The Sekimeiya: Spun Glass

Do you like mysteries? Actually, no, that's not the appropriate question to ask. Do you love mysteries? Think carefully about your answer. I'm not asking if you think you love mysteries. I'm asking if you truly, with your heart and soul, love mysteries, to the exclusion and detriment of everything else. Because The Sekimeiya seems like it was made for somebody who does.

On paper, The Sekimeiya is very close to how I likely would have described my ideal mystery game before playing The Sekimeiya. There is an endless deluge of mysteries, plenty of content, an incredibly tight plot, and unique ideas taken to their logical extreme. Yet in reality the experience is difficult to unabashedly enjoy. There are a lot of things that The Sekimeiya does right and that it does great, and there are no immediately obvious technical faults, so exactly what went wrong?

Let's take a trip into the labyrinth to explore that question.

Before proceeding, I want to briefly discuss the spoilers that will be in this post. If you've already played the game or don't care about spoilers, feel free to skip this paragraph and the next. All my reviews on this blog are spoiler-free unless noted otherwise. But what constitutes a spoiler? The metric I use is any piece of information which, had I known before playing, would have negatively impacted my experience of the work. This is an inherently subjective heuristic and won't catch everything for everyone every time, but I try my best. The other alternatives are to fully scrub my posts of anything that could possibly be construed as a spoiler (which would make it difficult if not impossible to substantively discuss the works) or to simply go all-out on spoilers (which would limit my already tiny readership, and I want my posts to be able to serve as a guide for someone who has not experienced the subject to decide if they should). I both think and hope that my spoiler policy properly functions most of the time, and ensures that any "spoilers" that still make it through aren't that bad.

So now we get to the issue of spoilers in this post. In my opinion, this post is "spoiler-free" by my own definition. However, I think this post is much, much closer to the line than my typical review. The issue, in short, is that there is a major plot element inextricably tied to the core of the game that I am not willing to explicitly discuss due to my spoiler policy—and so I discuss it vaguely, and yet I fear that somebody could construe even this as a spoiler. I also discuss the overall game structure, including the final chapter; as I explained, I do not believe this structural information would adversely impact someone's experience with the game, but the fact remains that it touches upon the final segments of the game. In other words, I think this post is spoiler-free—and I've put in a lot of effort to try to substantively discuss the game while avoiding what I consider spoilers—but I think it's a bit of a closer call than usual, so I didn't want to simply hop in as I usually do.

With that out of the way, let's continue. Hopefully you're still with me.

The game begins with Atsuki, our protagonist, visiting a gemstone museum with his friend Shiroya to witness the unveiling of a dazzling new discovery known as the Sekimeiya. However, right before the moment of the Sekimeiya's unveiling, black smoke appears, knocking Atsuki out and setting off an alarm. When Atsuki awakes, he discovers the building has been put into lockdown, trapping him and six others (possibly seven—the museum guide is missing when he wakes up) for the duration.

And that's the basic setup for the story.

Let's start with what The Sekimeiya does right.

The game's greatest, most noteworthy strength is the meticulousness with which the story has been constructed. The plot is incredibly complicated, yet all the details perfectly fit together like an intricately crafted puzzle box. That description doesn't even do the game justice, though. It's a mystery, of course the details are supposed to line up in the end. But what sets The Sekimeiya apart is the number of details—which include the specific movements of every character (and some other things) over the course of the entire story—and the stringency of the framework into which these details must be slotted. I doubt anyone who has played the game will need much elaboration or convincing on this point, but for those who haven't, it's difficult to convey the complexity of the details of the plot without revealing certain plot elements too spoilery to be explicitly named.

This, I've found, is the greatest tragedy of writing reviews. I can go on and on and on about a work's flaws and the parts of it that don't work. Even if the flaw in question is not really a big deal and doesn't detract much from the experience, it's still interesting to pick apart and see exactly what went wrong and how it possibly could have been avoided, both for the sake of analysis and for future reference for other works. Additionally, since it's a flaw, I feel there is much less of a need to be oblique in my discussion.

When something works, many times it's thanks to surprise of its occurrence. Revealing that context and setting up expectations can work to lessen the impact of the moment; if a work is built upon a core, central twist, merely knowing there's a twist can put the audience on guard and tarnish the moment. (Naturally I will not be providing any specific examples here, but I'm sure you can think of a few stories like that yourself.) Consequently, I need to be extremely careful when discussing such elements of a work, lest I diminish my readers' experience by priming them to be surprised, thus ruining it.

