After the final credits rolled on PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid’s Curse, there was only a single thought that crossed my mind as I dried the dampness from my eyes—this is why I love video games.
A follow-up to the surprising 2023 horror visual novel hit PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, going into The Mermaid’s Curse, I had severe doubts that this new one would be able to hit the same highs. Not because I didn’t have faith in the development team, but because the first PARANORMASIGHT had such fascinating meta-mechanics that toyed with the very idea of what it means to be a video game—I didn’t see how that could happen again. And what I mean by meta-mechanics is how the game forces you to toy around with settings, like having to turn the voice volume down to drown out a demonic voice in a story scene. The first game packed some enormous surprises in that regard, forcing you to alter the very way you think of solving its mysteries.
It was hard for me to imagine how the surprise of the first game could be topped, and that’s perhaps my biggest surprise with The Mermaid’s Curse—because boy did Square Enix find a way to make yet another shockingly creative adventure game. And that feels even more so this time, because I was already going in under the assumption that those meta elements would be there. But what really makes those surprises shine even more is the game around it, the integrally different tone and flavor of story this game strives for—a horror-tinged love story that ends up being shockingly sweet.
Those elements of surprise weave with a superbly well-told story packed with intrigue, lovable characters, and a maybe simple but heartfelt message on the power of love. The Mermaid’s Curse is a game not content to just build on the formula of the first, but entirely strike out on its own into uncharted waters.
“The Mermaid’s Curse is a game not content to just build on the formula of the first, but entirely strike out on its own into uncharted waters.”
The Mermaid’s Curse takes place in an unspecified year in the 1980s, in the Ise-Shima region of Japan, a culturally rich peninsula in Eastern Mie Prefecture. As you might expect, the story of this game builds directly on real legends of mermaids from Japanese folklore, as well as some specific events, locations, and figures of Japanese history. Ise-Shima, in the real world, is renowned for its woman pearl divers known as Ama, as well as its vibrant fresh seafood and rich culture.
The story of PARANORMASIGHT opens on a teenage boy named Yuza Minakuchi, who’s hoping to become the rare male Ama diver, with the help of his friend Azami Kumoi. Yuza has returned to the island of Kameshima five years after a tragic freak seastorm took his parents’ lives—but there’s a deep distrust the islanders have for him, because of a superstition that Yuza’s parents caused the storm in the first place.
As Yuza tries to reintegrate into life on Kameshima, bizarre supernatural events begin happening, and the threat of the same storm from five years ago reappearing starts to loom on the horizon. PARANORMASIGHT’s larger story is doled out in a nonlinear fashion, as you see things from the eyes of multiple different parties converging on Kameshima—a fantasy writer and his psychic relative come to investigate mermaids, a pair of paranormal investigators from a specialized division of the police, and a mysterious girl who’s been living on the island for the past few months. These stories weave together and intersect as you piece together the larger narrative.
The basic gameplay of PARANORMASIGHT plays out much like any other visual novel, with a few little twists. The game is heavily dialogue-based, as you talk to other characters, ask questions, and progress dialogue trees. But all of the game’s environments are also fully 3D areas, where you can spin around 360 degrees and examine the environment, and the game often plays with that ability, too – like sneaking a character up behind you for a quick surprise.
But the thing I really want to stress about The Mermaid’s Curse is how different it is from the first game, tonally. The first PARANORMASIGHT was a full-on horror game, and while there are horror elements here, I’d much more strongly describe this as a paranormal adventure game. And that comes down to both the game’s visual presentation and writing.
The scenery of Kameshime and Ise-Shima is gorgeous, based on real areas from Japan that the developers sort of rotoscoped in. This gives the game an eerie sort of uncanny valley feeling, where you have these highly stylized characters living in ultra-realistic scenery. But it really works for the overall fantastical tone of the game. Alongside that, each character is animated with extremely over-the-top animations and facial expressions, leaning into the absurdity of their characters. My personal favourite is the western fantasy author Avi, who continuously talks about how he’s only in all of this for the “adventure” of everything.
Secondly, The Mermaid’s Curse is an extremely deliberately paced game, to an almost painful degree at points. The first few hours of the game are staggeringly slow, an absolute onslaught of information on legends, myths, terminology, and lore. But this also, integrally, gives you time to understand the ethos of each of the main characters, what really makes them tick, and their history with this world. All of that becomes more important the further you get into the story, and it’s extremely important you read through many of the game’s Files to gain a deeper appreciation of how these characters tie together with everything. That initially slow pacing might be grating to some, but if you love games with extensive world-building and scene-setting, you’re in for a treat.
There are also some extra elements that tie into the overarching plot, like a diving minigame where you play as Yuza and collect sea creatures for points, letting you raise your stats to spend more time underwater and collect more. This minigame is, initially, a nice little diversion, but PARANORMASIGHT brilliantly subverts how you think about it later on.
And the hard part here is I can fully describe how that happens, because it’s something that truly needs to be experienced to appreciate how it’s implemented. More importantly, that’s the hard part of talking about this game: the surprises and twists that are packed in are so impactful in the moment, but difficult to describe because even lightly touching on them would spoil the reveals. But as the second game in what could be considered a series now, The Mermaid’s Curse plays with the idea of what it means to be a PARANORMASIGHT game—how you interact with things like Files and character profiles, how you digest its story, and even what gameplay elements might mean subtextually.
“The initially slow hours of The Mermaid’s Curse open up into a story that quickly becomes enthralling, an intoxicating brew of mystery and emotion.”
I mentioned earlier that this game implements a shockingly sweet love story, but even that I can’t really talk more about it—because the very reason it’s so sweet is because of how that “love” grows alongside your deeper understanding of the game’s lore and mythos. This genuinely might be one of my favourite love stories in gaming, both because of how well-written its duo is and because of how it ties into the game’s entire theming and the idea of what legends and myths mean to all of us, culturally and historically.
The initially slow hours of The Mermaid’s Curse open up into a story that quickly becomes enthralling, an intoxicating brew of mystery and emotion. At a certain point, I found myself surprised by how invested I was in this story, desperately hoping that a few of these characters got their happy ending—and I laughed and cried in equal measure. This is a game that made me feel, and that’s the ultimate compliment I can give to any visual novel.
The Mermaid’s Curse wasn’t quite the game I went in expecting, but that’s a good thing—and maybe the most PARANORMASIGHT thing that could have happened. This is one of the most interesting games Square Enix has made in the last decade. And now, despite my initial doubts, I hope the PARANORMASIGHT team has one or two more in the chamber to surprise and delight me all over again.
