Iwaihime Reviews

This VN is a master piece, it doesnt start making to much sense until a few chapters in. But I have no regrets.

If you’re reading this, you might be a Ryukishi07 fan looking to scratch that When They Cry itch, but you’re seeing some negative reviews and thinking, “Hey, the art looks good, looks like it’s got a decent budget behind it, but it’s a got a lower review score than his other work. It COULD be a hidden gem!” I highly recommend you don’t. I would probably rank it the third worst high-production visual novel I’ve ever read. Let me describe my experience with playing this game, so that you can decide if this game is for you. Every night before bed I lay down and read whatever visual novel I’m going through for maybe ten minutes to an hour. Honestly, it’s probably not healthy to have a screen that close to your face before bed, but this is how I read Higurashi, and honestly, it made me happy. Every night, I could jump into this world of stress, jump back out and think, “Yeah, my life isn’t that bad right now.” Before jumping into another absolute unit of a story like Umineko, I wanted to give myself a break with a shorter story from Ryukishi07, that being this game, Iwaihime. You know when you’re playing a game, and you notice that you don’t stop loving everything it throws at you, it’s starting to create problems in your life, and you think, “Man, this might be one of my favorite games of all time!” That’s what Higurashi did to me. The opposite happened here. I noticed anytime I turned this game on, I’d start fiddling with my phone, checking my email, checking the time, asking an AI “How long is this chapter going to take?” One time, I even turned on the game with the intention of giving it my full attention, but then on the title screen, I stood up and went to go vacuum around the house; this game had the side-effect of making me want to do chores. This game also marks the first time since I think Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness, where I started skimming scenes with the skip button, sometimes holding it for a couple seconds at a time and checking if I missed anything (I didn’t). So after two months of this routine (and after vacuuming again) I dedicated one Saturday just to finally finish this thing and move onto a more interesting visual novel. My final impressions: I can’t wait to play Fate/stay night. Okay, for real, my main problem is that the game doesn’t really evolve past its initial pitch: “There’s a spooky curse!” Like, yeah, you learn WHY there’s a curse about halfway through (and that was probably the most interesting part), but it never takes you in any interesting or unexpected directions, at least not for me. From the beginning, characters say that there’s a curse, and then we learn… yeah, they were right, it’s a curse. You just interact with this curse story for like 20 hours, and yeah, that’s really what’s going on in this game. Early on, you see various aspects of the curse affecting the heroines, and some of them are more interesting than others, but none of them really give you enough clues to even start theorizing. The game would rather blindfold you, spin you around, and later spoon-feed you the answers, rather than involve you in theory-crafting in the moment. It’s very “mystery box” story-telling, and in true mystery box fashion, some of those things they were using to get you interested in the beginning aren’t really explained even when it’s all over. Kanae’s part especially I found extremely boring, and that’s when i started to have a problem with the violence. I didn’t like the body horror or really any of the violence in the game. I don’t mean, “it was too scary” or “too real” or anything like that. Again, I loved Higurashi. No, this felt more like the director told Ryukishi, “You’re the murder and torture guy! Well we want the game to have a bunch of crazy dream sequences, so go wild!” So Ryukishi would describe something too bizarre to really connect with, the sound designer would squish a bag of beans into the mic, the translator would pull out a thesaurus, and you’re supposed to be scared. It comes off as pure shock value and exploitation. I was writing scenes a lot like these for my stories when I was 15 years old. There is not a single scene in this game that reaches anything in Chapter 5 of Higurashi. Okay, there is one chapter of this game I think ALMOST pushes the game up a point for me, and that’s the DLC chapter, Matsurihime. It’s probably the best part of the game. It’s got the best writing, it made me squirm a bit and click faster than usual, because the horror was finally working. It’s not worth playing the game for, but it worked for me. Last, I thought the ending was butt-cheeks. I’m going to talk about the nature of it without outright spoiling, so scroll over if you want to see it: [spoiler] After twenty-something hours of reading, they drop on me one of the most Chad lines in the game, and then drop a big pile of lame on me two seconds later. Come on. This is a bittersweet (mostly bitter) ending with two or three fake-outs, and I would’ve just preferred they’d just stopped at one of them, and been done with it. [/spoiler] Anyways, you have my full recommendation to skip this one. Take the time and money you were thinking about spending on this, and use it on a better horror visual novel, like any other Ryukishi07 novel, Corpse Party if you want to see this style of horror done better, Muv-Luv if you want something that evolves, or The Fruit of Grisaia if you like the idea of romancing girls with very troubled pasts.

I think of Iwaihime as an underrated classic or a hidden gem. It's a horror-romance game with great characters and a premise that allows for all sorts of strange and macabre imagery. Each character gets a wholly unique aesthetic associated with them, and nightmares fine-tuned to their psychology and personal trauma. Iwaihime was one of the works that caught Konami's eye when they hired the author to work on Silent Hill. Having said all that, the game has one of the most bizarre endings I've ever encountered. I still can't quite make up my mind about how I feel. It's nuts! Overall a very fun experience with memorable characters and beautiful art.

This visual novel has impressive production quality — from its beautiful artwork and strong voice acting to a well-composed soundtrack. It's clear a lot of care went into its presentation. Unfortunately, the story is where it falls short. It struggled to hold my interest and felt overly drawn out; by the end, I just wanted it to be over. While it wasn’t entirely without its moments, the narrative wasn’t compelling enough overall. I’d give it a 5.5 out of 10.