But when dealing with a flaw, there's no moment I need to worry about ruining, because the moment already doesn't work. Well, that's not entirely true, since I am cognizant of the fact that even if something didn't work for me that doesn't mean it won't work for someone else. But if someone likes something that I downplay, they'll probably like it even more than had I not tempered their expectations (whereas the opposite applies if something I hype up falls flat).

So I wish I could talk more about how well-crafted The Sekimeiya's story is, but I can't. If you've read one of my reviews where I say something along the lines of "I know I've discussed this flaw in great detail, but don't let that scare you off because it's not actually that big a deal in-context," this is the exact opposite.

Another aspect of The Sekimeiya's plot that I like is that there's a steady stream of plot developments despite the lack of inherent structure. A lot of ontological mystery(-type) stories structure themselves around some sort of "game"; for instance, the Nonary Game in Zero Escape or the Kill ME Game in Birth ME Code. Even when it isn't framed as a "game," there's typically some sort of set structure, such as alternating daily life and classroom trials in Danganronpa (and having new areas open up after each trial) or the periodic debates in Exile Election, or there's an overarching goal the characters need to work towards, most often finding an exit. Introducing this sort of structure has several benefits, one of which is that it leads to natural and consistent plot developments in the form of progression in said structure.

The Sekimeiya has nothing like that. The museum is on lockdown for twelve hours, and the cast just needs to wait it out. I was skeptical on this point when I first started The Sekimeiya. Are they really going to be able to draw a full plot out of this? Everyone could just sit around for half a day and be done with it, couldn't they? Yes, they could, but that's not how it ends up playing out. Despite having no inherent structure or goals beyond "wait for the exit to unlock," the game manages to bring out plot development after plot development after plot development. The story is always on the run, which is even more impressive when you factor in the ~30 hour playtime.

There's not much to complain about from a technical standpoint. The graphics are pretty good. While the sprites don't have the dynamism of Ace Attorney's animated sprites or the breadth of Danganronpa, they're clean and sufficiently emotive (although there are a couple that look a bit off). There's a large variety of backgrounds, all of which are detailed. The soundtrack is high quality and, while it's mostly ambient and so doesn't have any particularly memorable melodies, it fits the atmosphere and emotions of the story.

(If I can put out one minor complaint here, I do wish there were a few more CGs; there are a few scenes I would have liked to actually see for myself. There are also a couple of moments that hinge on whether a certain thing is present or not, but unfortunately we did not have CGs for this thing, so each time we had to wait for the narration to tell us whether it was there or not, which was a bit immersion-breaking.)

The game also has two simple yet incredibly useful features that not many other games have. The first is a running summary of events. The summary is presented in two columns: the left column has a bulleted list of the major events that happen in each scene, and the right column is reserved for taking your own notes. This lets you quickly look back in case you forget the general plot, and the ability to insert your own notes means you can easily track of anything you think is important that the game's summary doesn't record. That helps with general plot flow, but the other feature comes in if you want to check something specific: a searchable history of the entire game script. A history function isn't particularly distinctive, but the fact that The Sekimeiya's can be searched and covers the whole game sets it apart.

When I first started playing I thought these two mechanics were nice to have but not particularly necessary, but the further I got the more I appreciated them. These are definitely utilities I would appreciate appearing more often in plot-focused visual novels. The game is mostly linear, so nearly the entirety of the "gameplay" beyond reading and advancing the text consists of taking notes and thinking about the plot. (There is one more neat feature the game has that unlocks after you complete it, and my only complaint there is that I wish it was available the whole time.)

So that's what The Sekimeiya does well. It has a meticulously-plotted story filled with mystery and consistent plot developments and no technical faults. So what exactly drags the game down so much? It's a complicated question, because there are few to no concrete elements I can point at and say "This, this is what The Sekimeiya got wrong." That's not to say the complaints are nonobvious, but many of them feel generic or symptomatic of a deeper issue. But, after much thought and consideration, in my estimation most of The Sekimeiya's flaws are some form of or result directly from the following four issues:

1. The game is intellectually awe-inspiring but emotionally dead.
2. Most of the mystery comes from the straightforward application of unknown rules rather than the clever application of known rules.
3. The mysteries are unmanageably numerous yet also repetitive.
4. Each major mystery is solved by the game or intentionally left unresolved, and the player is left with scraps.

