The Silver Case

Kill the past

GOD SUMIO

Great story and a solid introduction to Suda51's world, surprisingly immersive too. The plot's quite surreal and real simultaneously. If you like postmodern investigative stories with banger music in the background while you interact with a rich spatial and textual world, Play this game

kill the past

pseud drivel

and I eventually killed the past.

This is a visual novel that is better played than watched.

Admittedly a bit of an acquired taste, but I think those with patience and fans of Suda's work will find a lot to appreciate.

Suda51 the mad dev could do better!

The Silver Case is a hard game to review. in it's most simplest form, it is a dated visual novel with one of the most compelling stories told in video games in the past 2 - 3 decades. At it's most, its a full on story about the idea of crime and the justification people use to rationalize said crime.
It's really hard to talk about The Silver Case without talking about SUDA51's Kill The Past series of games. TSC is the first game in the series and is later on followed by Flower, Sun and Rain and then The 25th Ward (the actual sequel to TCS). Each of these games, even if it seems as far fetched are interconnected as ever, like a string of web all spread across the internet. Simply put, TCS is the point where it all started.
About TCS, its quite simply, spectacular. you don't see narratives in games like this anymore, narratives that not only are intriguing, but are still faithful to the medium. games like detroit become human and the telltale games might have better narratives, but they are more interactive movies. Not TCS. TCS is special, it really is. There's nothing like it on the market as of right now. it's like a lynchian fever dream recreation of silence of the lambs except now its a huge case across one of the biggest counties (districts?) in Japan, The 24th Ward. It's insane. i can't describe it because no matter how much i can tell you about the game, it will never live up to the experience of playing the game.

51/10 would lend 50,000 yen.

Lend me 50,000 yen.

Quite an intelligent game. Suda began to cook here. Every story beat and the themes of the game were engaging and all the character interactions felt authentically put together. Tokio and Tetsu are my favourite characters. The bartender calling Red "rather nasty" definitely hurt my feelings too.
Unfortunately it was very difficult to follow sometimes with the presentation changes happening between Transmitter and Placebo, also with some chapters within Transmitter. I got confused on who's who with all that going on. I'm sure 5 hours of video essays on the game will bandage that problem together.
Should have completed the game sooner.
I would pay ¥50,000 in today's money for Flower, Sun and Rain on PC.
I am going to turn into a truck now.

finally went and completed this. yeah it's alright. honestly the reporter sections are a pain in the ass. I accidentally didnt do them alongside the main campaign with big dick and that was probably worse. was slightly confused about some things, but made it up through context, and honestly maybe it worked out better this way?

the reporter section has you just constantly checking the computer in 1 room mostly and sometimes you talk to your turtle. not super great, but some of the extra context is nice, I just dont care for tokio. the other section with big dick though does the thing some other suda games do where unrelated stuff pops up for no reason, which is where I bounced off the game the first time years ago, the case with the kid and his dead friend, just did not care. the case after is also unrelated to the whole kamui umehara thing too, but at least there's explosions I guess. overall plot kinda falls apart in the details, but as a general vibe it works I guess.

anyway decided to check out flower sun and rain after this, on my nintendo ds, and it kinda sucks (not cause of the ds, that's great, they should have put more on that system), but it's a weird number puzzle game and nothing like this one, tokio's in it though eventually according to the opening credits, not sure how much the context form this matters. I mostly played silver case cause of no more heroes 3 and travis strikes again having kamui make cameos. yeah honestly doesnt make any more sense why he's there lol, also knowing the end of this game, he's also not even in this game technically :) the guy in no more heroes is different and bruh, I dont want to play 25th ward to find out, not worth it lol. I already had this game and flower sun and rain is gonna burn me out from how much it wants to waste my time lol.

hands down, the best story in gaming history

i love how it keeps a fine line between everything essential: humor, plot and engaging characters that are easy to love and have intense feelings towards. its political message as well as questions about identity and belonging are timeless. this game holds so well despite its age because of its narrative, impeccable style and fun writing.

its probably my favorite game and i envy everyone who still haven't played it

This was a quite captivating experience! I like the retro vibes and unique UI/design of the game. The music is awesome too and I enjoyed the variety of visuals! The plot is very interesting, though I found it rather confusing for the most part and only understood the gist of it towards the end (plus a bunch of the details I had to look up later lol). Despite that I got really invested in the lore and love the creative story regardless. Additionally I enjoyed the funny dialogues and characters.
Overall I really loved the heavy, surreal and mysterious atmosphere, the constant uncertainty and vagueness actually made it more uncanny and impactful. Moreover I highly enjoyed all of the concepts and ideas, especially when the story explored diverse topics of psychology, philosophy, politics, etc!
I suppose the gameplay is somewhat rough as a whole; it's not difficult and certainly has entertaining elements but often it got simply annoying to repeatedly move around when it could've just immediately skipped to the next cutscene. Also a vast amount of animations (such as the computer in the appartment or introductions of the locations) are simply too long, it was eventually aggravating to be forced to see the same unskippable animations several times within a few minutes and made the gameplay feel incredibly slow at times. Besides that forced slow pace I don't really have any complaints however and found most of the game very enjoyable!

