• Finished 6th August 2023
  8/10

Wonderful story, carefully thought out and drip feed just enough information to let you figure out its main beats moments before the reveals but never much earlier. Very satisfying way to tell a story. Gameplay however is not perfect. It's outrageously easy for 98% then suddenly leaps in the last dungeon although if you've played well it just makes the difficulty feel "normal" instead. Also wish the party characters had been fleshed out better. Overall a very good experience. Would play again.

• Finished 23rd February 2024
  5/10

Really not as terrible as I remembered. Really fun puzzles and mood but ultimately let down by abysmal combat which at first is tolerable but in the last stages becomes a real chore if not source of frustration. The story needed a bit more fleshing out as it seems to be in a very realised idea but one that they forgot to let the player in on. People come and go and very little is explained to anyone’s motives. Still, it was fun in its own ps1 way but a hard recommend.

• Finished 2nd April 2024
  4/10

Not great, not good, not average, not utterly awful. The combat is rubbish, the platforming is rubbish and collecting all pickups is very easy to softlock. Now the positives, amazing music (but taken from the movie so no credit there) nice level layouts and varied designs and atmosphere and lighting.......but it's just a slog to play. Sometimes it feels 7/10 then swiftly returns to being a 4/10 when enemies show up or there's some trash autorun dash section. Bonus level also felt like a wasted opportunity to have better main levels.

• Finished 4th April 2024
  8/10

Really nice idea and very lavish production values. Just a shame it was very short and the puzzles felt unbalanced. Chapter 2 (of 12) was diabolical and then the rest of the game was incredibly easy It makes for a cozy night in but not one you would probably ever bother playing again. Reminds me alot of those free escape room games you get into on your phone and really enjoy but also don't really talk about to anyone after. Lovely videos segments though. Worth a go once if it's your jam.

• Finished 15th February 2025
  7/10

Jail breaker is a flawed but interesting game that sort of feels like an early version of what would later become the Outlast, Alien Isolation style of genre. First-person adventure game with a heavy emphasis on plot and fetch quests and avoiding enemies you cannot fight that can kill with one hit. Unfortunately, the stealth and evasion here is really rubbish. At first with the easier enemies, it works. But later, the enemies are much faster and the visibility distance is so far, they will be coming before they have even entered the draw distance. It’s very easy to find yourself stuck in a corner with an enemy coming from both sides.

The map is all made up of large square tiles too also causes frustrating as enemies see you on diagonal corners too easily. Avoiding them in closed spaces if very clunky, sometimes you can run past sometimes you won’t quite fit. Evasion in general is rough as your character moves like a stiff robot. The most frustrating aspect is that once spotting the game will spin around to face the enemy before giving you control back. This makes evasion incredibly frustrating as your first movement is just to turn yourself around again and try to run. It’s hair pulling and there was no reason for this and removing this alone would improve the game so much.

The system of being unable to see enemies on a radar until you find an upgrade chip makes things worse. One area in particular was utterly insufferable without the radar working at first. To make matters worse is that enemies still move when outside the room you are in. You can exit a room and be immediately spotted by an enemy and stuck and die instantly. You can’t see it on the radar either and this caused far too many unfair deaths.

The game also desperately needed a retry button. Every time you die you it plays a gameover fmv and has to load back to the start. Then you have to load the load menu and load your file. Then exit the save room (with another loading screen). I’m not usually too fussed about load times but this game really grates as you can die so quickly. The game does let you have a few items to destroy enemies but they are so few (about 3-4) and far between and with no idea how much game is left or how difficult it will get, I ended up saving all of them until the very end and didn’t use any.

Now the rough gameplay aspect is out the way lets move on to where this game excels—atmosphere and storytelling. The game really should have (and if made today would have) been a walking simulator. Exploring the prison and delving deeper and deeper, meeting other inmates and finding notes and slowly unravelling the plot as your character recovers her memories and pursues the elusive Nisnus is really fun. I often found myself wanting to play more just to see what happens next.

Unfortunately, I think the game wrapped up with a few gaps and aspects I felt were very poorly explained or developed. Characters come and go and the mysterious little girl Lala in particular felt very poorly explained. Without saying too much, the entire 3rd area of the game was so interesting at first then seemed to just make no sense at all and had no real point and felt very “here for variety” rather than real story importance.

The game flow generally has you run around finding items, codes, keys or items or NPC dialogue flag needed to solve whatever the present obstacles are. However, the game is very very particular about the order you do this in, to the point of ludicrousness. One time the protagonist wouldn’t pick up some matches because they were “damp” and decided to leave them there to “dry”. Lo and behold later when I needed the matches, they were now mysteriously dry and she would pick them up. It makes the back and forth very tedious. The game also constantly makes you back track with reasons to have to go back for something.

The game makes extensive use of FMV over it’s 2 discs and for a lesser-known company this was very pleasing in that creepy PS1 kind of way. All full voiced bizarrely in English too and mostly natural sounding writing. The game is very campy at times but again that is part of its charm. The music was also a little bit hit and miss. The in-game atmospheric music was really beautiful and stuff I would like to go back to, but some of the supporting cast’s “theme” songs were a bit jarring and didn’t fit the mood to me.

It really sounds like I didn’t like this game but I honestly did it just tends to be hardwork but then when the highs are happening you forget the last hour of hairpulling frustration you just went through and are immersed all over again. Should you play? I think so. Will it always be fun? Absolutely not.

• Finished 28th February 2025
  7/10

Ningyo no Rakuin gives a fantastic first impression. The cover is cool and early game footage looks cool. The intro story scenes are so cool. The premise is really really cool and very original for the genre (albeit loaned from Lovecraft). It’s such an unusual vibe and reminds me of the experimental ps1 era that birthed games like Koudelka and Parasite Eve. It will get any hidden gem hunter drooling at a potential new hit. However, for all its highs it has quite a number of rough flaws.

