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alternative jake hunter- daedalus: the awakening of golden jazz. Saburo Jinguji, or jake hunter in the west, is a series of games I've always been very curious about. i love these kinds of Japanese adventure games and they seem like pretty top of the genre games at that. Heavy on style; with a smokey, jazzy bar room kind of aesthetic to them and an art style to die for. however much like with a lot of series i want to try, i just never got around to it and eventually it just kind of slipped my mind. none of the games ever had European physical releases and the ones that did have American releases tended to be pricy and difficult to import, plus with how many were locked to Japan it always just passed me by during the hight of my adventure game days. these days though i don't have those same issues, I'm fluent in the language and the games Japanese releases don't usually have the same price barrier as their American counterparts. i would eventually rectify this blind spot when, a few years ago, i found the this specific game in a used game store and gave it a go. now that I'm finished with the game i have to say i totally get it. this game is great and i can see myself getting pretty hooked on these games and i'm very excited to dig into the rest of them. The story is the reason you come to these kinds of games and this one is a solid mystery as Saburo investigates the death of someone close to him in a foreign land, his only clue's being a small town and the word "Daedalus". It's got a likable cast, some pretty interesting mysteries and a really solid mystery at the core of it: Mafia members, the yakuza, deadly assassins and secret code-names. it's got a story that crosses country-lines and ends with a cool mix of American and Japanese story tropes that makes for a really interesting mix to watch play out. The cast aren't as prevalent or well developed as in some other series, but it's far more story focused than character focused anyway so you don't end up being too bothered by it. Though the relationship between saburo and his grandfather did move me to tears a few times over the course of the game, it's pretty powerful and it hits like a truck, plus Saburo's small group of friends are super likable and there's a cute romance there that you can engage with if you make the right choices. It nails the landing too in every chapter with it's "new culprit every chapter" kind of structure. the culprits are always well developed and their motivations are interesting. That final reveal is pretty neat to watch play out too. One downside though is the games endings, you're all but guaranteed to get the normal ending first and it's basically just the true ending without any of the catharsis or resolution, so that kind of sucks. at least it's not that difficult or time consuming to get the true end if you go back through with chapter select. it helps it's a fairly brisk adventure too, being at most 12-15 hours on your first run and that second time through can be done in an hour with chapter skips and fast foreword. the game can be pretty difficult and obtuse though, so it's hard to fully recommend for beginners to the genre. As good as the story is I do have a pretty major issue with it. Its pacing is really all over the place and I think it'll be a big barrier for some people. while the first chapter and the prologue are quick and work great, the game very quickly gets into it's biggest down point with chapter 2. it's a flashback set at a summer camp with the main cast as kids and it really drags. it's got the least engaging cast, atmosphere and characterization, the dialogue isn't the most interesting and it goes on for longer than entire other chapters combined. It's easily a good 3-4 hours of game where other chapters can generally take an hour and a half at most and it felt that length to me with how slow it can be. the camp councilors are at least interesting and the story it tells is well worth experiencing, but the manner it gets there can be a lot to work through. that said it does set up the rest of the game well and I do think it's worth powering through and I an see why it's there, it's super needed for the story they wanted to tell. One of the games cooler aspects is the visual style. The games environments are all made using photographs of real places in and around new York with a cool filter thrown over them. it gives them a real sense of place and they're all so pretty. Some of the games indoor and rural environments especially look great. the variety is there too with a ton of interesting locations to look around and talk to people. offices, small towns, campgrounds and a pretty large chunk of new York are all places you can explore more or less at will due to the games non-linier nature. The fact they're all 3D is neat too! he game uses a 360 degree camera so you can look all around an environment for clues and it's always a cool effect, it's fully seamless and they did an amazing job of covering up the blemishes you usually see with this kind of tech. character designs are great too, they're all on the more realistic end but they're super stylish and they give the game a really down to earth energy, it fits the tone of the game perfectly. Though I do think the darker more smokey jazzy bar room energy the art style