Retro Mystery Club Vol.2: The Beppu Case (PC)
Beppu isn’t the first city you’ll hear about when you consider taking a trip to Japan, but this town with a little over 100,000 people still has some unique sights to see. From the Seven Hells hot springs with their waters of many colors to an underground diving area to a theme park with a double Ferris wheel, Beppu and areas near to it in the Oita Prefecture do seem like an interesting place to host a story. Retro Mystery Club Vol.2: The Beppu Case is sadly not able to capture them fully though with its deliberately retro style meant to evoke games like the Famicom Detective Club series. However, it does still make those moments you’re not directly involved in solving its mystery more stimulating, and when the plot can intertwine with something like the underground diving it definitely shows that Beppu was a wonderful pick to host this detective game.
Retro Mystery Club Vol.2: The Beppu Case is a follow-up to the the previous Retro Mystery Club game, The Ise-Shima Case, but beyond a brief conversation with a character from that game, you aren’t required to play the first game to understand this one. Instead, the game begins with you working as a detective in Tokyo alongside Ken Kaimeiji, but the two of you can’t seem to keep in your jurisdiction very well. Rather than getting in trouble though, you’re assigned to a new task force capable of working across different jurisdictions, you and Ken’s first job in this capacity seeing you sent to Beppu in order to provide some security to an upcoming art installation. Despite looking like a game from the 1980s, Retro Mystery Club Vol.2: The Beppu Case is a completely modern tale, characters using smartphones and the reason you’re called in for security evens ties to online death threats the involved artists have been receiving of late. In a rather appropriate touch, the art exhibition is a blend of old and new as well, the bamboo crafts of Soichiro Anan being 3D scanned for a light show that is to be held in a few days time. An unexpected death starts to get the ball rolling on your detective work though, the player and Ken traveling around Oita in their investigations to try and identify a culprit and prevent things from escalating any further.
One major improvement over the first Retro Mystery Club is the game’s strong sense of focus and that leads to a lesser sense of helplessness. Ken and the player are always on task and following a lead, some of their investigations going in unexpected directions but it does feel like you’re building up towards the truth over time and being fed interesting twists to make your work worthwhile. The story doesn’t get sidetracked too often either, the player free to sometimes look at the nearby area a bit if you do wish to indulge in the game’s more tourist aligned moments, but you can also get straight to the point and interrogate people to get things moving. Retro Mystery Club Vol.2: The Beppu Case also keeps the relevant cast members pretty tight knit, it fairly easy to start to get an understanding of everyone’s relationship to each other so you’re left with a lot of room for theorizing on who may be the guilty party and what their motivations could be.
The characters you get to meet can be an entertaining bunch, like the Anan family’s maid Mitsu having an unusually perfect memory for time working more as a fun quirk despite its obvious use for establishing concrete details about the case. Tokiko, an older woman who runs a popular inn, remains deliberately enigmatic but not in an off-putting away, her coy flirtatious nature making it hard to get straight answers without it being too frustrating. Ken himself is certainly the game’s star, your partner youthful, excitable, and a bit simple-minded at times but still can do his job when it counts. He’s often a source of the game’s more comedic moments or ones where you need to push through a potentially depressing low point, his go-getter attitude able to keep things moving forward even when things seem hopeless. Considering you don’t speak at all, his role as your mouthpiece definitely helps you to get to know him best, but there’s also characters like the novice artist Fumika who appear often where it’s easy to get invested in her own struggles. On the one hand, Fumika wants to be a renowned artist and nearly overworks herself to do so, but she bumps up against her own limits and wishes she could provide more value than simply knowing the Beppu area since it’s her hometown. There are characters you’ll come to disdain as well, the reporter Hirata a constant nuisance who sensationalizes the case and adds to your problems, but luckily there are times where you’ll be able to prevent things from going south thanks to your detective work and specific actions in the moment.
Retro Mystery Club Vol.2: The Beppu Case is best thought of as a visual novel since it doesn’t allow things to diverge too much and you’re often made to stay in an area until you’ve gathered all available clues or testimony. There will still be moments with plenty to do, things like investigating the crime scene having you actually click on areas of the screen to get details, while others it will be just asking about all relevant subjects until it’s time to move along. Luckily, Ken has a pretty strong sense for when your next action might not be the obvious next course of action. For example, there are times you need to look something up on your smartphone to learn something important, Ken usually telling you to do so if there weren’t subtler hints. This means rarely are you lingering in a place wondering what you’re meant to do, and with the game taking me almost 12 hours to complete, it’s a bit surprising how well the game maintains its momentum. Part of it can be the game does a good job of distracting you at times with the local attractions so you don’t notice the runtime, but the case is still intricate and multi-faceted enough without having to indulge in constant swerves or cheap twists.
