interesting experience now that I know the answers to many of the game's mysteries. What I'm trying to say is that there's a lot of replayability here, even if you've already hit that True Ending, so it's worth picking up even if you've missed the launch discount that just ended at the time of this writing.

What is a dream anyway?

If only it were that simple...

I think I've made it somewhat obvious that I recommend Mystery Lover despite all of its flaws. It's a must play for fans of visual novels, mystery stories, or those just looking for a unique gaming experience. There are a lot of issues here regarding translation, controls, and perhaps even performance, but I can't help but look beyond all that and see the amazing story underneath it all. Hopefully some of the more glaring issues can be fixed in a future patch, and perhaps the English language option will even be added to the Steam release so the game can reach even more players. Either way, pick this one up now on the Switch and maybe tell me what you thought about it in the comments as I really want to discuss it with others. This game really leaves you thinking, and I hope that we see more from this developers soon. Until then, be sure to catch Yumeno Hitomi's next live!

Check Out Mystery Lover on The Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/mystery-lover-switch/

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​Story: B+
Gameplay: B-
Graphics: A
Music/Sound: A+
Value: A+

Overall: A-

Pros:
+ A unique visual novel that incorporates VTubers, mystery, romance, and more within a deep story.
+ The cell phone and livestream mechanics are very unique, as is the "Tips" system that helps ground the story in reality.
+ Manages to weave through many genre and narrative shifts effortlessly.
+ Probably the best soundtrack I've ever heard in a visual novel.
+ Most of the art is great, and the VTuber Yumeno Hitomi is well-animated.
+ At the price of $9.99, the game is a steal.

+/- Nothing in this game turns out quite the way you think it will.

Cons:
- The translation is one of worst I've seen in a full-release game and often takes a bit of self-interpretation to figure out.
- There are long stretches of the game where the only visuals are the often repeated location backgrounds.
- Control issues in a visual novel are pretty unheard of, but Mystery Lover manages to have a few of them.
- Since the controls are a bit wonky, it can be hard to get to all the game's various endings.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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Man, I never thought a Chinese visual novel would mention Anime Matsuri...

#MysteryLover