Weeks later, I’m still conflicted on the story. The highs are so high but the rest is so flat. I still don’t feel like I really finished the game as there are things I want to know more about that were never explained. There were some great story ideas explored here but they story quality didn’t sustain throughout.

One early high is when Keisuke is given a gun to fight the human cultists and after killing one, a moral dilemma cutscene plays out. Not many games do this and this is where the game shines. It tries to keep things realistic and plausible. There is some great early writing and characterisation and set up as you play. However, the latter third of the game really seems to fizzle away in terms of story and feels rushed at the end.

The game has a few different variations on endings, and I think this hurts the writing. For example. the ending route most people will naturally reach had some very dismissive reactions to a certain event. As the player I was quite shocked but the characters in game seemed to be over it in seconds. It felt very inauthentic and was a big shame. It feels apparent that this is due to laziness to rewrite slight differences in the games ending scenes.

I have to admit that I just generally didn’t find the ending very satisfying at all. Lots of questions raised midway in the plot regarding the backstories of some of the supporting cast were never answered. It felt like the mystery and backstory went nowhere. The villains’ motives never really explained. The ride was really fun but when you get off at the end you can’t help but feel a bit cheated of a good climax.

The music is also very hit and miss. The cutscene music hits so well and builds great mood and tension. The in-game combat music though is monotonous, grating and repetitive. A big shame as you will be listening to it for long periods.

The graphics are absolutely stunning. Some of my favourite pixel art I’ve seen on the PS1. The game also uses full screen still images in cutscenes and some of these are really breathtaking and add so much to the story and mood. The mix of 2D and 3D works really well and the hideous portraits of enemies was a treat.

However, the in-game camera is absolutely atrocious. The view always feels just slightly too low angled and the lack of transparency on 3D objects means you will be always fighting with the 4 fixed angles to try to see where you are moving too. Get used to being unable to see clearly because some tree is covering up the party, or a big house. It’s also one of those annoying SRPGs where you can’t undo movement afterwards when you realise, you’re not quite in range or are too close to use a skill you want. The mover cursor colour also is often difficult to see on the ground. Overall is a needlessly frustrating ordeal.

The ability to just farm XP by leaving on enemy alive and spamming healing skills and recovering is an odd thing to leave in. But, as the game is linear with no way to grind, it’s sometimes in your best interests to just make use of this. This is especially true to bring up to speed your newer weaker characters as you never know who the game is going to force you to use next. This is a bit of a nuisance really as the game loves to swap out and force different characters on you, sometimes for no real story reasons.

For a strategy RPG it really doesn’t have too much depth to it. Characters level up and abilities unlock to a point and that’s about all there is to it. Level up and be stronger. Weapons and armour are found in game in chests or hidden tiles, and you really don’t want to miss them. They are always just a linear upgrade and weapons are character specific. Guns are incredibly overpowered and appear to do just as much damage as the physical swords or close enough. Guns are also able to hit multiple targets so it’s really hard to justify not using them.

Three characters have the ability to turn into a stronger powered up form for allegedly beefed-up power, however the difference feels so minimal except the range girl who sometimes will crit and do crazy damage. She practically took out a boss in one shot with this. However, after a few turns they will lose their sanity and turn confused. The waste of turn to change and the turn to change back in about 3 more turns before they become confused just negates the damage boost most of the time really. It is also unhelpful as you have no idea when they will become confused either. Again, another feature I didn’t bother using much. You can also just cure their confusion which makes it an odd thing to include even if it is for story purposes.

Skills are very powerful and status changing skills can neutralize a lot of enemy threats early on. Turning enemies chicken or even charming them for you. Later game enemies love to do this to you too which gets very frustrating as there is no protection against this only cure. There are no shops in the entire game so all consumables are finite, I actually hoarded most of my items and barely used any. Most MP can be regained fine by just using the rest commands.

The Inventory feels largely bloated and vague in benefits. Skill increases accuracy but then some accessories increase “accuracy”. So is a skill accessory better or not? It’s a bit vague as to effectiveness. But the game is pretty easy for the most part that it doesn’t matter. Levelling up and getting new weapons is king.

The late game has quite a large leap in difficulty. A few later levels have endlessly respawning enemies and one level in particular is incredibly frustrating where you have an objective to reach a small are they are blocking. The story will eventually take over as an impossible situation, but it is not clear at all that this is the case and I spent along time stressing about how to deal with the situation from afar attempting to kite it away to realise later its scripted with some vague flags of just killing the respawning enemy blocking the way a few times. Not good game design.

—Very vague spoilers regarding getting the best ending—
The game’s best ending is also incredibly cheap buy the strategy guide rubbish. You needed to take a particular character to one level earlier on in the game (that is also a choice of a branching path of two levels) and have said character stand on a particular tile to find an object. On my playthrough, I actually took this character and chose this level and even noticed the shining object. However I had the protagonist stand on it, who just gave some dialogue about seeing a severed arm and didn’t find the item. I felt very robbed to discover how specific it was. This object is then used at the very end to change an event. I watched the other ending on YouTube and the difference was only a few lines anyway so I can’t justify a replay of the entire again. —END—

I really wanted to like Ningyo no Rakuin more than I ultimately ended up doing. It’s totally worth playing for the story set up and vibes alone, but the reasons this isn’t a niche classic hidden gem are apparent when you play a while. It’s a very interesting game, it’s a vibe of a game, but it’s also very unpolished and shallow.