A review of the full voice ADV 'How to Walk Mystery' in which you solve mysteries using the ability of 'past vision'
Imagineer x Toybox's Nintendo Switch software '
Mystery Walk | Nintendo Switch
https://mysterywalk.jp/
'How to Walk Mystery' begins with a short movie. A girl lies in a hospital bed, slowly losing her life in someone's hands.
The protagonist, Akazawa Doppo, wakes up to a voice calling out to him, 'Wake up.'
The voice sounded like a girl's, but it was actually the train conductor calling out to Doppo. The conductor asked for his train ticket, and he was given the choice to 'search in his chest pocket' or 'search in his trouser pocket.' When he chose 'search in his trouser pocket,' he successfully found the ticket. However, even if he chose 'search in his chest pocket,' he would have to choose a different option and the story would have progressed without any problems.
Doppo and his friends from university are on their way to a training camp in an area called 'Narumizawa.' Thirty years ago, a mysterious murder occurred in Narumizawa, and Doppo and his friends are heading there to investigate the incident as part of their 'Mystery Research Club' assignment.
A member of the Mystery Research Club is Izawa Kotaro, Doppo's friend who invited him to join the club.
Tono Kagero is the heir to a global group of companies and fancies himself a great detective.
And then there's Nanjo Alice, whose father is a former superintendent general of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, and who also gained attention as a high school detective before entering university.
On the train to Narumisawa, the four encounter trouble. A young man on the train says that some rare merchandise belonging to a female idol has been stolen by someone.
While interviewing a suspect who is believed to have stolen the goods, Doppo discovers that the box of sweets the suspect had in his possession is enveloped in a purple aura. This purple aura is a 'thought' that Doppo has been able to see for about two years, and when Doppo touches it, he is able to see the 'past scenes' of that object or person.
When Doppo actually touched the aura of the candy box, the surrounding scenery became 'low resolution.' The video of the past that Doppo was watching seemed to have a retro adventure game look. From here, he could select commands to get hints from the video of the past to uncover the truth.
From the options 'window,' 'wall,' and 'garbage can,' try selecting 'window.'
'There are no visible buildings and the train just runs through the forest,' is not a particularly helpful description.
Then, the message 'Your field of vision is narrowing. It seems that your time in the past is limited' was displayed. In the prologue, you can see all the information because it is a tutorial, but from now on, you will need analytical skills and intuition to reliably obtain information with limited opportunities.
Next, I selected the 'garbage can' and discovered that the 'candy box' had been thrown away.
Then the option 'Candy Box' appeared.
Doppo's past vision reveals that the candy box was thrown away by the ``person in green clothing,'' that is, the person suspected of stealing the goods.
Afterwards, I spotted a glimpse of someone.
When you look closely, you can see that it is a person wearing a brown uniform. Someone in a brown uniform is looking at their breast pocket.
At this point the time limit came and my vision began to become distorted.
Doppo returns his consciousness to his original time. While he is able to see into the past, time moves slowly, and even when he is carefully researching something in the past world, those around him see him as if he has stopped moving for a moment.
Then the deductive part begins. Doppo puts together the information he has gained through past vision to identify the culprit who stole the goods while proving the innocence of the suspected suspects.
You can get a good idea of what the mystery part will look like by watching the movie below. Note that some of the conversation parts have been cut from the movie.
In the past scene he sees with his past vision, a box of sweets has been thrown in the trash can. There is no mistake in what Doppo saw with his past vision. Therefore, he decides to investigate the trash can.
Select an item in the trash can. The box of sweets is an empty chocolate box. There is an entry mark for an idol's fan goods on the back, but the box was found in good condition. The passenger suspected of being a fan of the idol had purchased multiple sweets with the entry mark for fan goods, and was thought to be the culprit who stole rare goods. However, since the person had thrown away the box with the entry mark, it turned out that he was just someone who liked sweets.
I was asked by Arisu to organize the information I had obtained by looking back in time and tell me who the real culprit was. I chose 'Alice,' who had never been on the radar of the investigation, but I got scolded.
The truth is, 'The culprit is... not one of the passengers.' The woman on the left is a fan of a male idol, the man in the middle knows nothing about idols, and the man on the right is a man who has no interest in idols and threw away the application mark. The logic is that none of them would have known about the stolen female idol's rare goods.
The deduction ends when you choose the correct answer from the five options. Since this episode is the prologue, even if you make a mistake, you can just choose again.
After guessing who the real culprit is, the train arrives at Narumisawa. This is the prologue of the story, and the 'Transcript' is displayed at the end of the episode. In 'How to Walk a Mystery,' the story continues whether the deductions made in each episode are correct or incorrect, but the correctness or incorrectness of the deductions is related to the 'Transcript' at the end of the episode.
When the message 'Do you want to proceed to the next story?' appears, select 'Next story.'
The story of 'How to Walk Through a Mystery' progresses in the form of a serial drama with 10 episodes. Each episode is about 30 minutes if you read it quickly, or about an hour if you listen carefully to the voices. Each episode has an opening, ending, and a preview of the next episode, so you can enjoy it like watching an anime. From the first episode, which begins after the prologue, the main goal is to pursue an old case called the 'Sanmeisou Incident,' while also dealing with minor cases that you encounter in various places.
