The time is 1 a.m., which means I’m way past my bedtime. I can feel my eyes getting tired and bleary, yet I can’t seem to stop myself from jabbing away at my Switch 2. Next to me, my dog stirs, seemingly annoyed and curious why I’ve not turned out the lights yet. But how can I, when the secrets of immortality are finally within reach? This past weekend has passed in a haze, with Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse taking over my every waking moment.
Developed by Xeen and published by Square Enix, Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse is a horror/mystery visual novel that blends Japanese folklore and legends with both real-life and fictional locations, creating a vibrant tapestry of mystique, intrigue, and just a hint of the macabre. Its predecessor, The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, followed a similar formula and that game, too, had me in its clutches over the course of the few days I spent playing it.
I’ll say right now that Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse is best experienced blind, with no expectations going into it. If you know nothing about this game and The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, but find yourself drawn to its impeccable graphical style and are interested in immersing yourself in an intricate mystery plot, read no more. This game is for you and you will not be disappointed.
But alas, because this is an entertainment website and I must write a review of what is societally considered an acceptable length, I shall go into more detail against my will.
Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse takes place in late-80s Japan, on the quiet island of Kameshima, located in the Ise Bay. While Ise Bay itself is a real place, Kameshima is fictional. Our story begins with Yuza Minakuchi, one of the four main protagonists, who embarks on a quest to become an ama diver — free divers who jump into the sea with only a rope to keep them secured to a boat as they hunt for sea creatures.
What starts off as a seemingly innocent attempt to chase a new passion is quickly revealed to be hiding a much darker secret. Not so long ago, Kameshima was ravaged by a disastrous storm, resulting in the disappearance of 10 people, with Yuza emerging as the only survivor. Because of this, the people of Kameshima have grown increasingly superstitious and suspicious of Yuza.
With new threats looming over Kameshima, it’s up to Yuza and an excellent supporting cast of characters to find out what really happened five years ago, and determine just what the hell mermaids have to do with any of this at all.
Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse‘s story is told in chapters, and often from the perspectives of different characters. At the start, you’ll only have pieces of the full story that you’re not quite sure how they fit together. Keep playing, though, and things will eventually start to make sense, and often not in the way you initially thought.
For the most part, the story is told through rather linear fashion. Clicking on a character will reveal your available dialogue options, and you’ll spend the bulk of your time exhausting all these options to get the story to progress naturally. As you continue, you’ll unlock plenty of information and contextual information in the Files section, which gives you a whole info dump on geographical history, profiles of the people you just met, and more.
Just like The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, however, The Mermaid’s Curse absolutely expects you to pay close attention to what it’s telling you. At key points during the story, you may be prompted to answer key questions like pinpointing the culprit in a particular incident, or discerning the true name of an individual. These questions are almost impossible to answer if you’re not keeping up with your Files, so here’s my big tip for you: always read the Files in between each chapter.
While this can sound overwhelming or daunting, I’m pleased to report that I found I was largely able to keep up with the mysteries that The Mermaid’s Curse threw at me throughout its runtime. One of my major complaints with The Seven Mysteries of Honjo was that there were times where I was forced to make huge logical leaps, or expected to reach a conclusion that I wasn’t quite ready to reach just yet based on the information the game had provided me. These instances were immensely frustrating and I was worried that I’d run into the same issues in The Mermaid’s Curse.
Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. There were still a few times where I’d stumble and have to pore through all of the Files again, but any time I failed to answer a question correctly, it was often because I wasn’t reading closely enough or paying enough attention to the contextual clues. The reveals always feel earned as a result, making for a much more satisfying mystery overall. There were a couple times where I felt 100% sure of an answer, but the game just wouldn’t accept it as correct because it happened to be looking for an alternative name for the same thing, and that was irritating, but thankfully it was an isolated incident.
I was initially let down by the fact that Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse didn’t feel quite as scary as its predecessor; though, to be fair, that game was only insanely creepy for the first hour before pivoting to focus more on the story. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised by how well-rounded the cast is this time around.
It helps that four of the main characters start off the story as friends, which instantly creates a sense of camaraderie between them. The fact that the story is set on a small island also sets the scene for a more tight-knit island community where everyone knows everyone. By having a smaller-scale setting and characters with pre-established relationships, The Mermaid’s Curse‘s story unfolds much more naturally as the game trusts that you’ll be able to pick up on the nuances simply based on context rather than spelling everything out all the time.
It also makes the story feel much more exciting when you do eventually meet unfamiliar characters who have seemingly arrived on Kameshima for dubious reasons. I was also pleased to see that Xeen had opted to reuse certain character archetypes, but with a twist.
For instance, our detective duo this time around is made up of a carefree Tokyo housewife and a younger, stoic psychic detective. We’ve also got an American fantasy author accompanied by a young English girl with psychic powers, which raises all sorts of funny questions when they arrive on a remote Japanese island as tourists. I know Tetsuo Tsutsumi garnered a huge fan base in The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, but I’m fairly confident that fantasy writer Arnav Barnum (Avi for short) will be able to rival him.
The writing in Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse is impeccable, with every character coming to the table with a clearly defined trait, but also with enough nuance and depth to them that they never feel boring or one-dimensional. Avi may come off as an obnoxious foreigner, but at his core he’s just a lovable goofball trying to do the right thing. Yumeko may seem like a bit of a lazy detective who just wants to go home to her husband, but she’s deceptively sharp and decisive when she needs to be.
Even Yuza, our teenage boy protagonist (and often the most boring archetype in these sorts of games), comes off as extremely likable in the way he stands up for his friends and defends them. There are no duds in this cast, and I found myself excited to jump into each character’s POV whenever it was their turn for a new chapter.
Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse also tries to shake things up a little bit in the gameplay department by introducing the diving mini-game. I’ll tell you right now that there’s not really that much to it, and you’ll spend maybe 45 minutes to an hour on diving, out of the game’s 12-hour runtime. It’s simple; when you go underwater, you press A in any direction to swim, aim your camera at a sea creatures, then press A repeatedly to harvest it. As your breath meter runs low, press X to look up at the boat, then press A to return. If you run out of breath before reaching the boat, you die and start again.
By harvesting sea creatures, you can increase your Diver Rank and attributes. These help you to spend more time underwater, swim faster, expand your search radius, and harvest more efficiently. I did feel that the diving mini-game was woefully underutilized, and was really only there to advance the plot in a couple of instances, and I wonder if there could’ve been a more elegant way to implement it in an otherwise fantastic visual novel. Still, I’m just nitpicking at this point, and I did find leveling up my Diver Rank to be rather satisfying, in a lizard brain sort of way.
The real highlight of the game is, of course, the story and its mysteries. Just like its predecessor, Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse deftly weaves together fiction and legend to create a dramatic mystery that hooks you in from the very start. The Mermaid’s Curse nails the payoff with aplomb, while delivering on the most compelling and morbid summer vacation you’ll ever experience.
A review code for the game was provided by the publisher. You can check out our review policy here. Reviewed on Switch 2.