of the earlier games has a little more appeal to me specifically and I find the new York setting to be a whole lot less interesting than a Japanese one even if it does fit the story the game wants to tell pretty perfectly. gameplay is fairly traditional which I like. it doesn't overly explain itself or what you're meant to do and really expects you to do the work to find the clues. it reminds me a little of a less linier silver case or 25th ward in that sense. you go around a large set of environments with a mostly open map to explore and you have to examine the environment and talk to people in order to find the clues you need. Once you have all of the clues in a given chapter the game sends you into a questioning session with the chapters culprit, where you then have to use all of your gathered clues to gain a confession. these are a lot of fun and it was always cathartic seeing the killers slowly break down and reveal the truth, like a less flashy ace attourney or danganronpa. I like this style of game a lot and here I think the less handholdy nature works really well for it. you're left to figure things out yourself, this can get a little annoying sometimes in chapter 2 where it can get super repetitive and obtuse but for the most part it is nice that the game really trusts you to be able to figure out the puzzles and the mystery on your own without the game needing to constantly explain it to you. I think people who like DS and pre-DS era adventure games will get a ton out of that. the OST by Ayako Minami is pretty killer. it nails the jazzy, noir'y atmosphere perfectly and it's catchy in its own right too. Ayako herself has done a lot of work with fromsoft on games like: enchanted arms, armored core games like nine braker and last raven, tenchu z and adventure player, though she would later leave them seemingly and work on things like child of Eden, kurohyou and this. it's a really fantastic resume, having enchanted arms on there alone puts her work above most of the industry. Also listed as a composer under the company "truejam" is Makoto Asai, who has worked on games like grandia 2, growlancer, megaman X7, radatia stories and various lumines projects. standout tracks to me include "usual noon", "ando", "hiai" and "title" for the games more piano focused tracks. it's also worth saying that each of these also has a more jazz oriented version which are as good and in some cases even better. in that section of the OST: "usual noon jazz", "ando jazz" and "hiai jazz" as well as "sousa jazz", "kinto jazz" and "hageki jazz" are the highlights. the latter of which I didn't care for on the piano side but I loved on the jazz side. The games ending theme is a great way to go out too, it's a great little funky jazz suite. as far as ways to actually play it you have a few options with ps4, switch and PC versions. the former two have physical releases so they're the versions i would go for. i myself played the game on the Japanese ps4 physical release, i picked it up a few years ago on a trip to Tokyo from a cute little used game store in oji. this version however only has Japanese as a language which is fine for me but for others i would say to try and get the Asian English release instead. it's pricier but if you don't know Japanese it's your only real option to play the game, though do know the switch version is marginally more expensive than the ps4 one. it'll run you a good £60 as opposed to the ps4 versions £40. it's a little strange that it lacks a phone port though seeing as this has always been a very phone centric series in it's recent years. the game wasn't developed by the usual jake hunter studio but rather by Neilo Inc. a small studio who has worked on some pretty killer titles of their own. their first game for example is a personal favourite of mine: orgarythm, for the PS vita. they also made last years scar-lead salvation and shutten order both of which I've been super curious to give a try. the games director Takashi Yuda was a former sega alumni that worked on games like puyo pop fever, sonic riders, space channel 5, Sakura taisen and several of the first few sonic games. It's a solid lineup of games and a talented creator. the series has tons of games that you could go and play after this one if you so desire. the slightly newer app "Tantei Jingūji Saburō New Order" which serves as a base for new stories, similar to how some otome game apps work, is the newest game in the series. Which stories are contained in it I'm not sure or if it's even still available at all. there are tons of older games though, prism of eyes for ps4 and switch, ghost of the dusk and rondo of revenge for 3DS and tons of games for the DS and psp, as well as a plethora of older titles. too many to mention, really, it's a very long running series with titles going all the way back to the famicom and the disk system. i myself picked up "innocent black" for ps2 as my next title in the series. it has some killer box art and nice OP and that was enough for me, but admittedly i also just got it because it was one of the cheaper titles available. I'm excited to try either way, i have to see how the mainline games differ! All in all i recommend this game, it won't appeal to everyone, but for that small niche that *loves* retro Japanese adventure games this is a total must play, no questions asked.