Paradise Killer

I think whether you like this wonderful game will come down to whether you like the game's style (which is really what merits the comparisons to Danganronpa, as well as some Suda51 games). It might be one of my all-time favourites as far as that goes - it just has an astonishing, and ambitious, amount of charm.
The highlight of this game for me was definitely exploring the vibrant and eccentric map and piecing together everything I could about the world (the world map is quite fleshed out and full of small mysteries). I also loved the retrofuturistic, vaporwave/city pop-inspired visuals and soundtrack, and I was amazed at how alive and real they made the game's setting seem. I couldn't get enough of the game's surreal boldness - aloof hedonism, which is key to selling its flavour of worldbuilding.
A strong sense of place, attention to detail, and exuberant idiosyncrasy make up for the flaws and missing polish noted by others (the platforming can be a bit clunky, there's some faltering in the trial segment, some weird use of voice lines, the story being enjoyable but not deeply suspenseful for mystery veterans). As for the comparisons, it's more like the evidence gathering part of Ace Attorney than the trial part. It is rough sometimes, but it reminds me more of games like VA-11 Hall-A and The World Ends with You (very high praise), which nail the feeling of a place in a particular time across the board.
I really recommend taking a chance on this game if the aesthetic seems at all up your alley, or you're looking for something that looks and feels pretty different.

To get the most out of Paradise Killer, you should first ask yourself a question.
Would you rather:
play a game about solving a mystery, or
play a game about exploring a landscape for items to collect?
Paradise Killer can reward either approach, but pursuing one experience will undermine the other. If you're interested in solving the mystery, searching every inch of the island for clues and collectibles is a laborious brute-force approach that robs you of the opportunity to pursue specific leads and investigate hunches. You can't deduce the most logical place to search for clues and shout "Eureka!" as your hunches pay off if you've already scoured the map for everything that wasn't nailed down in pursuit of 100% collection completion.
On the flip side, the path of justice is a winding one. Following the chain of evidence will send you back and forth as you revisit suspects so that they can corroborate or contradict each others' alibis. The Island is bigger than you might expect, so you'll want to use fast travel to accelerate this process—except that most trips costs money, and money spent on fast travel can't be used to buy secrets, or to buy drinks, or to unlock new fast travel points, or to pray at shrines. It would be a lot more efficient to just search for currency first so you won't lack for money when an opportunity to spend presents itself, but that means you're back to brute-forcing the game.
It's a hard balance to strike.
Other flaws: despite the aesthetic charm of building vaporwave silhouettes out of tiles, the hacking mini-game feels unnecessary and repetitive. Likewise repetitive are the voiced character quips, although I did enjoy whenever it would sync up with the character's dialogue. Speaking of which, dialogue text could use a few more commas; a semi-colon wouldn't go amiss.
None of these issues were sufficient to blunt my recommendation for this game. This is an impressive landscape and an impressive world in which that landscape is situated. If I wanted more out of the trial and the ending, then that is just a testament to how invested I became in this mystery and in these characters. I hope we see more from these creators.

I'll just say it. I am in love with Paradise Killer.
So many elements are done so well, and the whole comes together so beautifully.
Gameplay.
Hard 'gameplay' is somewhat thin on the ground. You won't find thrilling twitch challenges, rewarding statistical management, tricky boss fights, or complex puzzles here. Moment to moment activity consists of traversing the simple first-person environment, collecting 'artifacts' (almost all of which are set dressing that have nothing to do with the case), searching for points of interest, and above all conversing with the suspects. It doesn't sound that great, and if that's all there was, this would be a lackluster adventure title. But that's not all there is.
Setting.
PK takes place on a bizarre, wonderful, horrible science fiction island, populated by a "Syndicate" of immortals whose collective purpose is to construct a flawless paradise and resurrect a dead pantheon of horrific space gods, fueled by the souls of thousands of slaves abducted from the real world. So far, all attempts have been thwarted by demonic corruption, and each failure results in the destruction of the current reality and the building of a new one.
