Tantei Seven (タンテイセブン) Review

These days most galge are locked into a mold — standard school romance, over-the-top bloodbath, or the “playable” kind.

“Playable” means the game has some actual game to it, unlike a traditional visual novel. Maybe lots of choices, maybe combat, maybe investigation.

Right, investigation. The easiest thing to bolt onto an AVG is an investigation and deduction system. Throw together a Danganronpa-style investigation screen, then pile up a bunch of choices during the deduction phase — points for right answers, deductions for wrong ones. Compared to building an RPG with combat, this is as simple as it gets, and it’s the go-to for any studio trying to inject “gameplay” into an AVG.

So this month we got a game called Tantei Seven (タンテイセブン), which is just “Detective Seven” (I’ll call it Detective Seven from here on). The marketing pushed the “mystery detective” angle hard, and the promo art was so over-the-top cool that it instantly reminded us of a certain game called Persona 5. The OP is genuinely hype too — gives off a “there’s something big here” vibe. I happen to like this kind of setup, so I gave it a spin this month.

And after playing it, I was fully satisfied… (on multiple levels)

They say you should evaluate things from two sides, so let’s start with the good:

Pros 1: It has a unique auto-update system

Most eroge offer updates, but the routine is always the same — you go to the official site and download a patch yourself. Detective Seven checks for updates automatically when you launch it, and if there’s a new version it pulls it down via autoupdate, just like Windows 10 Update. Mind-blowing. This is what industry progress looks like.

Pros 2: It has a stylish visual identity

You might say the UI style looks a lot like Persona 5, but imitating well is a skill and a selling point, right? It’s not just the art — the engine is powerful, E-Mote is pushed to its limits, everyone moves, expressions are lively. Screen transitions have effects backing them up; it doesn’t look like a simple galgame at all, more like something aiming for consoles. Also worth mentioning is the soundtrack — half jazz, half pop, with a slightly lazy everyday vibe like Blood Blockade Battlefront. Fits the theme perfectly.

Pros 3: The systems are diverse, with puzzle elements

The game is called “Detective Seven,” so of course it’s a mystery game. It includes everything a standard mystery game has: an investigation system, an interrogation system, and a “find the contradiction” mechanic similar to truth bullets. Not only that, the story is broken into individual “Missions,” split into “Main Mission” and “Sub Mission.” As the names suggest, Main Missions drive the main plot, while Sub Missions are branches that may have nothing to do with it. But despite the naming, plenty of Main Missions are hidden behind Sub Missions — you have to complete certain Sub Missions to unlock a Main Mission. It gives players some choice instead of being raped by the script like in a traditional galge; you can pick different Missions and read the story your preferred way.

Pros 4: The story is flexible, missions are modular, and it can be expanded online

As I said, the game has autoupdate, and the story is delivered through Missions. That means the developers can easily add new Missions, new plot, new quests via updates. Fucking insane, right? Other eroge studios selling some shitty APPend have to post a separate patch on Dengeki Hime. Detective Seven handles it all with one autoupdate. I guess tech really is the number one productive force?

So with these three creative pros, Detective Seven is destined to be an extraordinary game. If the story unfolds well, it could even go toe-to-toe with the Danganronpa series. Everything’s in place — all it needs is a story that’s even slightly coherent, and this game would be not just insanely good but explosively good.

So how is it, really? Hold on — let’s talk about the cons…

Cons 1: It has a unique auto-update system, and it was all used to fix bugs

Sure, Detective Seven’s systems are cool and the ideas are solid, but… the game is terrifyingly buggy. How bad? Apparently on release day, you bought the retail version, put it in your PC, installed it, launched it, and the very first line the game told you was:

“この体験版は………………”

So the first wave of players freaked the fuck out. I paid for a game, I get home, and you tell me it’s still a trial version? What the hell are you doing?

Within two days of release the game pushed who-knows-how-many patches via autoupdate. At least it stopped calling itself a trial version on launch, but plenty of other problems remained — save errors saying it couldn’t read/write, the game hard-freezing on a break out, and more miscellaneous issues got fixed. By the time I played it was version 1.52, and most bugs were gone, but even so… it still crashes easily, and I still got hit now and then. Fortunately the game added a ton of autosave points, so a crash doesn’t set you back far — otherwise it’d be pure misery.

Cons 2: It has a stylish look, but the cheapest backgrounds and the fewest CGs

No question, Detective Seven’s UI style is badass. You can say it copies Persona 5, but it has plenty of its own elements too. The thing is, almost all of that style went into the UI and a few character silhouette images. The rest… nothing…

Yes, nothing. The backgrounds look okay at a glance, but look closely and it’s just real photos with a filter slapped on. Especially the street background — you can see pedestrians in the back, and they never change. Even funnier is the road background: at one point the game says “we need to go out under cover of night,” and the background is still that same street, the same pedestrian still standing there, just with a darker color grade. That’s it. That’s your “dead of night”? Couldn’t you swap the image? And the backgrounds inside the haunted house investigation — I won’t even bother. They’re real photos with an even lazier Photoshop filter.

