Mohism: Battle of Words Reviews

If you're a fan of the Ace Attorney games, then I would highly recommend giving this game a shot. The cases here are akin to Ace Attorney where not everything is as simple as it seems, which kept my interests throughout the whole game with its twists and turns. The gameplay is very similar to Ace Attorney, with you examining scenes and gathering evidence, then having a rebuttal with suspects and witnesses. Key Differences : - There is no 'Press' mechanic for testimonies. What you hear is what you have to work with. This can be a plus or a down for some depending on your stance on pressing testimonies in other games. - Presenting Evidence is easier in Normal difficulty. Instead of choosing from a hoard of evidence, the game chooses a few (1-4) evidence that could or could not be relevant to the testimony at hand. All you need to do is figure out which evidence is the right one and to present it on which statement. [Note : I played the game on Normal, I'm unsure of how it is on 'Enjoy the Story' and 'Challenge' difficulty] I don't understand Chinese too well, so I played the game in English. The translation is pretty good, but there are some word breaking ( exa- *next line* -mple) that makes reading a bit tedious. I can't really say anything about the voice acting since I don't understand them, but I do enjoy them! The voices fit the characters. Overall, I really enjoyed the game! As a fan of Ace Attorney games, this game hit a lot of right spots with the story, characters, and mysteries.

故事, 音乐, 配音 和 画风 我都喜欢 , 类似武侠phoenix wright 的侦探和舌战玩法 推荐 期待续作， 加油

The game rule similar to ace attorney series and other choice in story doesn't have much impact. 4 chapters and my play time is around 6 hours in Simplified Chinese language, Some conflicts is not obviously connected to evidence, it can be more accurate. Give it a try if you want to feel a Chinese ancient version of ace attorney without high expectation. [spoiler] not sure why telling truth is a bad end.. [/spoiler]

A detective visual novel set in fantasy medieval China (wuxia style). The game is a visual novel with minimal animations. Backgrounds and characters are drawn as watercolor paintings with thick lines. This style works well with wuxia setting. The music is inspired by traditional styles. Voice-over is limited to primary story dialogues. Gameplay is similar to Ace Attorney - a visual novel with crime scene exploration, dialogues and deductions. The centerpieces of gameplay are the word battles, a more streamlined take on cross-examination from AA-series with time-limit. There is a difficulty setting that can decrease the time pressure. The game is mostly linear except 2 major choices at the end of prologue and the end of the game. These affect the conclusion of the story. The story fits into the wuxia genre with different political/martial arts sects and intrigue after accession of new Ming dynasty. The main character assists with investigations of murders and there is a background plot that connects them to a different degree. It was enjoyable and interesting and not as over-the-top as AA series. The localization is a mixed bag. The game starts in Chinese and must be switched to English in its menu (settings are the second choice on the main screen). Translations are generally legible and fairly good, with some exceptions. These may slightly complicate some deductions. English text formatting has a weird word wrapping, which is probably caused by engine made for chinese characters, but it is readable with no problems.

A good story set in a pretty and fairly rich world. It is 100% a detective, mystery-solving game, but of the linear style; you don't have freedom to go about the cases your way(e.g. choosing who to question), but rather gather evidence and do deductions and questioning in a specific order, gradually revealing more and more of the case. I found the translation pretty good; not especially stilted, and clear with all the necessary information gameplay-wise, but could be better. One annoyance was the text formatting: there's unnecessary hyphenation(as in, to break words across lines) and sometimes the hyphens are even misplaced so they're not the last thing on the line.

This is a really good detective game in the style of Phoenix Wright. More than Phoenix Wright, it makes great use of a very flavorful setting (Ming China/wuxia). It's generally a more serious set of cases than Phoenix Wright, and the characters are more enjoyable. (Fewer annoying comic relief characters). It's hard but usually fair/logical and you get unlimited retries. The first case is brilliant. The case takes fantastical plot twists in who killed whom and makes it feel entirely natural. Overall it's one of the best tutorial missions I've ever seen, and one of the best mystery cases I've seen in a video game. The main character's trainer solves this beautifully convoluted case almost instantly and there's a lot of writing skill in how he realizes the truth and how he nudges you towards little pieces of it. ... Case interaction: you can understand a Mohism case fully but still get some choices wrong if you try things in a different order than the writers intended. In one case I had to challenge a character who claims he brought "nothing" to a crime scene. I have evidence that he had a cape. I nervously offer the cape as a contradiction even though only an asshat detective would claim that having clothes contradicts anything, unless the crime scene were like a nudist colony or a Kevin Spacey birthday party. The game slaps me around for giving the wrong answer. Fair enough. Later on, I get asked to find ANOTHER contradiction and then the cape contradiction is suddenly a big deal. WTF. ... If you haven't already played the game, it's really solid and I recommend it. If you have already played the game, the backstory sounds like it could be a con job. [spoiler] Reportedly a ~9 month pregnant royal VIP is rescued after a siege is broken and their first instinct is to move her? Their boat comes under heavy attack, and she sees this as an opportunity to murder a bodyguard and light the ship on fire? Then she jumps into the water and swims away, and then she *walks* to a friendly keep miles away, and she successfully gives birth to a healthy child that night? [/spoiler] Press X to doubt. In particular, taking a super-pregnant VIP on a journey AFTER the siege has been broken, is really weird timing.