Ridiculous! It's so far out there. Why have such an insane backdrop for a whodunit? The key is in how the setting is delivered, and how it synergizes with the cast of characters. The suspects and the protagonist are all members of the Syndicate, and everything described above is completely normal to them. The game doesn't insult the player's intelligence with the tired old trope of "You have amnesia and must learn the game world from scratch" - exactly the opposite. Although your character (whose name is Lady Love Dies) is a stranger to this particular version of the island, she already knows the history of the whole culture, and converses casually about it throughout the game. There are no "infodumps", no exhausting setting briefings to sit through; you just pick it up as you go along. This is how good science fiction is done.
Characters.
In addition to already knowing the setting, Lady Love Dies is also already on a first-name basis with the cast of characters: just under a dozen suspects, all high ranking Syndicate members with jobs to suit the outlandish situation, with a deft mixture of freakishness and humanity. One is the Architect who designs island realities; another is a bartender. The mix of outrageousness and normalcy even extends to their physical forms: one is a sexy pop idol in a low-cut kimono "blessed" with the head of a goat; another is a man who survived a murder through sheer strength of will, though all his flesh peeled off in the process and he is now a living skeleton; another is a fit-looking guy with a blackberry.
Similarly, conversations veer wildly between the mundane and the sublime as if it's all the same to these people - because it is. A conversation can go from "What's your favorite whisky" to "We just slaughtered 2000 people to channel the psychic energy to the gods" and back again without even shifting gears. The fact that Lady Love Dies is friends with most of these people only further helps the player internalize it all.
Presentation.
The island is beautiful, in a garishly colorful "Florida postcard" kind of way. Again, the mix of normal and crazy is apparent with every step you take in the game world, with power boxes and water pipes next to clusters of tentacle god statues. The environmental graphics themselves come across as cheap, but intentionally so? The general effect is of the crappy graphics overlaid onto old FMV games, but in a charming way, seamlessly blended with beautiful vistas and the dazzlingly spinning stars of the night sky.
Character graphics are, somewhat jarringly, in a different style, with 2D still images laid over the 3D world. The art itself is somewhat inexpert but bursting with ideas. One quickly adapts to all this and it becomes yet another "this is how this world is". As with everything else in the game, each person is highly distinctive and any imperfections in the art soon become bonded with the player's image of the character's personality.
Although the game is not fully voiced, every character does have several audio lines to flesh out your image of them and this further helps establish their identities.
The music of PK was a surprise for me. In a grim world of evil gods, stalking the rain-soaked streets in search of a murderer, why on earth would you soundtrack it with chirpy, upbeat dance synth? The island itself is actually dotted with loudspeakers everywhere - the government blasts this stuff around almost the entire city, 24/7. I found it wildly inappropriate at first; yet, once again, by the end of the game I wouldn't have wanted anything else. This is another instance of unexpected juxtaposition that simply works. I have the soundtrack on my phone and am looking forward to being brought back to this scary, sunny place when commuting.
The song over the end credits, adding melancholy lyrics to a theme I already knew by heart from wandering the island, nearly brought me to tears.
Story.
So how does the mystery itself hold up? You won't be surprised when I say: beautifully. By the time you've criscrossed the island a few times and discovered some of its secrets, the setting will be deep enough under your skin that unpacking what happened, even the weirdest parts of it, will be perfectly within your reach. Putting it all together was a pleasure for me, and the trial at the end of the game, where I was allowed to reveal my findings, was a very satisfying conclusion.
With all that I have gone through over these 15 hours, I wouldn't have changed a thing. This is one of those experiences that carves out a place in your heart and makes you not want it to end - though the length is actually perfect too. They knew the story they wanted to tell and took the right time to tell it without dragging things out and without skipping over anything.
