Yeah, it seems like FMV games are back in full force. From titles that play more like Visual Novels, to adventure games and even attempts at stealth, there’ve been plenty of very different approaches to trying to mix live action segments with gameplay. And overall, the results are so much better than what we had during the boom of FMV games in the early to mid 90s. The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story, an FMV game from (surprisingly) Square Enix, is trying to mix the live action with a detective game and the results are pretty great, if uneven.
This title is a new project from the writer of the cult FMV visual novel classic 428: Shibuya Scramble that I myself also enjoyed, despite it having a lot of gameplay flaws. And although this title isn’t attempting to tell several different stories in completely different styles and tone this time around, it’s still quite an ambitious tale. This time, the game follows several different but connected stories involving a particular crime across several time periods from the past 100 years of Japan history. It also doesn’t get as wacky or crazy as 428 did at times, but also manages to make the most unexpected moments touching almost effortlessly.
And it plays nothing like 428, which was a VN mechanically. This time around, the title follows a particular formula for every chapter (with one big exception). First, you’d have a long sequence of events played as movie. Occasionally you’d get choices (most of them don’t affect much) and you will also see important clues pop up, at which point you’d need to press a button to “remember” it. But otherwise, it’s mostly an uninterrupted film which introduces the characters, the situations, then the crime and then the investigation of the crime. Once that whole thing is done, you’re transferred into a deduction space (as a Sherlock Holmes developer I can’t help but call it “Mind Palace”, because it’s the same idea). In that deduction space you see a “road” built out of hexagons that are empty, and each major question has several slots around it that you can fill in with the clues. Some clues are always there, and some you have to remember manually, as I’ve mentioned above.
Cute little touch that simplifies this process is the fact that each of the hexagonal pieces has a pattern on it, so apart from reading the text of the clue and how it corresponds to the question, you can also look at the patterns and see which ones match. Although, this quality of life thing is so useful, that it kinda makes reading clues almost pointless at this step, as checking the pattern is faster. Either way, each clue combined with the question gives you a hypothesis – a potential answer to the question. And once you’ve given at least one necessary answer to each of the necessary questions, you can say “I’m done” and move on, or fill in every single slot and form every possible hypothesis. Some clues are extra too, so usually you have leftovers.
After this part there’s a confusing section where you can confirm your conclusions with your partner and then just move on (this genuinely confused me because it felt like some important check, but no – in reality it’s just a trial run that’s optional). Then the game goes back to the FMVs, where in typical detective story fashion the main characters dramatically explain what happened. Except at certain points the game pauses to give you the choice between the different hypothesis that you’ve formed or ask a question that is answered with several always available options, so you need to understand the situation yourself to make the correct choice. You can fail and the game will let you retry, which is good because some of the answers are, frankly, a bit of a stretch. But in general, the game is pretty good at being clear enough with its mysteries.
I have to praise it – it is tough to make this deduction process interesting, where you have to balance the possibility that the players find the answers too obvious, with the possibility that even after you basically spell out the answer the players are still in the dark. The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story does a very good job at evoking the feeling of having a lot of questions and some answers when you start the deduction space, sorting things out and forming a pretty confident conclusion by the end of the deduction space and being very confident during the dramatic revelation. Thus, it really is fun to follow the investigation along at every step. Plus, there’s one chapter that goes in a very different direction and while it’s not fantastic at what it tries to do, it’s very unexpected and quite fun too.
There are some moments where the game is a bit weak. Some parts have the acting feeling a bit cheap, then in other scenes it’s incredibly well delivered. The story, while very interesting, does have a few moments where you feel like they didn’t really need to go there or at least not like this. And some of the detective bits can be weaker than the others.
Nonetheless, it’s a very good game if you’re in the mood for a mystery/detective game and don’t mind the FMV-ness of it. It’s not as wild as 428: Shibuya Scramble, of course, but at least it’s far more consistent and focused and brings a far more enjoyable gameplay experience. All while still managing to be a very touching story.