Process of Elimination is NIS America’s take on a classic, established formula. The murder mystery genre is teeming with a few titles now after Spike Chunsoft’s success with the Danganronpa series. Does Process of Elimination compare favourably to the more well-known franchise in its genre though? The answer to that largely depends on the type of game you’re looking for.
The Quartering Duke
In Process of Elimination, players will take on the role of the “Incompetent” detective Wato Hojo. Detective Wato is one of fourteen detectives that have been sucked into solving the case of the “Quartering Duke”. The Quartering Duke is a murderer that has a kill count of over 100 so far. Nobody knows who he is or what his motives are but it’s up to you and the Detective Alliance to crack the case and hunt down the Quartering Duke.
After an extremely gripping opening sequence where a murder takes place with the Quartering Duke front and centre, the story shifts over to Wato. Our protagonist is knocked unconscious and finds himself awake on a strange, remote island. This is where the tale really kicks off and players will get to know the other detectives involved with the case.
The Quartering Duke attacks the Detective Alliance’s base on the remote island and strands them all there. Players will have to solve numerous puzzles by piecing together clues and unravelling the mystery bit and bit. Without spoiling too much of the story, one of the detectives is actually the Quartering Duke and it’s up to you to find out which one it is.
Visual Novel-esque
As with most Japanese games in the horror mystery puzzle-solving genre, players will have to wade through a lot of text and dialogue in order to piece together clues which lead to the eventual conclusion. Yes, it’s formulaic but it works and Process of Elimination does a great job of onboarding players into its story. Unfortunately, though, the game does tend to be a bit slow-paced and only really picks up around the halfway point.
Process of Elimination is perfectly suited for the Nintendo Switch since you can play it in bite-sized chunks at a time. This really helps with the game’s pacing since you can get through a particular segment and then simply put it down to resume later. The game is quite lengthy if you play through it at a glacial pace reading all the text available and searching for clues. In its entirety, Process of Elimination should take you around 25 hours to get through but might be a bit longer depending on your own play style. If you’re skipping through text and conversations, you’ll be doing yourself a disservice since much of the game’s writing is really enjoyable even though it is filled with anime media tropes.
Isometric Investigation
The gameplay of Process of Elimination involves a lot of reading combined with moving your detective around the grid map and investigating. You’ll have to take into account each detective’s specific ability scores and use these when investigating and analysing clues. Mess up though and you’ll end up dying and then it’s game over. There’s also a rather vexing time limit involved so you can feel a bit rushed at times, especially if you’ve entered an area with a “Dead Herring” trap or you’ve made a mistake with your movement.
As you move, analyse, assist and infer with your detectives, you’ll be piecing together the story with clues that are talked about in the dialogue on screen. You’ll also get to know the detectives and their respective personalities really do shine through via the visual-novel dialogue. This is great and the fact that the Japanese voice-acting cast did a good job here really helps elevate this even further. Unfortunately, there isn’t an English dub here. The game’s soundtrack is quite good throughout too and never gets annoying.
Graphically, Process of Elimination has some really great visuals. The character designs are visually appealing and the isometric grid view sprites are cute. The game’s user interface is also very user-friendly and everything that you need to progress further in the game is generally available to you quite easily. The Detective Roster and Lexicon in particular features a lot of additional information that you can sift through which is quite intriguing.
Final Verdict
Process of Elimination is a solid horror mystery puzzle-solving detective game. The game’s story and pacing are more suited for on-the-go gameplay with the Nintendo Switch so if you pick up the PS4 version, you may want to limit your gaming sessions a bit so as to not be overwhelmed by a tonne of text and dialogue to get through. If you play the game in bite-sized chunks while trying to solve the mystery of the Quartering Duke, you’ll most likely have a blast. The game isn’t at the same level as Danganronpa or the Zero Escape Trilogy but it sure does deliver an enjoyable enough experience regardless. NIS America has dipped into the detective mystery genre and hopefully, we’ll see a future title which expands upon these ideas further. Give Process of Elimination a try if you’re a fan of the genre, chances are you will enjoy it quite a bit. Just do be warned that some of the content is quite dark and disturbing since it revolves around a psychopathic serial killer.
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
Reviewed on Nintendo Switch
Grab your copy here https://nisamerica.com/process-of-elimination/
Code passed to us by the publisher.
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