Nintendo World Report

Impressions

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Atlus brings us the stuff, again.

Random E3 Game Alert: Touch Detective is yet another quirky Japanese import courtesy of Atlus, and I can’t wait to play it in English. Unfortunately, the game shown on the floor is entirely in Japanese, and text is a large part of the gameplay. With a little intuition, I could snake my way around, and found it to have a lot of potential.

When you first begin the game, you are locked in a room, likely your own. A creature nearby talks with you and seems to be your sidekick. Control in the game is entirely touch-based: if you touch something, your character will walk to it and pick it up, if possible. The items you find in the room are a jewelry case with a skull on it, and an emerald. When you combine these items (you actually have to click the empty eye socket on the skull to insert the emerald), you can open the case and unlock the door. After you get out, you can go to a phone and make a call. This triggers a cutscene that doesn’t seem to end.

The main character is a girl, and she apparently has a butler, a mom, and an arch-nemesis. Plot will be heavy, as will dialogue and text. The top screen shows your main characters thoughts, including during cutscenes, and even when she’s talking. It also functions to move the gameplay forward. According to an Atlus rep, the main character will solve crimes for other people, but the demo seemed to indicate an overarching story found in RPGs. Once it’s localized, we’ll get to see for sure. It also remains to be seen how interesting, and more importantly fun, this Phoenix Wright style detective work will be.