The game takes place in a world with a group called the Detective Alliance, an organization of private detectives that is often hired to solve bizarre and high-profile cases. Detectives in the Detective Alliance are ranked, and each one has their own quirk or specialty, so when a case comes in the Detective Alliance will dispatch the detective best suited for the case.
We play as Wato Houjou, a young man who dreams of being a detective. He has a part-time job at a detective agency… but he isn’t very good at it. However, one night an old man invites him to join the Detective Alliance… and then promptly kidnaps him. When Wato wakes up, he discovers he’s on the island that functions as the Detective Alliance’s headquarters. A group of detectives has been dispatched to the island as part of a task force to deduce the identity of the Quartering Duke, a prolific serial killer who has been terrorizing Japan. But somebody has killed all of the Detective Alliance staff members on the island, as well as one of the detectives—the group discovers there may be traitors in their midst, and begins investigating the deaths to find the truth.
Like Danganronpa, each character has a shtick they’re designed around, and even has a special detective codename they go by based on their gimmick. The “Mystic Detective” is knowledgeable in the occult, the “Workaholic Detective” is an overworked salaryman, the “Bookworm Detective” has read a ton of books (and narrates her life), and so on. (If you aren’t convinced of the Danganronpa comparisons, just compare Wato’s and Saihara’s designs.) Each chapter of the game is also based around a murder, although, unlike Danganronpa, there is no death game structure, and each murder develops organically.
The vast majority of Process of Elimination is a kinetic visual novel, meaning there are no choices or interactions other than advancing the text. Danganronpa packs a lot of extra content (and life) in the ability to explore, examine, and chat—including Free Time Events, where you get to interact with and learn more about a character of your choosing. While Process of Elimination has plenty of character development, optional dialogue content can let you feel like you’re exploring and interacting with the world, rather than just being told a static story. So even though the story has plenty of character interaction baked in, it still feels like there’s more of a barrier between me and the characters than in Danganronpa or Ace Attorney.
The denouements in Process of Elimination are simply a set of multiple-choice questions with three possible answers per question (other than when you need to identify the culprit, where you choose from the full cast list). So they’re functional but mechanically not particularly exciting, unlike most other deductive mystery games. While trials are the star of the show in Danganronpa and Ace Attorney, Process of Elimination flips the script by installing the investigation as its premiere mechanic.
Unfortunately, the investigations aren’t that great either.
Alright, let me immediately backtrack a bit. As murder mystery investigations, they aren’t great. As puzzles, they’re fun, although the implementation is a bit lacking.
Investigations take place in an isometric grid-based map (like a tactical RPG), and involves directing the characters to investigate the crime scene and surrounding area in order to solve the case before time runs out. The basic flow of the investigation is finding evidence, analyzing that evidence, and then solving mysteries (which might reveal the existence of new evidence).
Each detective has five attributes, corresponding to the five types of actions in investigation mode. The first attribute is Movement, which determines how many squares that detective can move when using the Move action. Each turn, each detective can Move once and perform one other action, although they can forego their “other action” to Move to any square on the map outside of their normal movement range.
The second stat is Inspection, corresponding to the Inspect action. When a detective Inspects, they examine all squares within a distance equal to their Inspection stat. The location of each piece of evidence is clearly marked on the map with a 2x2 spot known as an “Evidence Square,” and you need to Inspect it to find it. There are also squares that add entries to the in-game glossary when Inspected, providing additional lore and background on the characters and game world. (Each level also has a “skit” that can be unlocked by examining a square with Wato specifically.)
Once a piece of evidence is collected, it must be Analyzed. Each piece of evidence has an analysis difficulty level, and can only be Analyzed by a detective with an Analyzation stat at least equal to the difficulty level. Any detective can Analyze any piece of evidence (as long as they have the sufficient Analyzation stat); there’s no detective-specific inventory system.
The fourth stat is Inference, and is used to Infer the solution to mysteries. Mysteries are represented on the map as “Mystery Points,” which always have a “resolution point” value. Inferring a mystery reduces the Mystery Point’s resolution point value by that detective’s Inference stat. When the Mystery Point is reduced to zero resolution points, the mystery is solved. Resolution points are not reset or recovered between rounds, so complex mysteries can be solved over time.
The final stat is Assistance, which ties to last action, Assist. If one detective Assists another detective while that detective Infers a Mystery Point, the Mystery Point will lose an additional amount of resolution points equal to the first detective’s Assistance stat. In other words, Assist functions just like Infer, except you need someone else to Infer to use it. There are several characters with low Inference but high Assistance, so Assist can be extremely helpful. (Especially once you discover that if you arrange three detectives in an L-shape around a Mystery Point, the detective in the corner can Assist both other detectives at once.)
Detectives don’t take individual turns, but rather you assign orders and have them all executed at once. However, there are two ways to assign orders: “Investigate” and “Preliminary.” Both cause all commands to be executed, but Investigate moves onto the next round while Preliminary does not. This allows you perform actions that must be done in order in a single round. For instance, you can have one detective Inspect an Evidence Square in a Preliminary investigation to get a piece of evidence, and then have another detective Analyze that evidence in the same round; with a regular Investigation, that would have to occur over two rounds. (There is also no limit to the number of Preliminary investigations you can have in a round, so if you Analyze the evidence in a Preliminary investigation and unlock a new Mystery Point that way, a third detective could Infer that Mystery Point, still in the same round.)
