Sometimes, all it takes is a glance at a game’s store page to get a sense of what it’s all about. Detective Kobayashi‘s emphasis on scouring crime scenes for evidence and then using that evidence to draw conclusions about what happened combines with its visual novel roots in a way that instantly evokes Phoenix Wright. Beyond some minor differences like your ability to highlight all interactive points at once, the biggest thing differentiating the two is that you play as a detective in Detective Kobayashi. That means that you present evidence and poke holes in theories outside of the courtroom. There’s also Chinese voice acting. Despite the audio clipping and some lines of dialogue sounding like they were recorded on an entirely different microphone in a different room, it’s kind of charming. Not understanding Chinese is probably a factor in that.

Detective Kobayashi is broken up into 4 investigations (plus one extra chapter that’s a flashback to highschool) if its store page is to be believed, and I haven’t even finished the first case despite playing for almost an hour, so it looks like there’s a decent amount of content for players to sink their teeth into.

Despite sporting a gameplay loop similar to Phoenix Wright‘s, Detective Kobayashi‘s presentation leans more toward the “traditional visual novel” side of things, including a pair of ubiquitous quicksave and quickload buttons and a less exaggerated art style. It brings some interesting ideas to the table, however, the most notable of which being lightbulb icons that allow you to see the main character’s thoughts.

Yellow lightbulbs are normal thoughts of no particular importance beyond exploring the main character’s personality (such as his preoccupation with anime women), whereas red lightbulbs signify important case elements. Neither are crucial, but red lightbulbs highlight important information in a way that separates it from everything else, and that could potentially be used as a clever way of focusing the player’s attention on the most important case details without skimping on flavor dialogue. Exactly how necessary and useful these lightbulbs are over the course of the game remains to be seen.

Some of the writing is a little clumsy—a missing child’s description says that he’s “now in the custody of his grandmother” to indicate that he lives with her rather than his parents—but I haven’t come across anything too awkward or distracting yet. There’s still plenty of time for writing problems to arise (the character descriptions explicitly spelling out that you’re playing as a socially awkward virgin raises a red flag, as dwelling on those elements too long could make for some truly cringe-inducing exchanges), but the writing has been perfectly serviceable thus far. All things considered, Detective Kobayashi is looking like it could be the perfect game for those of us in need of a Phoenix Wright-like experience.

Detective Kobayashi impressions: Exactly what it looks like first appeared on Killa Penguin