AI: Somnium Documents – nirvanA Initiative Review
need to know
what is it? A fantastic visual novel where you will solve a murder mystery in Tokyo in the near future.
release date: come out now
Expected payment: £50/$60
Developer: Spike Spring Soft
Publisher: Spike Spring Soft
Comment on: Intel Core i7-10750H, 16GB RAM, GeForce RTX 2060
multiplayer game? Do not
Association: bit.ly/SomNirvana
Jin Furue was murdered. Someone cut the CEO in half and left half in the TV studio, where the Q&A was being recorded live. Kim’s other half won’t show up until six years later, and appears to have died just hours earlier. That’s the puzzling setting of AI: The Somnium Files – nirvanA Initiative, an anime visual novel but a riveting murder mystery at its core.
Given how crazy this sci-fi adventure is going to get, are you going to have other ideas. Your forever buddy — at least halfway through the game — is a nasty AI that lives in the fake eyeball where your left eye is supposed to be. With her help, you’ll unravel the mystery of the half-length serial murder case while dispelling conspiracy theories, creepy viral videos, and a cult that believes the world is just a simulation. That said, quick tips are needed when you’re not battling faceless thugs in one of the few ridiculous action scenes.
(Image credit: Spike Spring Soft)
Like its predecessor, the Nirvana Initiative is a sprawling mystery across multiple genres, combining visual novel dialogue with the aforementioned action sequences and more interactive puzzle-solving and investigation scenarios. Somehow it all came together – this generic fusion and conspiracy science fiction – because it didn’t take itself quite seriously. You’ll be amazed at the Pokémon minigames in the latest Frogwares Sherlock Holmes adventure; here, it’s just another day at the office.
The Somnium Files game is set in Tokyo in the near future and involves an elite high-tech police department who use the aforementioned eyeball AI to help them solve puzzling mysteries and surgically extract their real eyeballs. But this astounding act of dismemberment does pay dividends: With artificial intelligence in their eyes, agents can view things in X-rays or thermal vision, and walk around in beautiful VR renditions of crime scenes.
In the first half of the game, you play as a mentally unstable agent, Riyuki, whose mind begins to collapse as the case affects him. After he fails to find the culprit, the story moves forward six years and falls at the feet of a superpowered high school student named Mizuki, who is drawn into Jin’s left half after mysteriously reappearing. case.
(Image credit: Spike Spring Soft)
The two agents – thanks to those AI balls – can not only see the suspect’s skin using X-ray vision, they can also “sync” with their subconscious: a terrifying word contraction, but at least a silent P decent. Psyncing is essentially entering a dream, a la Inception. When interviewing suspects, you can do a quick “blink psync” to get a quick glimpse of their thoughts if the game allows. But the backbone of the game is full-fledged psync executed in the lab, where both the detective and the object are hooked up to a special machine.
Psync or pswim
While much of the game is a traditional, dialogue-heavy visual novel — or a lightweight adventure game when you examine the scene — psync is more reminiscent of a JRPG dungeon. Controlling your character in the third person, you’ll explore the environment drawn from the subject’s subconscious, and their innermost thoughts and feelings will manifest. For example, one character’s dream came in the form of a twisted quiz show, while another was a fun and vibrant Pokémon parody. In fact, they’re very similar to Persona 5’s psychological dungeons, but with a focus on puzzles and a strict time limit that diminishes with every action you take.
You are trying to unlock the psychic lock and finally reveal a hidden truth and hopefully find clues related to the murder. However, every movement, even walking, consumes precious time. Standing still can effectively pause time, giving you time to think and weigh your options. How will throwing this briefcase, slapping an object, or putting a shoe in this box, will open the next mental lock? But while these actions may seem random at times, the game justifies their connection to the main mind. Take a moment to think about it, or you might waste so much time that you have to start over from a previous checkpoint – at the default difficulty setting, you’re limited to 3 retries.