And that’s how it works. The reason it doesn’t quite make it as an investigation system is that it’s so abstracted, information about the case and evidence isn’t conveyed efficiently. All you need to do is follow the visual on-screen cues, and the actual substance of the evidence never matters.
But as a puzzle, figuring out how to do all the things you need to do within the time limit is fun! The issue with the investigations as a puzzle, however, is that it feels like they stopped trying halfway through. The first few levels get progressively more difficult and complicated, adding and iterating on hazards. There are also some detectives that want to work on their own, and so are controlled by the AI. As a result, you need to plan your moves around theirs. But in the second half of the game, all that drops away. You control every detective, and there are no hazards. At that point you just need to use the basic mechanics to do all the things, which you should have a decent grasp on by that point.
Despite the problems, it’s clear that a fair amount of care was put into the investigations. The level designs match the actual locations. Before I said that the investigation is abstracted, but there is still specific dialogue when Inspecting, Analyzing, or Inferring. They don’t just say “A clue!”; they say “There’s a sheet hidden behind this dresser… and it’s covered in blood?! The killer must have stashed it here… but why? And when?”. And not only that, but there is a unique conversation for each detective Inspecting each piece of evidence, Analyzing each piece of evidence, and Inferring each Mystery Point. Obviously this is simple to implement, but the effect does add life to the investigation and makes it feel like the game is responding to your choices. (There are even a few unique conversations if you have a specific detective pair solve a mystery (through Assist).)
Perhaps this is asking for too much, but I do wish there could have been some “challenge cases” as post-game content. The investigation system is the main mechanic of the game, but it ends up being a relatively small fraction of the playtime. Getting to dig our teeth into some more difficult puzzles would add content to the game, put more of a spotlight on the main feature, and make up for the lacking investigations in the second half of the game. But alas, I suppose it was not meant to be. (If they did do these, then I think generic “It’s a clue!”-type dialogue would have been fine, since the focus would be on the puzzle rather than the in-game investigation or story.)
While the investigations may be the main gameplay focus, as a visual novel, the core of Process of Elimination is its story. And it’s extremely, extremely anime. Technically less than half of the cast are teenagers, but that’s only because two are preteens. One character is a veteran agent of the Detective Alliance, and he’s… 29. There’s a 14-year old girl who can uproot trees and swing them around as weapons. They can spend five minutes talking in the middle of a battle. They yell out attack names. There are magic powers. Some of those magic powers have names. And so on.
Obviously other Japanese video game, manga, and anime-based mystery franchises rely on and draw heavily from (and form a part of) Japanese pop culture, but they generally try to be realistic (as mysteries often operate in reality), while Process of Elimination leans much more heavily on shonen tropes. And yet the emotion, the psychology behind the characters, rings true. While the setting and situation are unrealistic, the characters are allowed to act like real people, and not merely cardboard cutouts for a single repetitive punchline. (Although that is not to say that each character doesn’t have a shtick that will be beaten into the ground by the end of the game, because they do.)
The story is, naturally, about the overarching mystery concerning the identity of the Quartering Duke, as well as events that took place on the island prior to the formation of the Detective Alliance. The individual cases are functional but not amazing and, like the puzzles, the first half is better than the second. Most of the runtime covers character development and interaction, overarching plot, and setting up the individual cases; the time from body drop to chapter end is relatively short.
While the individual mystery components are not fantastic, I think they actually complement each other. The mysteries are relatively simple, but because the investigations are abstracted, the solution isn’t immediately apparent. And the fact that the game isn’t entirely clear and forthcoming with its information doesn’t impede the denouement because the “gameplay” is so easy and straightforward. While I’d prefer meatier mysteries with more involved deductive mechanics, Process of Elimination makes it easy to lean back and just enjoy the ride. (Compare with Danganronpa, which has more intricate cases, but over-shares which causes the much lengthier investigations and trials to drag.) The climax of the game is my favorite part, and, while it doesn’t solve the human condition, it feels like real philosophical thought and care was put into it—much more than screaming “hope” and “despair” back and forth for an hour.
Graphics are clean and stylized, and while they are limited they are utilized to their fullest extent. Character sprites use the “base model with swappable expressions” system, but each character has a few base models, so there is a balance between cost and variety, although they admittedly don’t have the dynamism of Ace Attorney or Danganronpa sprites. Notably, each character has both front-facing sprites and 3/4-view sprites, allowing for scenes where the characters speak directly to you and with each other. The game will also have sprites appear larger or smaller and in different areas of the screen, further adding a sense of movement not conveyed by the sprites alone.
The sound design was good as well. The soundtrack felt a bit limited, but the songs were fitting, and the music for the most intense scenes was catchy. Like most modern visual novels the game is fully voice-acted, adding more personality to the characters.
There are a lot of complaints and criticisms you can lodge at Process of Elimination, and yet the package coalesces into something greater than what you’d expect from its parts. I don’t think it will become a classic like Ace Attorney or a cult hit like Danganronpa, but it’s a fun mashup of detective and shonen tropes, with its biggest pitfall being that it will likely appeal only to fans of both rather than either. So if you fall in that segment of the Venn diagram, go check it out. I feel like Nippon Ichi could make a great mystery game, and they just continue to not, which is starting to get a bit annoying, but at least they’re trending in the right direction.
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