Let's dig into each of these.

The game is intellectually awe-inspiring but emotionally dead.

It's true that I gushed about how well-constructed the plot is and how amazing it is that all the details come together, but that appreciation is all on an intellectual level. The Sekimeiya unfortunately fails on nearly every emotional level. No matter how meticulous the plot is, if there's no emotional connection or reaction—if there's no enjoyment—then what's the point?

You might have noticed that I haven't mentioned the characters yet. And that's because up until this point I was only discussing things The Sekimeiya did right. Now, it'd be easy to say that the characters are nothing more than deductive supercomputers, laugh and move on, but I don't think that'd be fair to the game, even if the characters are unquestionably one of its weakest elements.

The characters do have personalities. It might look like they have no personalities when lined up against the casts of games like Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, or Zero Escape, but there were a couple of mysteries I solved from character clues, so I can't deny their existence. It's just that they're... ordinary personalities that you'd expect from each character's basic profile, with no major surprises or interesting complications. For the most part they act like normal people, and their personalities are swallowed up by the strangeness of their situation. (There are only so many ways to be shocked by a surprising turn of events.) Imagine if you randomly chose half a dozen people off the street; odds are you'd end up with a mix of personalities but none particularly ridiculous. The Sekimeiya's cast falls in the same ballpark.

I think the flat personalities are symptomatic of the deeper issue, however: the game does little to nurture an emotional bond between us and the characters. Merely being trapped in the same building as these people is not enough to make us care about them. There's nothing to build rapport between us and the cast, no reason to root for them, no information on who they are or what they're trying to do. Some characters do have their backstory filled in, but it comes very late and it's not presented in a way that makes us care about the characters. There's no development that makes me care about the characters personally, and none of them are trying to accomplish anything I have a stake in.

Alright, at this point everyone who's actually played The Sekimeiya is probably chomping at the bit to utterly wreck me by pointing out the obvious counterexample, so let me address that now. There is, in fact, a character with a notable and bombastic personality. Yes, it's true. Unfortunately, a single person does not make a compelling cast. Additionally, even though this character has a stronger personality than the rest of the cast, it does not translate into a stronger emotional bond with the player, and so all the other issues I have discussed in this section still fully apply to this character.

While I don't think this is a simple cure-all, one thing I noticed about The Sekimeiya is that it has no levity. If you look at other mystery-centric video games—for instance, Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, and Zero Escape—they tend to be chock full of jokes and humor. (For better or for worse.) Even games without a large comedic component, such as When They Cry and Science Adventure, set aside a decent chunk of their runtime to develop and interact with the core cast without (direct) interference from the main plot.

These are the scenes and plot elements that are essential to making us care about the characters and what happens to them, and they are almost entirely absent from The Sekimeiya. We're locked in the museum as soon as the game starts, and the onslaught of mysteries never provides us with a chance to catch our breath and bond with the cast. (To preempt objections from those who have played the game: Yes, there is a prominent segment that lets us "catch our breath," but it does not let us "bond with the cast.")

The Sekimeiya has a dark, somber atmosphere befitting the subject matter, and adding a bunch of jokes would obviously change that, which is why I said I don't think this is a simple cure-all. But the fact remains that there is nothing to induce us into an emotional bond with the cast. Humor would be one way to do that, but it certainly isn't the only way and may not even be the best way. The game should've employed some way beyond just locking us in a room together and crossing its fingers, though.

The situation is admittedly a bit different for Atsuki (and, to a certain extent, Shiroya). Atsuki is the person through whose eyes we see the world, which leads to us naturally identifying and empathizing with him. Shiroya is his friend, and the person in the cast with which he most intimately interacts with, and that in turn makes it easier for the player to open up to her. Atsuki isn't particularly compelling, but he's in a much better position than the rest of the cast. The issue is that I just didn't care about his goal. In fact, a part of me didn't even want him to achieve it. If he was trying to do something worth doing I would've been rooting for him, but I ended up feeling as ambivalent about his success as the other characters'.