As someone that loves detective games ala the Ace Attorney and Danganronpa series, as well as Wuxia films. this game proved the perfect combination! I loved every bit of this game... my only complaint is that the ending felt a bit short, I feel like one more case would have been perfect. I would love more games like this set in pre-modern China. I also loved the music, although there aren't too many tracks, so i'm sure some people could complain that it is too repetitive for their liking. I played this on Linux via Proton. I experienced some minor glitches. I found that that the game would crash randomly sometimes, but by chance when I played it without a network connection one time, I found it worked perfectly and I completed the game. Hence despite my 0.8h on record, I probably put in somewhere around 12-15h. I would definitely recommend this for everyone that likes detective games, wuxia, and graphic novels, although I wouldn't know how many people there are out there where this venn diagram intersects!

I've had a very good time playing this game! It nails the wuxia vibes and the Ace Attorney-style gameplay works surprisingly well in this setting. The Chinese-to-English translation is good, with some puns and jokes thrown in (which seems like a staple of any Ace Attorney-style game). It's not perfect, but at no point was I unable to follow what was being talked about. The art style is unique but I grew to really like it! And the voice acting is nice. The cross-examination is on a timer, but you get unlimited tries. So don't stress about the timer. Also, the game narrows down what pieces of evidence you can submit for the cross-examination which makes it easier to find relevant clues (but doesn't eliminate the challenge). One criticism I have of the game is that at certain points the game will ask you to make logical deductions where lots of concepts are floating on the screen and you have to click on the right ones. The concept is fine, but I think it must work better with Chinese characters because the sentences are hard to read in English because they wiggle around. Thankfully if you hold your mouse over them they pause. But I think that system could have been executed a little better. The second criticism I have is that when you are browsing through cross-examination statements, the game will slowly reveal the text instead of having it all written out. That is fine for the initial dialogue, but it was a little annoying when finding statements to contradict. And it adds pressure to the timer. This is a very minor thing, and as I mentioned before, the timer doesn't matter because you get infinite retries. I would really like to see another game in this series!

This is a very interesting game. I had this wishlisted after I played the demo. I am enjoying this quite a bit. The translation to english ain't too bad on this one. The gameplay and mystery solving is good. No complaints.

A really good Ace Attorney style game in a Wuxia Setting. Both the Art and Music were a lot better than a game with this price would let you expect. The english translation was very readable as well, except for constant, wrong splitting up of words and some untranslated chinese symbols, that make solving a riddle in the last case harder than it should be. I definitely recommend this hidden gem, but I do have some nitpicks: First, even though game has a wuxia setting, it is a very "grounded" one. If you played the Demo, set in the enigmatic Order of the Blade, you might expect a lot of similiar cases, taking place in exotic martial arts sects or other typical Wuxia tropes. That is not the case. After the first introductory case, which barely counts, the rest of the 4 cases are following a common storyline, that deals with the murder of a highranking official, and the uncovering of a conspiracy. It ends up feeling very mundane compared to the Demo case. I was hoping for the wuxia elements to be more prominent. Second, one of the features to distinguish it self from Ace Attorney is the ability to choose the outcome of a case. This was a decent idea, executed very badly. The mechanic first appears at the end of the introductory case, where your choice has very minor consequences. Then it disappears completly, as there is no way to influence the endings of case 2 or 3, and only appears again right at the end of case 4, the last case. [spoiler]Here you can basically decide between 2 endings. Both endings, though, are somewhat dissatisfying. After basically 5-8 hours of a linear experience I would have preferred just having a satisfying ending and I don't understand the point of this mechanic at all. [/spoiler] Thats all my problems. All in all it is a very solid experience, especially for the price point.