Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse
If I had to make a list of "games I never would have expected to get sequels," Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo would have been pretty high on the list. As a visual novel that leaned heavily on its real-life connection to a city in Japan (to the point where it was co-produced by the town's tourism board), while simultaneously being a game wherein people wield opposing curses and fight to the death for the chance to earn a wish for resurrection, it's uh...pretty out there. So imagine my surprise when it was revealed that not only was it getting a sequel, the sequel was done and it's coming out in like, two weeks. The Mermaid's Curse is technically a sequel, in the sense that it DOES take place after Honjo and it will occasionally throw out a "Hey, remember when this happened in the first game?" but beyond that, the two are entirely unrelated - new town, new characters, and most importantly, new curses.
This time around we find ourselves in the waters of Ise Bay, on the (fictional) island of Kaneshima. Our "main" protagonist is a boy named Yuza, learning to be an ama diver like his mother and grandmother. Only one problem: his mother (and by extension, he) was given the evil eye by pretty much everyone on the island because they suspect her of causing the storm that killed 10 people and wiped out large parts of the island 5 years ago, Yuza himself being the only survivor of the calamity. He has the support of his friends, of course, but honestly? He and the people directly surrounding him are probably the least interesting part of the cast. The first third of so of the story revolves around Yuza trying to find out what happened to his mom, why no one wants to talk about her, etc, and it definitely gets a little samey, especially when Sato's early scenes go over similar information.
Far more interesting are the other main character duos - Yumeko and Sodo are from the Paranormal Affairs police division, and here are to investigate...well, a couple things really. There's a pair of divers that have gone missing over the few days, a pile of corpses that were hidden in a corner of the bay, and most concerningly, a body that washed up on shore that looks an awful lot like a mermaid. Meanwhile, we have a pair of tourists in Arnav Barnum (who goes by "Avi") and Circe Lunarlight - the former is a fantasy author from the States, and the latter is an English exorcist in training (in addition to having one of the most Fate-ass names I've ever heard). Ostensibly, Avi is here to learn about mermaids for his next book, but it's never quite that simple, and he's far and away my favorite character in the game when it's all said and done.
The story itself is quite different from the first game; while not exactly scary, Honjo was at least ostensibly trying to be a horror adventure game and didn't really transition to solving the mystery until the latter half of the game. It had a good variety of curses (in both effects and triggers), which made the curse battles such a delight - often times when you were talking with someone, you were aware THAT they had a curse stone, but not what it did or what the condition for activating it was, which made even fairly straightforward conversations extremely tense. Mermaid, for better or worse, does not go down this route - it leans into the mystery aspects of the plot almost immediately with Yuza's storyline, and its curses are both fewer in number AND far less interesting than Honjo's, so even the curse battles (which are once more the highlight of the game) are less interesting than its predecessor's. While the Curse of the Raging Waves understandably gets top billing by the game's story, it's less a curse (in the sense that Honjo used the word "curse") than it is a plot device - and beyond that, there's only two (three? If you really squint?) more traditional "curses" in the game, each with fairly straightforward activation conditions. It turns out that when you build your entire story around mermaids, your options for "what kind of weird stuff can they do?" are pretty limited!
Beyond that, what you're getting is MORE Paranormasight, and you probably already know how you feel about that. Sure, the story chart has been simplified a little (in that you only have four characters to choose from this time, but each of them get more scenes to compensate) and there's a diving minigame that it makes you play like, twice, but otherwise it's another round of silly curse mysteries that plays almost exactly like the first game did. It even continues the fine tradition of a few meta gags, including a sequence to unlock the true ending that is a lot more convoluted than I expected. None of the steps are particularly difficult on their own, they're just weird stuff that I don't think most players would do without some external prodding. Of the five steps you need to reach the true ending, I figured out like...one and a half of them, which doesn't really help when each one leads to the next step in the chain. When you see the whole thing play out, it's really cool! But I get the feeling that most people will end up following a guide to get there.
I don't know if I'd say I think it's better than the first game. They're clearly going for different things and the story structure of each game puts a different amount of emphasis on the horror and tension vs. the mystery at hand, but if pressed, I think I would say I liked the first game more. Not out of any particular failing of Mermaid, I just vibed more with the setting and its greater variety of curses. It's still a good time, mind you! I just feel like variety and interaction is a stronger asset to these games than a heavier focus on any specific theme or setting.