Editor’s note: Spoilers for Paranormasight’s opening hours to follow.
Several days after my birthday in early 2023, a review code found its way into my inbox. It was for Square Enix’s new mystery-adventure Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo. Considering this happened amidst a busy work period as press, I didn’t expect to be able to afford too much time on it. A fourth-wall break moment early on, however, quickly changed my mind.
Paranormasight is set in Sumida City, one of the wards in Tokyo, Japan. Its story revolves around a series of murders related to ancient curses. I expected a straightforward narrative with your goal being trying to save all key characters in danger. Before long, I ran into a dead end, all routes leading to getting cursed or killed by curse-bearer Yutaro Namigaki, witnessing one of the first playable characters’ demise over and over without a way to fight back.
Hitting a game over state in Paranormasight leads you into a room with an ominous character that narrates the events between story branches. After a handful of visits, the narrator gave me a few hints that got me thinking outside the box. If the curse’s effect was related to my hearing, then turning down the in-game volume entirely could work. Remarkably, that was the solution to the puzzle. Namigaki’s curse no longer affected me.
The option to adjust the voice volume is as innocuous as in every other game. Right until that moment, that is. The sequence immediately took me back to fighting Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid, its psychokinetic powers requiring the player to swap controller ports to beat him. What’s more interesting is that you don’t need said voice volume slider for anything else in-game. It literally exists for that particular puzzle, and this told me all I needed to know about Paranormasight, which has since become one of my favorite Square Enix games in recent memory.
Fourth-wall breaks aren’t rare in visual novels or adventure games, but that early moment in Paranormasight was exactly what I needed to put everything I was working on aside to soak up the narrative brilliance it had on offer and see it through to the end.