(I'm purposefully omitting why I didn't care for Atsuki's goal, since I'm afraid that even a vague description could be crossing the line. But, for those who have played the game or have a higher tolerance for potential spoilers, that vague description (in rot-13) is: Ngfhxv'f tbny vf gb uryc n greevoyr, ubeevoyr crefba jub V qvq abg guvax jnf jbegu urycvat naq jubz V nofbyhgryl qvq abg jnag gb uryc.)

On top of that, even if you do believe in Atsuki's goal, the game's conclusion will likely deny you emotional catharsis. So either way you can't win.

A script that was a bit more polished probably could have helped overall on this front as well. The technical accuracy of the writing is impressive (I think I saw one typo in the entire game), and for that the game deserves commendation. But, while the writing is grammatically correct, it's missing the sheen of native fluency. The game was written by someone from Spain who is evidently very good at English, but creative writing is tough, especially in a non-native tongue. The script was proofread by a native English-speaker, but apparently changes were constrained by fears of introducing plot-holes.

The characters will often go into protracted deductions, and Atsuki has a habit of conducting lengthy theorizing sessions within his head. These can be okay, but it's not uncommon to lose track of the thread connecting point A to B to C. When this happens, we're left with two choices: we either shrug our shoulders and move on, simply taking what was said at face value even though we don't fully understand it, or we stop and carefully parse the text to figure out what's going on. Either way we're being drawn out of the narrative rather than naturally going with the flow of the characters, further widening the emotional gulf between the player and characters.

Finally, the solution to the mysteries aren't emotionally compelling. Let me explain what I mean by that, since even I think that's a bit of a weird statement. I think I've written this before, but the appeal of the mystery genre to me is the sense of catharsis, surprise and wonder when the curtain is pulled back and everything suddenly snaps into place. I'll go into more detail about this later, but, while I can marvel at how all the intricate details of the plot so perfectly fit together and appreciate the amount of care and effort that must have gone into setting everything up on an intellectual level, there weren't any moments that sparked the emotional reaction I just described.

So, as I said, The Sekimeiya flounders on every emotional level. No matter what part of the game we look at, something inhibits the emotional connection between the player and the game, which in turn prevents the player from caring about the game.

In the introduction of the review, I wrote that The Sekimeiya was, on paper, close to what I would have said is my ideal mystery game. That's because of its meticulously crafted plot that constantly throws mysteries at the player throughout the whole game. I thought interesting mysteries were all I wanted. But now that I've gotten that at the cost of nearly everything else, I've seen how, while the mystery may still be the most important component, the other elements of the work are still necessary to provide proper support for the mystery.

The Sekimeiya is like a dazzling gemstone placed in a chipped, tarnished setting. The gemstone is the main draw and you may be able to appreciate the gemstone on its own but, no matter how brilliant the gem is, you aren't going to be able to enjoy the piece as a whole and probably won't even want to wear it.

Most of the mystery comes from the straightforward application of unknown rules rather than the clever application of known rules.

This is why the solutions in The Sekimeiya didn't provoke an emotional reaction. Earlier I mentioned three emotions that I'm looking for in a solution: catharsis, surprise, and wonder. Catharsis is the feeling of relief and closure derived from the fact that the solution explains all the questions we had. Surprise is the reaction to something unanticipated or unexpected, because we didn't see the answer coming—or, if we did solve the mystery, it at least took some tinkering before we got it to work. Wonder is the it factor. It's wondering why we didn't see it ourselves and how the author managed to come up with something so clever. As you've probably guessed from this section title, it's "wonder" that The Sekimeiya is lacking in.

The issue with rules—and that is the apt term here—is that they're arbitrary. They can be set to whatever is needed to make the plot work. Consequently, there is no element of cleverness. Cleverness, in this case, means using known variables to reach an unexpected result. It's about taking set elements and putting them together in a clever way to reach the desired result. But creating rules (and hiding them) allows you to simply build a direct bridge from start to solution. (If the rules are known, even if they are artificial, then a clever path is still needed; this is why "games" stories can scratch the same itch as murder mysteries.)

Yes, rules can be made complicated to obfuscate them, and it may take more care and effort to mold all the pieces into their proper forms with complicated rules, but they're still rules and still arbitrary. It may take time, effort, care, and attention to make sure a story abides by a complicated set of rules, and I can appreciate and acknowledge that time, effort, care, and attention, but it doesn't take wit, and wit is what sparks wonder.

