Horror and visual novels. Two genres that go together hand in hand. There’s nothing like reading your way through a creepy story accompanied by some excellent visuals and spooky music. Games like Worlds End Syndrome and other horror visual novels are few and far between but when they do come around, they’re always interesting.
The latest entry to fuse the visual novel genre to horror is Hermitage: Strange Case Files. This visual novel from developer Arrowiz and publisher Giiku Games did exceedingly well in China and has now been translated to English. It’s always a bit of a crap shoot to see how translation from Chinese goes into English, but be assured, the translation for Hermitage is nothing short of exceptional. Sure, there are a few typos in this incredibly text-dense visual novel, but if you didn’t know any better, you’d swear that the game was written in English by an award-winning author. The dialogue is simply superb with an abundance of nuance and depth.
Hermitage tells the story of a nameless Store Manager who is inexplicably trapped in a bookstore in urban China, unable to leave. From this bookstore, his web extends outward to a variety of contacts who you encounter during the game. He’s sort of a weirdness magnet and troubled people gravitate to his store. In each of the game’s five main chapters, someone shows up at Hermitage with some sort of supernatural problem which you as the Store Manager must use your contacts, knowledge, books, and the internet to solve. It’s a unique approach to a supernatural detective story and one that feels very well–designed. Characters are recurrent and their depth slowly builds over the course of the story as small details create a world that pulls the player/reader in bit by tantalizing bit.
There are also some light gameplay mechanics in Hermitage. The manager will respond to conversations in a variety of ways that subtly change the feel of the story, examine things here and there, surf internet forums for clues, gather his thoughts while having a smoke (he’s a chain smoker…apparently that’s more acceptable in China), and even have text chats with other characters. The main thrust of the gameplay is putting together clues to solve questions that come up during each case though. As you read through the story and investigate, you’ll gather clues that are put into a book. At preset points, you’ll sort those clues into three key points that if successfully chosen, confirm your suspicions and advance the story. Here’s where things fall apart though.
In Hermitage: Strange Case Files, when you put your clues together, there are three chances to get it right. Assuming you didn’t save (and you can save anywhere), there is no going back and making different choices. On a first playthrough of any case, you can absolutely fail to confirm your suspicions in three tries as some clues are subtle. The game progresses with no outward signs you have done anything wrong. Unfortunately, you’ve failed the case and lost the game, you just don’t know it yet. Fail any suspicion check in pretty much any level and you lose: game over. But it’s not right away. The game lets you keep playing for literally hours, reading your way through a story until you get to the end of a case and find yourself lacking the clues to proceed and ensuring failure. You get a bad ending and usually the people you are helping are brutally slain by supernatural forces. Then the game just starts over at the beginning!
This incredibly unforgiving design is carried throughout Hermitage: Strange Case Files. Why the developers chose to only give you three tries to solve the case is puzzling, as there’s no real reason to do so in what realistically would work fine as a kinetic visual novel. But the simple fact is there are plenty of gotcha points in the game that let you proceed blithely along thinking you’re all good until the inevitable doom overtakes everyone. There are even some trick areas of Hermitage that give you bad endings if you make the wrong selection or don’t read a book again at a particular time. For a game that takes hours to get to the first interactive point, this is rather disappointing.
Now, make no mistake, Hermitage is an absolutely spectacular read. But it can also be incredibly frustrating. Even with high-speed text advance and knowing the right selections to make, getting back to where you were can take a half hour or more easily. It’s that text-dense. And the music doesn’t help much either. Hermitage has an excellent soft jazz soundtrack that worms its way slowly into the back of your psyche. But sitting in bed with a visual novel that plays soft jazz tends to, well, have a soporific effect. Don’t be surprised if you’re slowly dozing off to the relaxing music as the smoke curls around the Store Manager’s face. The limited number of tracks in the soundtrack is a bit repetitive as well and after a few hours, you’ll find that you notice tracks repeating regularly. It’s a great soundtrack and the composer is excellent, but there’s just not quite enough there.
Visually, Hermitage is excellent too. The stylized artwork is simply outstanding and you really feel the dark and subtly creepy atmosphere of each case as the game progresses. It’s a realistic cartoons style similar to Darkest Dungeon, but with a bit more flair and a hint of Steins; Gate here and there, even if the line art is thicker and richer. The art complements the story in a way that’s rarely seen in this style of visual novel and the backgrounds, story elements and overall character design are all excellent.
Hermitage is a beautiful game with well-designed menus and responsive controls. It’s hard not to love nearly everything about Hermitage, honestly. Everything except being able to fail and keep playing for hours that is. Well, that and the fatal bug that popped up when dinking around in the relationship menu. In a certain part of Case 1, highlighting a character profile and then skipping to the manager’s while zoomed in killed the game every single time. Without delving further it’s hard to say whether the whole game has that glitch or not, but it was irritating as there’s a fairly long load time from scratch on the Switch. Fortunately, none of that is necessary and it’s not a game breaker, but it was still surprising to find.
If you like horror and visual novels, and you have the patience to read a spectacular amount of text, Hermitage: Strange Case Files is well worth your time. The world creation is top notch, the visuals are excellent, the music is enjoyable (if a bit repetitive) and the stories are fascinating. Make sure you save regularly though, especially before any suspicion checks! This is a game that might be too heavy for some players but if you love to read and the weirder side of horror appeals to you, this is one worthwhile game and at $20, you’ll definitely be getting your money’s worth here as Hermitage: Strange Case Files manages to truly capture the imagination as you play!
This review was based on a digital copy of Hermitage: Strange Case Files. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Hermitage: Strange Case Files is also available for Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC on Steam.