At first Visual Novels were somewhat of an oddity in the Western gaming culture. While they offer choices that can change the out come of the story much like point and click adventure games, VNs are only limited to that and really don’t offer much interaction. However over the past decade or so, VNs have been quickly gaining attention from Western gamers thanks to publishers like NISA, Idea Factory International, Aksys Games, and XSEED/Marvelous. UK publisher PQube can be added to this list as they are publishing Kadokawa Games’ latest release, Root Letter next month in North America.
You play as an investigator who is working on a case of a missing pen pal friend, Fumino Aya, 15 years after she allegedly murdered someone and disappeared. What’s interesting about the game is that the story is told through old letters that she wrote to you during high school. Between the letters and your own investigation, you have to find out what happened 15 years ago. Root Letter boasts the following features:
• An intense murder mystery set in a gorgeous, real-word, rural Japanese setting
• Stunning Visual Novel artwork from the renowned artist Minoboshi Taro.
• Increased gameplay elements – search for clues, present evidence and explore environments.
• Travel freely around Shimane, visiting real world locations and interviewing suspects.
• Interrogation mode allows you to present evidence to characters and catch them out in lies.
• Unravel the truth from your pen friend’s letters – was she telling the truth, was she even real?
• Make difficult choices as you straddle an investigation spanning 15 years.
• Five different endings with wildly different routes, for a huge level of replayability.
• Incredible Soundtrack from composer Takashi Nitta and lead voice actor role for Noriko Hidaka (Ranma)
I’m not really sure how North American gamers will take to Root Letter due to how heavily Japanese it is, but I hope they give it a chance when it releases on November 1. It seems like a really interesting story to dive into.