It's seeing the result and trying to reverse engineer the restraints that gave rise to it, when we should be given the constraints and be trying to figure out how to get the result we need. It's the difference between a mystery where a guy is shot by a machine and the solution is that it was programmed to fire if someone said "shoot," and a mystery where a guy is shot by a machine that is programmed to fire only when someone says "shoot" despite nobody saying that.

I mentioned there were two parts to wonder. One was wondering how the author came up with the idea. When you're dealing with rules, there isn't much to wonder about; they made it up and massaged everything into place. The other part—wondering how you didn't see it—could still theoretically work even when dealing with unknown rules, but unfortunately it doesn't here.

There are really just two components to making you think you should've solved it: you need to be given enough clues to reach the answer, and enough information to eliminate other reasonable answers. So the main issue with unknown rules is that there is an extraordinarily large solution space, which can make cutting it down difficult. Especially if there are no constraints on complexity. The Sekimeiya's rules are relatively parsimonious all things considered, but that has no bearing on the possible solution set. If the solution space is left open, the player is going to ask how they were supposed to know that that was the answer, and not any of the other possibilities left open.

But I actually think it's the other side that The Sekimeiya fares worse at: providing enough clues. There's a certain thing that I think is the crux of breaking open the mysteries of The Sekimeiya, but the game typically only gives us vague information on this thing. Some mysteries come down to incredibly precise details that are not touched upon at all. Sure, you could assume the necessary details, but that doesn't seem like a fair basis for solving mysteries; you need to arbitrarily make the correct assumptions, and even if your assumptions cause everything to be resolved you still have no way to confirm that they're correct.

Obviously, if you make up rules for your story, you should make sure your story follows them. And I'm not saying The Sekimeiya doesn't. But there's a common pitfall associated with the plot element at The Sekimeiya's core, and The Sekimeiya seems hellbent on not stepping into this pitfall. Some sequences contain a long explanation for why this pitfall was avoided in that particular instance... but sometimes it just felt like a long-winded description of the pitfall itself. There are no direct, glaring, technical issues, and some instances where I was satisfied, but also some where I just wasn't fully convinced that the pitfall was avoided. And even if it did avoid this pitfall, I doubt it did it as cleanly as it wanted it to.

There are also a few solutions that feel like cheap handwaves, but to be honest, I don't really blame the game for this; when you have as many mysteries as it does, a few particularly lame solutions are to be expected.

To the game's credit, I also want to point out that this section refers to "most" of the mysteries. There are indeed some mysteries resolved by applying the rules of the game in a clever rather than straightforward manner. Unfortunately, these mysteries comprise too small a fraction of the total number of riddles to evoke enough of the proper emotion.

The mysteries are unmanageably numerous yet also repetitive.

This one should be a bit more straightforward.

The Sekimeiya has a lot of mysteries. Like, a lot of mysteries.

Too many mysteries to keep track of everything clearly.

How am I supposed to care about something I've forgotten about? When hit with mystery after mystery after mystery after mystery after mystery, it's difficult to remain clear about all the details and even all the questions confronting us. Yes, I can look them up without much trouble thanks to the game's note-taking and search features, but I'm not going to think or care about them if they aren't in my mind.

It's true that some of the most salient impossibilities stuck in my mind, but a lot of questions just kind of blurred together. On top of the sheer number of mysteries, this is exacerbated by the fact that a lot of the mysteries end up falling into one of a few "types" of problems, which does help with mental organization on a macro level but muddies things on a micro level. Imagine a novel with twenty locked room murders; you could probably remember easily that about a third were "locked" because the exit was continuously watched, about a third were "locked" because electronic records showed nobody entered or left, and a third were traditionally locked with a key inside the room—but I suspect it would be difficult to remember off the top of your head a list of all the rooms, exactly how many rooms fell into each category, and each room's pertinent details.

This issue implicates the "catharsis" element of an emotionally satisfying solution. Catharsis comes from having the solution resolve all the questions in the mystery. But if we don't remember all the mysteries—and it's because there are so many of them, so we know that we don't remember all the mysteries—then we can't see how the solution resolves the mysteries, and that catharsis is dampened if not wholly denied.

If we don't understand or remember the question, we can't be wowed by the answer.