Above all, Paradise Killer fills me with nostalgia, triggering feelings of longing for my real world past through masterful evocation of its own fictional one. The setting taught me so much about itself that, as I played, I already felt nostalgic for earlier islands, the times of innocence I never saw, the old friendships with the whole cast; and now that it is over I'm nostalgic for Island Sequence 24 and the adventure I had there. I'll miss the living and the dead, even those I never met; I'll miss the help of the trusty Starlight computer sidekick; and I'll miss myself as Lady Love Dies. She does some damn good detective work.

This game is tremendous and you are doing yourself a disservice not trying this out. While it is very inspired by Suda51's classics when it comes to style, the game is more akin to the masterpiece that was Outer Wilds than anything else, and this is a really good thing.
Paradise Killer thrusts you in an island that was on the cusp of erasure in order to transfer to Perfect 25, the final island after 24 failed attempts by a religious council to create paradise. However, the entire council was murdered on the night of the transfer. You play as Lady Love Dies, a previous investigator in exile, who has to solve this unprecedented situation.
Armed with your wits and a handy portable computer, you are free to explore the island however you want to. It is an open world where you have to talk to different suspects and explore every nook and cranny in order to find pieces of evidence that will lead you to the truth.
Just like Outer Wilds, open world doesn't mean that the experience isn't guided. It has a comprehensive list of leads that you have accumulated and will always make sure that you are exploring with the knowledge of what you have to do instead of just wandering around aimlessly. It isn't a game about searching some random piece of evidence snuck in a corner of the map at all, so rest assured that you will always have a lot of fun playing through this game.
What really strikes me as special is how incredible and well-realized the universe is. The lore is tremendous and fascinating, it's a story about dead gods, immortal religious zealots who all have something to hide and a ton of colorful characters with hidden allegieances. You are not just solving a puzzle, you are solving a fascinating one. The mystery itself is so interesting that you investigate because you want to, not just because you have to.
The music is also above and beyond anything I have heard this year. It has elements of city pop, future funk, and vaporwave and manage to come together as an extremely tight body of work that use and reuses its themes to great effect. Let's just say I thought the soundtrack was so good that I bought it on bandcamp.
The game is also extremely beautiful. The art direction is stellar, and full of inspired architecture showing the vanity of the syndicate. Religious icons are present everywhere in stylish ways. Some of the later areas are jaw-droppingly beautiful. A delight.
Performance was super smooth on my aging PC (GTX 970, i5 6500) and I had zero bugs or crashes over 20 hours of gameplay. Everything was smooth from beginning to end. Not only that, but the game also offers a lot of accessibility options such as a font for dyslexia and color options for color-blindedness. Everything was made sure that everyone can enjoy this game to its liking.
As a fan of Suda51, I would love to say it is inspired by Flower Sun and Rain, Killer7 and The Silver Case, and while the inspiration is clear, what they have accomplished is special and unique. It is its own thing and I respect it as such. I had so much fun playing through this game that I didn't want it to end.
I simply loved everything about it, and I urge everyone who is reading this review to take the time to try out. Paradise Killer has a lot of style, yes, but it also has the substance to match it. For me, this game was as much of a stellar surprise than Outer Wilds was, and once again proved that open world mystery games can be some of the most fascinating and immersive experience you can find out there.
Should you play this game? A resounding yes. It is my game of the year without the shadow of a doubt. They have made something special and I can't wait to see other people experience the same joy I felt playing it.

I'm about to tell you a bunch of bad stuff about this game. So why did I choose to thumbs-up recommend it? In short, because I had fun playing it, and Steam reviews are a binary yes/no. But I would have wanted to know some of the negatives I'm about to talk about before buying it.
1. The biggest negative is that I kind of feel misled by this being called a "detective game."
In this game, if you:
a) find everything on the island (very easy to do given that you have a display that shows you where to find stuff), and
b) exhaust every dialog option
Then you will just know the answer to the mystery. That might sound like a weird thing to say, but I found it very unsatisfying that after I'd found everything and talked to everyone -- neither of which presents any real challenge other than taking time -- you just know the answers when you go to trial. I wanted a little more mystery to persist. I wanted to have to make educated guesses that were still merely guesses. I wanted to have a lingering fear of accusing the wrong person. There was none of that; by the end, everything is clear cut.
