process of elimination review for nintendo switch

Can you solve the mystery of the Quartering Duke before they claim your life? Take the reigns of a new and incompetent detective to find out in Process of Elimination.

Process of Elimination is a gruesome murder mystery that places the player in the role of a new detective investigating a case in which everyone at the agency is a suspect. You’ll meet a roster of 13 characters, each with different personalities that butt heads with some more than others. Can you herd this group of detectives like cats to solve the mystery of the Quartering Duke?

He’s leaving people dead left and right, with 22 people’s lives already claimed by the time the game starts. In this Japanese visual novel, you’ll uncover the truth behind the agency and who the Quartering Duke really is… or die trying.

  • Title: Process of Elimination
  • Genre: Visual Novel, Murder Mystery
  • Developer: NIS (Nippon Ichi Software)
  • Publisher: NIS America
  • Price: $39.99 digital, $49.99 physical (Demo Available)

Gameplay

The gameplay is pretty standard in terms of visual novels. The story moves along at a decent pace and the detectives you meet have compelling personalities. The gameplay aspect of conducting investigations is like getting these detective personalities to work together to solve the mystery without botching it. This involves learning about each of the detectives personalities so you – know how they will complement each other.

There are periodic times in the story when you’ll be presented with a multiple choice question about events as they have transpired. The game expects you to catch small details like which two detectives were investigating a specific room or task—so pay attention to the storyline for these events.

The actual puzzling gameplay takes place on a grid, where you can order detectives around to investigate the scene. Some detectives are headstrong and less willing to take direction from a newbie—a personality trait you’ll need to be aware of when solving mysteries. You have a limited number of hours to solve the mystery, with each ‘turn’ you consume subtracting an hour from the clock.

Graphics & Audio

The original Japanese voice acting is available with no English dub. You can turn the voices off if you’d rather advance through the storyline at a faster clip. Thankfully there are onto advance options so you don’t have to keep pressing the A button to advance the text. The soundtrack is sufficiently mysterious and complements big reveals well.

Some of the murder scenes the player encounters can be littered with depictions of blood and gore like severed limbs. There’s no overt gore, but plenty of insinuated gore with blood on screen. You probably shouldn’t play this one if you’re squeamish about seeing death or depictions of murder on screen.

Switch Issues

While playing Process of Elimination, I experienced once crash in the middle of a scene. Thankfully, it happened not too long after a save and early enough in the game that it wasn’t too much trouble for me to restart. That was the only crash I experienced while playing through the story.

The text size is decent for both handheld and on the TV, so there are no problems reading the large amounts of text for the story.

Conclusion — Process of Elimination Review

3.5 out of 5 stars

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

There’s a compelling murder mystery visual novel here if you love that genre of game. The characters who make up the main cast are fairly tropey, so you’ll know what to expect going in. If you’ve played a lot of these games—you may not even be surprised to learn who the real killer is at the end. That being said if this is your first murder-mystery visual novel it’s a decent introduction to the style.


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