The reaction you want to a revelation is "Oh, so that's what happened!" as the answer causes previously inscrutable details to slide into place. In The Sekimeiya, my reaction was usually more along the lines of "Sure, that seems right, I guess...?". I could usually remember a few specific moments that would be explained, but I wasn't sure I remembered all of them, and there were just too many events and details in the game for me to mentally confirm that the game's answer actually does resolve all of them. To be clear, I'm not doubting the game's answers. I'm sure if you ran through them all, they would indeed check out. But if I can't immediately confirm it for myself, I don't get the catharsis.

The fact that so many mysteries fall into the same archetype also means that game is often hitting the same plot beats. Earlier I praised the game for consistently bringing out new plot developments throughout the course of the entire game. I stand by that, but, while the plot is always on the run, there are definitely segments (especially in the first portion of the game) that feel like it's running on a treadmill.

And this leaves...

Each major mystery is solved by the game or intentionally left unresolved, and the player is left with scraps.

This is where all the issues we've discussed so far come to a head. But before I elaborate, I need to give a quick run-down of the game's structure. The game is divided into five chapters. The first four chapters set up the mystery. The last chapter provides the solution, running through and explaining all the events of the game, but does so in the form of a multiple-choice quiz, asking the player for each answer before elaborating upon it.

It sounds fine on paper, but with all the other issues we've discussed, as well as the execution of the quiz.... It doesn't turn out so well.

There's an inherent contradiction at the heart of detective video games (and, in my opinion, detective fiction in general): the player both wants to solve the mystery but also be surprised by the solution. Every detective game is forced to grapple with this contradiction and come up with its own answer through its gameplay mechanics. For instance, Ace Attorney leads the player to the solution by carefully guiding them through the entire chain of deduction. The player gets the satisfaction of answering each step on their own, but can still be surprised by where each step leads them and at the overall path they take. Games like When They Cry completely eschew interactive gameplay, approaching the issue more like a traditional novel and allowing the player to decide for themself how deeply they want to engage with the problem. The wonderful Her Story completely does away with a definitive confirmation of the solution, forcing the player to solve the case on their own.

The Sekimeiya... eats a succulent steak in front of us, expects us to thank it for letting us lick the plate afterwards, and says if we want one of our own, there's a frozen steak in the freezer we can cook for ourselves.

For most of the major mysteries, the game just dumps the solution in our lap with no warning. Sometimes there might be an obtuse quiz question we need to answer first, but it invariably feels like the game is just handing us the solution, not that we earned it or reached it ourselves.

The Sekimeiya is one of the most mysterious mystery games that's ever mysteried. If we're playing it and we've gotten to the final chapter, there's a pretty good chance that we like mysteries, and that we like solving mysteries. If this was a game like When They Cry or a novel that simply had no interaction and never even contemplated letting us prove we solved the mystery, that would be one thing. After all, you know the book is going to give you the solution at some point, and you just need to solve it by then, if you choose to. But when there actually are deductive mechanics—the quiz—and then we're denied the chance to actually deduce the most salient mysteries, it feels like The Sekimeiya took all the best bits for itself and just left us with scraps.

Of course, even if the game had asked us to solve the major mysteries, it's unclear how feasible that would be, for reasons already discussed—but that's beside the point, and doesn't work either way. If the major mysteries weren't solvable that defeats the entire point of inviting the player to solve the mystery through the quiz, and if they were solvable then there's no reason to have denied us the opportunity to solve them.

Most sections of the quiz take the form of the game simply telling you a rule, and then quizzing you on how well you can directly apply it to the events of the game. But, as already explained, directly applying arbitrary rules just isn't that interesting.

As I've intimated, not all of the major mysteries are explained in the game, but those are intentionally left completely blank. The issue with these, I think, is that there is neither a clear opening for attack nor a way to check your solution. Sure, you can theorize about these mysteries... but that's it. Without a way to confirm if you're correct, there's no opportunity for that cathartic release. This might feel a bit unfair since just a few paragraphs ago I was praising Her Story for not having a way for the player to confirm their answer, but the difference is that Her Story provides enough building blocks to ensure the player is able to formulate some answer and doesn't walk away empty-handed.

There's another issue as well, but I'll get to that in a moment.