The Yamanakisou Incident is a murder case that occurred 30 years ago on the grounds of a mansion called Yamanakisou in Narumisawa. A famous painter named Uchida Suiryu was working on a piece of art at Yamanakisou when he was discovered dead in the middle of the night, stabbed in the back. The case has now been resolved, but there are two big mysteries. The first is that Suiryu's wife committed suicide. Since Suiryu never allowed anyone near him while he was working on his art, and the only person he allowed to approach was his wife, she was suspected as the prime suspect at the time. Was the truth of the case, which ended with the suspect's death, really correct? Secondly, instead of the murder weapon, a brush was found stuck in Suiryu's body. What was the reason for this symbolic situation?
As a convenient feature for reading the story, you can press the X button to open the menu. Select 'Mystery Research App.'
As a Mystery Research app, you can refer to tips such as character lists, case records, maps, and explanations of terms. It's useful when you want to look back on the story or review information for your deductions.
Saving is done automatically before each investigation or deduction part, and you can return to a certain point by saving when you pause. You can also view the backlog by selecting 'History' from the menu or by pressing the Y button while playing. The backlog has all the features you'd want in an adventure game, such as voiceovers and the ability to rewind time to a certain point.
Also in the first episode, he discovers a purple aura on the lighter that a girl named Uchida Nagisa, whom he meets at a cafe, is looking for.
When Doppo comes into contact with the purple aura, he begins to see into the past. He sees images from a much earlier time than when he touched the box of sweets, creating an even lower resolution, more retro feel to the experience.
You can see how the past vision is played by watching the movie below.
This episode began with a search for a lighter lost by 'Nagisa's Grandpa,' the brother of painter Mizuryu who was murdered 30 years ago. Doppo and Alice's search led to the lighter being found, but Nagisa said that the brothers had a pair of lighters, and that Mizuryu's had lost the one he had before he died. Doppo finds a purple aura on the other lighter, and touches the aura to travel to the past to search for the lost lighter.
Perhaps because I'm looking back more than 30 years, I start exploring a world that is even more retro than the train. First, I find a lost lighter on a desk, so I investigate it.
Then a girl appears and I talk to her.
The girl said she was making a time capsule and wanted to put important things in it and bury it, so she collected the lighters.
Later, when I went out into the garden, I found the man painting and the girl from before.
When you return after exploring a bit, you'll find that the girl has buried the time capsule in a flower bed. Unlike the prologue's time-traveling past, here you can't choose all the options before the time limit. However, you learn some important facts: 'The girl put the lighter in the time capsule' and 'The time capsule was buried in a flower bed near where the person believed to be Suiryu was painting.'
Once the past-vision investigation is over, the next step is to 'guide' Doppo. Since Doppo keeps his past-vision ability a secret from everyone except his sister, he cannot reveal his deductions from the information he has gleaned from past-vision. Therefore, Arisu, a great detective, must hint at information and guide Doppo to the truth.
In the prologue, if you made a mistake in the reasoning part, you could just reselect the option, but from episode 1 onwards, if you made a mistake in the reasoning part, the shoe icon would turn monochrome as shown below. Depending on this point, the 'Transcript' at the end of the episode would change.
At the end of episode 1, Doppo's younger sister, Mizuki, also appears in Narumisawa.
And at the end of the episode, an ending movie was played.
The ending song is 'Holy Forest', sung by voice actress Ogura Yui as Mashiro Anna, a member of a national idol group who appears in a later episode.
Please listen to the song too (╹◡╹)
https://t.co/ybd6vIQ0bp — Yui Ogura (@yui_ogura_815) March 15, 2025
My impressions after playing 'How to Walk Mystery' were that the approach of seeing through the past was interesting. In mystery adventure games, it can be hard to notice things when there are no hints, so I was worried before playing that I would have a hard time, but the difficulty level is lowered by incorporating the ability to see through the past, which only the protagonist can use, into the story, so you can enjoy the story without stress. However, the fact that the difficulty level is not high and the story progresses no matter how many mistakes you make makes 'How to Walk Mystery' strongly feel like a novel game that you can read while enjoying the investigation and reasoning parts, and many people who play it looking for a 'mystery game that progresses with knowledge and ideas' may find it lacking.
As for the story, while the conversations between the characters are fun and pop, the goal of investigating a past murder case and the foreshadowing surrounding the case and the characters are apparent from the beginning, giving the story a real mystery feel. The use of past perspective also works well in terms of the story, making the structure of the mystery easy to understand and providing the basis for the students to 'deduce' the case from 30 years ago, making it enjoyable for both mystery fans and novices.
'How to Walk Mystery' is a Nintendo Switch software, and both the package version and the download version cost 5,980 yen including tax. It can also be purchased on Amazon, and the price on Amazon is 5,677 yen including tax.
Amazon.co.jp: Mystery Walking Guide -Switch : Games
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