Recalling Spike Chunsoft’s Danganronpa popular franchise in more ways than one, Nippon Ichi Software’s Process of Elimination introduces players to a large cast of eccentric characters trapped in a conveniently enclosed environment and slowly goes about picking them off one by one. Only the mastermind behind this game’s mayhem isn’t a robotic teddy bear, but a far more run-of-the-mill serial killer known as the Quartering Duke.
This mysterious figure has somehow managed to gather Japan’s top detectives in one location—an elaborately designed manor in the middle of nowhere—where they’re forced to work with one another in order to survive. As one with any experience with this brand of visual novel-adjacent mystery thriller could easily predict, each of these sleuths has a secret or two to hide, nothing is truly what it seems, and there’s a grand conspiracy that ends up connecting all of the seemingly miscellaneous plot points into a convoluted Pepe Silvia-esque narrative web.
Something that will also come as a surprise to no one is that Wato Hojo, the game’s primary protagonist, is destined to make it out unscathed. He’s been given the accurate moniker of “Incompetent Detective” by his fellow private eyes and serves as the voice of reason whenever one of Process of Elimination’s other gumshoes start flying off the rails, but he’s also an incredibly bland entity who never makes much of an impression beyond complaining a lot and getting into Shinji Ikari-esque pity parties over his perceived lack of resolve.
The rest of the game’s ensemble are more engaging, if only by the sheer ridiculousness of how some of them have been conceived. Among them is Armor Detective, who dons a suit of armor and never once takes it off; Mystic Detective, who rocks an eyepatch, cooks British-themed breakfasts, and solves cases involving werewolves and ghosts; and Techie Detective, a boy genius with a PhD from an unnamed “overseas university” who’s confined to a wheelchair. While there’s a few too many characters whose deaths are telegraphed early on—a character will usually get a heartwarming moment of pathos before being brutally disposed of immediately after—they still make for a fairly lively bunch to spend 20 or so hours with.
Also like Danganronpa, jarring tonal shifts are the order of the day in Process of Elimination. Here, moments of silly anime-styled comedy will follow a gruesome murder and vice versa, and given that you’ll be spending approximately 80% of the campaign reading text, the game practically invites you to experience its wall-to-wall ludicrousness in short doses.
As for the remaining 20% of the game, players will be completing investigation simulations, during which you move the remaining operatives around on a giant chess-like board in order to solve the game’s most recent murder. Some detectives have special skills that outshine those of their fellow colleagues, like Rowdy Detective’s ability to scour larger swathes of any given location, while some characters are hindered in different areas, such as Techie Detective and his inability to move very far during their given turn for extremely ableist reasons.
There’s a decent amount of strategy that’s required in order to accomplish any of the investigation’s objectives in a limited amount of turns, but these end up constituting such a low amount of the game’s playtime that you’re left wishing for a better balance between Process of Elimination’s non-interactive sections and the far too scarce interactive segments. The game is an absurdist lark, with a few potent howlers and some delirious plotting, but also one that never quite compensates for the overwhelming amount of text that it forces you to read.
This game was reviewed with code provided by NIS America.
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Plays a visual novel
Complains about the game being a visual novel
I think you need to stay away from reviewing visual novels if your main complaint is “too much text”
Sorry, I have to respectfully disagree with the person above (or below, however this is put up). It really is too much text. It’s mostly text, and doesn’t have enough branch options or decision-making opportunities for the player, which is where it pales in comparison to Danganronpa, which has a very healthy dose of player autonomy and mystery-solving to mix with what is also a very large amount of reading. And most of the reading in Danganronpa is during important scenes and class trials, which makes it much more engaging for the player. When I was playing this game, I would start to feel my mind wander a bit because there was SO much pointless conversation that seemed to be put there just for the sake of it. It didn’t aid in making the characters more interesting or compelling. It just seemed long-winded and almost made me feel like it wasn’t edited down before being released. I find the game intriguing to a degree and it has potential, but it’s unbalanced and I think that is what this review is trying to get across.