Because of this, I'd say Paradise Killer is less of a detective game and more of an open-world visual novel.
2. Why is moving around so hard? You should be able to walk/run much more quickly. You shouldn't have to jump over EVERY. MINOR. BUMP. Fast travel should be free and easy. And if not free, it should at least have had a separate economy or something where you had context with regard to how much you can/should spend on fast travel. I saved all of my blood crystals for purchasing foot-bath abilities, temples, Crimson Acid secrets, and drinks, since I didn't know how many blood crystals there were in the world, and thus I didn't know whether every time I fast travelled I was blocking myself from buying something important. So for the vast majority of the game -- really until the final act -- I didn't fast travel, but rather took the excruciating time to "sprint" between the places I wanted to go.
(For those wondering, after buying everything in the game, I had a bit more than 50 blood crystals left over that I could use for fast travel, so it seems safe to say you can use about 50 crystals to fast travel throughout the game without blocking yourself from important purchases.)
3. This place is so ... EMPTY. Yes, I know that it's accounted for in the story, but I can't escape the fact that I just feel very alone on this island. It made the fact that the majority of the game was walking around finding things very boring. And I couldn't help but have a lingering suspicion that the story's explanation for why it was so empty was written merely to justify the emptiness rather than the island being empty because the story demanded it.
4. The random character voice-acting interjections were annoying. Sometimes during text-based dialog the character speaking will actually speak which is usually a cool addition. And in some cases here, it was welcome -- when what the character was saying was actually what the text said. But often -- more often than not? -- the spoken words were not what was written, they were just repetitive interjections that were semi-related -- often very tenuously -- to what the written words said. That just made it harder to read what was written (as they were saying unrelated things), and because there was so little recorded dialog, it got repetitive very quickly.
5. The trial was ... confusing. I knew the "right" answers to everything, but the way the trial was set up made it hard to actually convey that. I ended up having to reload the game because I made an accusation that was technically correct but wasn't what they were looking for. The wording and the clarity in what they were actually asking for was just very confusing. For instance, there's the case of "Who got Henry possessed?" You can only choose one person. Is it Henry, who literally got himself possessed and actively sought out the forbidden knowledge? Is it Yuri because he provided Henry the books? Or was it Carmelina, since she's the one who directed Yuri to do it? I chose Carmelina, since it was her plot -- and they deemed that incorrect. Also, there are two conspiracies going on, but it never explains to you that you can only accuse one person for each crime, even if the crime was committed two different times by two different people. So that just felt weird, and I didn't understand what I was supposed to do. And then out of nowhere at the end you find out that Carmelina and Witness are going to be charged with the entire conspiracy ... that wasn't announced, so I had spent the entire time trying to figure out how to convict either of them with the murder when neither of them were the actual people who directly committed the crimes. It was just a confusing mess.
Despite all of the above, I thought the aesthetic was cool, I thought the story itself was excellent, I thought the character art was gorgeous, and I had a fun time playing. I just wish the above issues were resolved to have made the game perfect.

Phoenix Wright as directed by David Lynch.
That's a big recommend, by the way.

It’s easy to describe a game as “dripping in style.”
Paradise Killer, the debut detective title from Kaizen Game Works, has – quite clearly – been marinating in it.
From the offset, Kaizen Game Work’s art direction radiates absolutely gorgeous purple-blue-pink hues and glinting golden tones, set within a vaporwave cityscape of dreamlike, fantastical appeal. Spending time in its world, the eponymous Paradise Island #24, is quite sincerely a dream come true.
This impression is apparent before you’ve even launched a new game. Paradise Killer’s menu is streamlined yet immediately attractive, showcasing your control scheme front and centre alongside a plethora of well-thought-out accessibility options. These permit you to experience the games’ narrative with a forceful, yet easily-delivered punch. Text is easily readable as colours simulate a well-contrasted 90’s RGB aesthetic, and the ultra-slick combination of modernist and retro UI decisions make every second of its runtime a visual feast, with second helpings of dessert. You get the impression this developer could create the most sought-after Winamp themes available.