Loved it but it's far from Suda's best

On the level of "FLower, sun, and rain" and "killer7"; no, not really same level, but in the same order of artistic quality.
Entirely recommended if you look to videogame as a cultural and art medium; and you should play this before "Flower, sun, and rain", and both before "killer7", while you should, definitely, play all 3 of them.

Suda51 at his best.
Works very well on Steam Deck, even though some controller inputs got swapped somehow.

Great aesthetics, strong character writing, rough pacing, great story. Bends the limits and breaks the confines of what most other visual novels normally do within the genre.

BELIEVE IN THE NET

the best visual novel, or whatever it is, of all time

right ear twin peaks
left ear the x-files

**Insanely** well written. The story explores themes of morality, corruption, psychological trauma and the blurred line between 'reality' and multiple characters perceptions.
Easy 100%, Definitely worth full price.
Also, Kusabi best character.

Нуу...

i hate visual novels but wow

interesting visual presentation, if only there wasn't the typewriter sound and the flashes of blue light every time someone speaks and the walls of text. At first I was interested but after watching a lowpoly car drive for like 5 minutes with nothing else happening but annoying sounds I quit

i play with my turtle

/ is an undeniable proof that god is in the cables, so BELIEVE IN THE NET

Can't recommend it enough. Can you lend a brother 50.000 yen?

i have no live weight

The translation is terrible, it feels like how a Japanese indie-dev would translate. Dialogues are statements that just don't seem to flow into each other. You get things like Ward 24, being referred to as 24 Wards, confusing you and making you require a guide to understand the already convoluted backstory. I do not understand how the reviews are so positive

yeah

kino

now if only fsr could get remastered

its alright

More of a surreal psychological thriller than a full on detective/investigation game, but the plot's mystery aspects are strong enough to appeal to genre fans nonetheless. Chapter 5 has a really boring stretch where you just climb up and down towers but apart from that this game really starts to come together around the 'Parade' chapter.

Tokio Morishima is literally me

Believe in the net...

gave me the will to live

10/10

so he's pretty much like a f

Kusabi and sumio have the most compelling romance in gaming

I want to live.

Lend me 50,000 yen.

This game exceeded the borders of uniqueness, it is something of its own down from the art direction to the representation to the storytelling, and it can't be replicated in any other medium. this piece of work can't be called a game or a movie, I don't know what can this be identify I as?

This game is worth 50,000 yen

"KILL THE PAST"

this games good as hell i love reading emails

can be confusing at times but kino.

It is a very unique approach to Visual Novels' gameplay. This game helps the player integrate himself even further into the game by allowing him to move and even solve simple puzzles. The directing is very unique, memorable, and exciting compared to classic VNs. It has a great soundtrack and an interesting story that touches many of the social subjects of Japan in the late 90s. What surprised me was how close the concept of Kamui is to the concept of Lucy Monostone from MPD Psycho manga which started releasing 2 years before the game release. Still a very interesting experience, I hope Visual Novel fans will look into it more.

The Silver case is a visual novel with light adventure gameplay elements sprinkled on top, made originally in 1999 and remastered in 2016 both done by Grasshopper Manufacture, and this is a SUDA51 game by definition.

This being my first KTP game, and not being an astute visual novel guy, this game was a welcome suprise in both ways. I will definitely binge through the rest of the franchise if those games also have strong narratives, themes, and amazing characters.

I usually use a structuralized review style, rating graphics, controls, sound/music etc. but I don't it's neccesarily needed here so a Pro/Con review method will suffice.

Pros:

- Amazing story that not only holds up, but I think is even more important nowdays

- Gobsmackingly good ost (this is what got me to play the game in the first place)

- Great visual style and Character Designs

- Hefty story (around 15~ hours)

- Very well written characters

- Humor is spot on, along with the really depressive parts

Neutral (heh):

- Pacing is all over the place at times (beginning feels more like a day-to-day cop drama, but eventually goes back to a main over-arcing story.)

- Movement is akward

- New remixes and stuff sometimes take me out

- New intro is kinda meh

Cons:

- This game works if you love this genre of a game, but if loathe it to a high degree, then it's just a slog.

- While the character design is great, expressive, and memorable - there are times when they are similiar to one another and often you will mistake characters for different ones, or see one you already know in such an esoteric way that you don't even recognize them

- It's kinda overpriced tbh

- Puzzles are meh, like the beginning chapter had the only one that was interesting

- Some chapters are pretty repetitive, especially in the start of the game

- As could be discerned from the above mentioned gripes: the game takes time to get to the meaty parts, so keep on keepin' on till those parts come.

Overall: This is a great read if you enjoy cop dramas, and by the end want some life lessons about society, nature of control, political corruption and power hunger, letting the past go and rising above it, and grasping that fucking light and never letting go of it. It can be a slog, but getting through the end is worth it, and will stick with you for a while.