(Image credit: Spike Spring Soft)
I enjoy the tension during psync, but if time constraints bother you, there are ways to get around it. You can tinker with difficulties, or reload from a manual save when time runs out.Still, I urge you to try it as-is, because it’s a smart way to get players to actually do it think It’s about puzzles, not breaking into solutions through repeated trial and error, as I do in almost all adventure games.
These mind-searching dungeons may be the focal point of the Nirvana Initiative, but my favorite parts of the game are more low-key. After each new murder (of which there are quite a few), you’ll be plunged into a virtual VR version of the crime scene. Here you feel most like a proper detective, running up to the evidence and examining it directly (your X-ray/thermal vision helps), while chatting theory with the AI located in your eye-hole.
These are probably the best parts of traditional murder mysteries: the moments when assistants come up with fanciful theories—theories the readers themselves are sure to ponder—before the great detective knocks them down with arched eyebrows. Well, Nirvana’s VR crime scene is where these moments are recreated here, with the player in the role of the assistant and the great detective played by the AI.
(Image credit: Spike Spring Soft)
But as much as I enjoy investigating crime scenes, they are fairly limited in scope, and their conclusions are small and annoyingly rigid. At the end you’ll be asked what you’ve learned from each scenario – basically about what the AI is suggesting to you – that you can’t progress or do anything at all until you give your AI friends the right information Answers to other things. I know it’s a (basically linear) visual novel and not a more free-spirited detective game where you can draw false conclusions, but it’s still an obnoxious way of presenting a puzzle.
friendly fire
Not that I’m pounding the visual novel part — these are the moments that gradually drew me into the game, allowing me to adjust to its quirky cast. The Nirvana Initiative treats suspects in a very different way than traditional murder mysteries, which are often made clear by their crafty actors at a glance. After all, at any country house he is currently investigating, Poirot is an unwelcome outsider – his job as a detective is to provoke feathers and shake hornets’ nests. By contrast, here you are part of a gang. Many suspects become friends during your investigation, and if they’re not already at the start of the game, Detectives Riyuki and Mizuki are the glue that holds them together. Most of the time, interviews are less like interrogations and more like friends hanging out and talking about cases.
They’re not suspects, but party members in a JRPG – bringing memorable characters to life with a clear script and great voice acting.i won’t say i like Most of them — about half of the cast are annoying or creepy (though at least the script admits that), and I’m still frustrated with a character’s inexplicably cube-shaped head. But, over time, I started to enjoy being with them.
(Image credit: Spike Spring Soft)
Now, this may be a Stockholm Syndrome term, but I think it’s due to the quality of the writing, which walks a fine line between sleazy and straightforward, stupid and emotional. Although the cube-headed guy frustrates me, the subplot of his introverted son is well told.
Sometimes you forget you’re playing a murder mystery — a more vile word might be “stuff” — but it pays to make you care about this group of suspects. These emotional subplots only become more effective when the killer knocks on the door again.
I say the game is most Linear, that’s because there are multiple endings that branch off from transfers that don’t happen often when psyncing. There aren’t as many branches, but they’re used in fascinating ways, ending certain subplots where you’ve identified the killer.
(Image credit: Spike Spring Soft)
That would be a bad ending in any other game, but here they can be very happy, giving NPCs a satisfying ending at the expense of overall mystery. Going back to the previous chapter, those moving conclusions may never happen in order to part ways with the “true” path. Sure, it turns out you’ve solved the mystery of the bust serial murder — but at what cost?
However, with its branching path and two time periods, the game does feel like a long stretch.I end up moaning whenever I know psync is coming because that would be other Added half an hour for no reason. Oh, and there are some flimsy excuses for subjects refusing to share information, but this is a story that feels loose and lengthy at times.
I don’t mind too much, though, and in a game that blends genre and composure, it maintains its core mysteries even as it indulges in conspiracy theories and the weirdness of the dream state. It’s a philosophical sci-fi story, but with clear constraints on its future technology, and ultimately a plausible explanation for its impossible crimes. Most importantly, this is a game that respects the art of detective storytelling and does a decent job of presenting itself.
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