I rolled credits on Murders on the Yangtze River (OMEGAMES STUDIO) after fifteen hours, and it was mostly a fun ride. I talked about the demo in this post, which was the first two chapters of the game. That took roughly three hours–maybe four? The rest of the game is four more chapters, which is six in total. So given how long the game took me to complete, that’s just under four hours per chapter. Let’s remember that I talk at least twice as long as other people do to finish a game, so I think we can safely say that most people can finish it in seven or eight hours.
I mentioned my biggest gripe about the game in the last post I wrote about my perfect detective game. It’s the super-shitty get through the maze to escape the giant maw of your dead father who is trying to devour you.
In the last chappter of the game, there’s another shitty gameplay section in which I, playing as Afu (Shen Chung-ping’s assistant), have to sneak around the police station at night. At least that one saves after every floor climbed. But my god, it was tedious and really had no need to be in the game.
I think that’s my biggest problem with the game. There are way too many different ways of solving the cases that could just be lumped together. And the logic doesn’t always logic. I’ll get to the latter in a bit, but I’d like to focus on the former for now.
I want to stress that I know this game takes a lot of its inspiration from the Ace Attorney games. It’s very clear that the DNA of this game is that series. I did not like those games when I tried them out for a few reasons. One is the hamminess of the games. Two is because of the ridicilousness of the logic.
In this game, I really think they could have benefited from paring back on the different kinds of deductions. I’ve included a gameplay trailer below to show the different things you can do in the game. There’s investigating the crime scene (fine), talking to witnesses (fine), looking at the surrounding environments (fine), and then there’s the bunch of things that sound so damn similiar. These aren’t the actual names, but there’s interrogation, debate, finding inconsistencies in evidence, and a bunch of others. I don’t understand why they can’t just lump them together.
Also, I didn’t enjoy any of that because the logic wasn’t always logical. Sometimes, it was straight-forward. Such as spotting something in one piece of evidence that was also in another or indicated something about another. But sometimes, it was like (and I’m totally making this up), “Sulfur melts at 382 degrees, creating a crystalized substance that can be tracked if you step on it with 210 pounds of pressure”. Like, you have to know this shit off the top of your head!
Plus, there are little mini-games that aren’t explained well at all. There was one in which I had to weigh different chemical substances. Which is fine. I’ve done several of these puzzles, no sweat. Except in this case, there were some chemical solutions that were in powder and some in liquid. So there were two ways of measuring–by a scale and by pouring the liquids into test tubes. These were on separate ‘pages’ so you didn’t have to mix the two.
The powder side was fine. The liquid side, on the other hand, was not. Why? Because while the powder side had labeled weights so it was easy to weigh the powders, the test tubes were not marked. I mean,I figured out that the numbers at the bottom of each test tube was how much the test tube could hold. It just had a number with no ML whereas the weights on the other side had the KG on the weights themselves.
The test tubes themselves did not have numbers on the test tubes. Oh, I thought the numbers below were how many test tubes there were in that bunch. Yes, I know that made no sense, but my brain works very differently than other people’s. Anyway, it was the typical pour the liquid in the largest test tube and then pour from that one into the others and keep pouring until you reach 40 ML (or whatever the number is). Once I figured out how it all worked, it was easy. But it didn’t have to be that hard in the first place.
This was my issue with all the mini-games, really. I could figure them out eventually, kinda, but they were not explained well. And sometimes, I got the answer just by dumb luck and/or brute-forcing it. At least some of them were skippable. I was glad for that, even though I did not skip any of them.
I really liked each of the individual cases and the overarching case–at least until the very end of it. I agreed with the message, but it was very heavy-handed in how it was delivered. I mean, I’m about as antidisestablishment/anarchist/socialist as you can get, and I was cringing at how the message was delivered.
The game builds up this very tense case throughout the whole game. It’s very intricate and elaborate, and I was engrossed by it. Every time we went into that investigation, my heart quickened and I perked up.
Then, at the end, it was tied to the last case in a way that left me with mixed feelings. I understood why it was tied together, and I didn’t have a problem with a mastermind behind everything. But, wait. Yes I did. Not in the concept itself, but in how it was carried out. I mentioned how elaborate and intricate the whole case was. In the end, though, it defaulted to the biggest trope of all–the meglomaniacal, delusional mastermind who was in it solely for the money–and there was never enough money.
I did appreciate the commentary on colonialism and Western hegemony, but it was done in such an overblown way. And while I enjoyed a certain character from the last case very much, I always had my doubts as to their authenticity. The fact that they were pulled out at the last minute was a misstep. They needed to be salted much earlier in the game.
I think the last third of the game was lacking and disappointing. They started out so well, only to falter over the finish line. I still loved the game for the most part, and I would recommend it to anyone who loves detective games, especially the Ace Attorney series. I would like them to do a sequel and streamline the whole process.