Retro Mystery Club Vol.2: The Beppu Case won’t be as deep as some detective games in terms of what you’re doing, most of the time you just select options from a menu box on the right that includes things like Question, Investigate, and Show. The story being told is the important element though rather than you needing to make specific deductions, although there are times where you are given a broad set of options so you need to do a little problem solving or use your knowledge of the evolving case to give the appropriate response. There are a few rare moments that are more interactive like that earlier mentioned underground diving segment which actually requires you to navigate the caves underwater, and with limited oxygen it can be a bit tense if you get turned around and lose your way in the aquatic maze.
The game’s art style can be a bit of a mixed bag during certain moments though. The characters are expressive and outside an unintentionally funny image of a monk they depict the person’s emotions well, but those wonderful sights the game likes to draw your attention to can’t be depicted too well or the game even makes the curious choice not to show them in much detail. The literally red hot Blood Pond of the Seven Hells is definitely the most striking, and yet you only get to see the buildings near it. However, the game can make interesting use of such areas for foreshadowing or even some unexpected leads that would only work in such a location, although perhaps it was wise not to have the scenery steal the spotlight too often since otherwise the plot is well-paced and only a few reveals feel a little strange in their narrative placement. Much like the previous game though, there is a nice digital manual included with a song with Japanese lyrics that plays as you read it, and generally the game does have an effective soundtrack that can add some extra emotion to moments you already feel more because you get to know the characters beyond their role as suspects or sources of information.
THE VERDICT: Retro Mystery Club Vol.2: The Beppu Case handles its core mystery well, working towards new leads and new revelations at a steady pace so its narrative momentum doesn’t run out. However, the game wisely slows down so you can get to know the key characters well, allowing you to both form your own suspicions but also come to be invested in their fates. Your role as the player is more to go through a set of menu options to progress the investigation, but there are times it will be rewarding to notice a detail and make the appropriate action and there are a few more involved sections like the underground diving maze. It even has a few moments you can indulge in a little tourism for the unique sights of the city of Beppu, giving you some extra motivation as fascinating real world places intermingle with an intriguing fictional case.
And so, I give Retro Mystery Club Vol.2: The Beppu Case for PC…
A GOOD rating. While the Retro Mystery Club series could do more to make the player’s detective work feel valued, Retro Mystery Club Vol.2: The Beppu Case does feel like it has a much stronger handle on how to write a mystery than the first game while also taking place in a setting with far more interesting details to uncover. Beppu and the surrounding area are used well both as places interesting on their own merits and as hosts for special moments in the case but the game exercises the proper degree of restraint so that these local areas being relevant doesn’t feel like a hokey attempt to show off the town’s tourist destinations. The mystery needed to be strong and well structured so you’re fed meaningful information often, and besides holding a few details close to its chest perhaps a little too long, Retro Mystery Club Vol.2: The Beppu Case does keep stoking your interest with a steady stream of key details. Even when you’re not learning about something related to that first mysterious death you’re still working towards subjects relevant to the case, the tale having more layers that allow it to focus on different aspects without feeling like it has lost its focus. Spending so much time with the extended cast is definitely a huge boon, the player able to care more about the mystery than if this was typical police work and rarely does it feel like the game wants you to think of someone solely as a person to interrogate. Not everyone will have a narrative arc like Fumika, but other characters are managed well so they can have some extra depth that makes solving the case more emotional than if everything was too professional.
Retro Mystery Club Vol.2: The Beppu Case being the second game in the series helps to put into focus more the intent behind this series, that partly because it handles things better in most regards than the first volume. The pearl industry of Ise was an interesting subject to learn about, but Beppu’s sights and culture are highlighted well here and the town chosen certainly has a strong range of unique things to learn about. The main mystery though feels like it has a much stronger sense of how to give itself more substance so it can better keep the player occupied and thinking about what they know so far, the mysterious death, the online threats, and the character relationships giving you a great deal to consider even though your path through the plot doesn’t often ask you to directly put your theories to the test. However, a mystery book or film can work well without you getting involved in unraveling things, so Retro Mystery Club Vol.2: The Beppu Case can still engage the player with plenty of things that pique their interest or get them thinking, this definitely a nice step up in structure and concept from the Ise-Shima Case.