So that's how the resolution of the major mysteries is handled, and the issues with it. But the way the players are left to fill in the details of the story is filled with problems as well, mostly stemming from the lack of emotionality and abundance of mysteries, both of which issues I have already examined in depth.

The quiz is long. I won't say the exact number of questions, but trust me, it's long. And that's only natural, with the number of mysteries in the game. But that just makes it drag.

If you want to try to solve The Sekimeiya, you're going to have to create a timeline of everything that went down. And like I've said, a lot of stuff went down. You're going to need to be detailed and comprehensive, and ensure that everything fits together. Such an endeavor requires a fair amount of effort. And that would be fine... if we cared about the game. But—if your experience is similar to mine—you probably won't have a strong emotional connection to it. So why bother spending the time and effort?

On top of that, it's not like you just come up with an answer and see if it's right or not. The game consistently makes big reveals and gives extra details over the course of the quiz. That means that, if you're really going all-in on trying to solve the game, you're going to need to revise your answer every time you get a revelation, which means re-constructing your entire solution over and over and over and over....

You don't need to get the correct answer in the quiz to continue; you just pick anything you want, and the game will tell you what happened. So when it's so easy to just move on, and so time-consuming to come up with a comprehensive theory, and we don't really care that much about the characters, is it really worth the effort?

The Sekimeiya feels like it's taunting you with the quiz, going "You should be able to solve this" as it waves the various mysteries in front of your face. And I respond "I probably could, maybe, but why should I even try?" And The Sekimeiya just sits there with a smirk on its face, less because it's a jerk and more because it's a video game and thus incapable of conversation. But that doesn't change the fact that, if I'm in the position where I'm asking that question, it doesn't have an answer.

This is the other reason I think the major mysteries that are left unaddressed aren't particularly compelling. Without any sort of emotion or passion for the game, I have no drive to attempt to come up with answers that I know I won't be able to verify.

Additionally, there are some specific questions that I think are executed particularly poorly. A few times I didn't know which option was the correct answer even after seeing the explanation. There were also a couple of questions that explained the solution, but then pointed out holes in the solution, to be mysterious. But if this answer has apparent flaws, then that means every answer seemed to have flaws, so how was I supposed to know that this one was the right one?

I already compared The Sekimeiya to a puzzle box earlier; a particularly intricate and complicated puzzle box. But this one feels like it really doesn't have an opening to get to the center. All the parts come together into one cohesive whole, but that means to solve it you need to recreate that whole at once, not reach there by slotting the individual parts into place. And if you're not super-duper into puzzle boxes, are you really going to put that much effort into trying?

Conclusion.

So, to recap, even though The Sekimeiya is meticulously crafted and filled with mysteries, it ends up falling short of the ideal because (i) the biggest mysteries mostly involve the straightforward application of unknown rules, which lacks an element of cleverness, (ii) those mysteries tend to just get resolved by the game, with the player prompted to solve the less-interesting minor mysteries, but (iii) there are so many of these mysteries that (iv) the player likely lacks the emotional engagement to properly grapple with them all.

Sorting through a mountain of tiny problems that you don't care about isn't solving a mystery, it's doing homework. And that's not fun.

This feels like the part of the review where I'd typically go "I know I spent a lot of words analyzing and picking apart the problems, but the amount of words I spent on these problems does not correspond to the severity of their impact on the experience." I... can't really say that here. These flaws don't ruin the experience; The Sekimeiya isn't bad. But The Sekimeiya doesn't feel nearly as good as a game with such an original, complex and meticulous plot should.

I really, really hope the people behind The Sekimeiya try their hand at making a game again, because if they could build upon their weaknesses while maintaining their strengths, I think they could make something far beyond any other game I've seen.

Do I recommend The Sekimeiya? If you don't like mysteries, then it's definitely not the game for you. If you do like mysteries, the question then is why. If it's for the characters and drama, then I'd pass on The Sekimeiya. But if you like the puzzles and plots, then it is undoubtedly worth experiencing. Let me be clear: I wholeheartedly recommend The Sekimeiya in that case. Yes, there are plenty of issues with various elements of The Sekimeiya, but you're not going to find a plot with this level of craftsmanship anywhere else. To borrow my metaphor from earlier: even if the flaws of the setting bring down the piece as a whole, The Sekimeiya is still an awe-inspiring gem worthy of appreciation.