To squeeze the inventive plotline into simple terms – the council of your Paradise island has been murdered, and it’s up to you, Lady Love Dies – investigation freak – to figure out what happened and who is responsible.
Paradise Killer always runs the risk of being too wacky, too intense, too overbearingly complex to the point where figuring out the case feels secondary. Actually orienting yourself in this world and deducing its norms is perhaps a larger ask than following the investigation here. It takes time to get your bearings.
While Paradise Killer took me about 15 hours to come to a pleasing conclusion, I never felt fully versed in its lore and exposition. I think that’s intentional and helps the formal narrative drip with novelty. However, some might have trouble engaging with a deeply layered case when the norms of an society and its corresponding social structure aren’t apparent from the offset. This shows Kaizen Game Works are willing to take risks, and that ultimately justifies respect.
If I had one recommendation to make, it would be to read up on your case files at least five or six times over the course of the game. There’s plenty of context to absorb here, context that regularly redefines itself as you add more information to your working timeline. You can get forgetful if you’re not paying attention, and it’s easy to feel misled.
Fortunately, Paradise Killer’s Island 24 is here to explore in its full depth. Its environment seems disjointed, wacky and quite irrational for the first few hours of your playtime, but you’ll soon come to know its deceptively small layout and bountiful, little secrets to gather, of varying consequence to the main plot.
The level design here is fantastic. Its verticality always enables you to find new items in amazingly well-hidden spots, including case-critical information and ‘blood crystals,’ which are used to unlock save points, fast travel, and pay for additional secrets from the right vendor. Furthermore, it’s possible to access small asides in the form of vignettes, taking the form of small, pithy conversations between two characters at the ‘Way of Blood Bar.’ I came to very much enjoy these little narrative interludes as they provided a comforting break from the insanity of the main plot.
Exploring this island takes time, but you can enable an auto-sprint option and use your blood crystals to unlock movement abilities, such as a double jump and air-dash. Before long you’ll be zip-zapping around Paradise with confidence.
It’s not easy for one distinct case to keep your interest for fifteen hours, but in Paradise Killer, the sheer audacity of how much there is to inform the narrative is impressive. This has to be a landmark shift in how we think of investigative processes in video games, and I very much hope they iterate on this formula. That’s a huge accomplishment for any developer to pursue, let alone achieve. Don’t forget – this is the studio’s debut game.
I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to mention Paradise Killer’s divine soundtrack. Every track here is an absolute delight, merging vaporwave, synthwave, disco-jazz fusion and more. It regularly defies explicit definition but is continually inspiring, peaceful yet energizing, always nourishing. It permeates your time on the island with care. It hangs over your surroundings with diegetic and non-diegetic presence in a manner that grants you concrete time and place, even in these ephemeral surroundings.
The main beauty and draw of this game is in taking all of the information you have uncovered and presenting it at court in a manner entirely of your own making. You decide which evidence is relevant. You point the finger and try to convince the islands AI, Judge, of your narrative. You decide if you have enough circumstantial, testimonial and demonstrative evidence to condemn your friends. The lines of justice are blurred, and it seems that many outcomes are possible and pliable.
For this reason, I believe Paradise Killer is more than worth the price of admission. Some may not appreciate its verbosity and anime-adjacent vaporwave aesthetic. You could feel overwhelmed by the player agency and lack of concrete, immediate truths being delivered to you on a synthetic, crystal platter. I did at first. But then I really, really didn’t.
Paradise Killer is a game that upends your expectations and demurely reveals itself to you in a manner that continually questions how you can discern truth, what your justifications for it are, and if you are responsible enough to deal with the consequences. Justice isn’t always so pretty.
For that reason, Kaizen Game Work’s first title is more than memorable. Until we move unto the next island, at least.