The music is jazz with a pop flavor, but there’s way too little of it. Genuinely too little. There are only like three main themes, and they loop back and forth until you’re sick of them fast. And the worst part is the CGs. As an AVG with no action and no 2B panty shots to look at, all you have left is CGs — and this game has almost no story-related CGs outside of HCGs. Maybe one or two, like the protagonist holding the heroine, but that’s it. Most Missions are just talk talk talk talk and done. Same scenes, same sprites, same music, same boredom…

Cons 3: Diverse systems with puzzle elements, but the IQ is room temperature

Sure, Detective Seven has puzzle elements — investigation, questioning, and confrontation. Investigation really has nothing to it: a bunch of dots appear on screen and you just click them. The in-game explanation is that it’s the protagonist’s “ability” to see emotional fluctuations and things others can’t see. So they grab a random image, circle a bunch of dots, and call it investigation. That’s not convincing at all. Some investigation points aren’t even objects — you’re just clicking around blindly to see dialogue. What’s the point?

The “questioning” sections are a goldmine of cringe. At first you take it seriously, then you realize the dialogue is a joke. Most questions have zero connection to context and zero logic. On the rare occasion the choice is actually relevant, the game makes you pick it multiple times…

For example, when the Last Boss appears wearing a mask, a choice pops up asking “who is this Boss really?” with a screen full of names…

You pick the right answer. The Boss denies it and asks again.

You pick the right answer again. The Boss keeps denying and asks again.

So you just keep picking the same person’s name over and over until the Boss finally admits it.

This “confirm the same name repeatedly” dialogue choice appears an infuriating number of times. I don’t know what it’s supposed to accomplish. Maybe the devs think it tests the player’s conviction? You can’t test it like that, it’s too stupid. Two or three times is enough — what’s the deal with making you confirm four or five times?

Finally there’s the “confrontation,” similar to Danganronpa’s class trial breakdown phase — find the contradiction in dialogue and break it with evidence. Except the contradictions are… so dumb. Most of the time only the first option is difficult; subsequent ones have evidence added as you succeed. But here’s the thing: the added evidence is always the next option. Remember that and you can’t go wrong. Even the Last Boss fight works this way: first it’s a four-way choice, you use one, three remain, then the dialogue replenishes back to four — don’t hesitate, the newly added one is the answer…

Is that retarded or what? Genuinely retarded. The mindless investigation, the asinine dialogue, and the final “confrontation” that telegraphs the answer with zero difficulty make the entire game system pointless.

Cons 4: The story is flexible, missions are modular, it can be expanded online — but it’s a complete mess

Detective Seven’s story isn’t linear; you pick missions and piece the fragments together into a narrative. So if you watch every mission, you should be able to see the whole story, right?

No!

By the end I think there are roughly two main plots: one is the protagonist and the people around him gaining abilities, the other is someone in town using drugs to rape women. The former is baffling, the latter is also baffling. Baffling how? The plot has no continuity. Since it’s told through mission fragments, there’s no direct connection between missions. For instance, one mission you’re watching the protagonist investigate a stray cat poisoned to death, the next mission they’re eating barbecue, and then five or six missions later it suddenly tells you the cat poisoning case is solved… There are way too many missions unrelated to the main plot, so many I don’t know what to say. You watch and watch until you’ve lost the thread, and the game never ties these missions together with a line. It’s like the writer just wrote whatever came to mind. All the missions perfectly embody “low coupling, high cohesion” — none of them have anything to do with the main plot. Maybe it’s so the devs can keep adding new missions via autoupdate (patch 1.50 added a ton of new missions), but as an AVG — a mystery game, no less — a single mission doesn’t explain a single puzzle, and multiple missions don’t connect to solve one either. What a waste of a system.

So we can see that Detective Seven is a game with good ideas in every area and plenty of strengths, but it completely fails to deliver on those “strengths.” Is it really a pity? Honestly, I think if the main plot were even slightly interesting it would be fine. As I said above, “all it needs is a story that’s even slightly coherent, and this game would be not just insanely good but explosively good.”

The result is obvious: the script is the biggest culprit, because the script is a disaster.

Detective Seven has a non-linear story, a mystery style, and a bit of chuuni flavor — you could roughly follow the approach of something like Chaos;Head and no one would complain.

But the script completely fucks it up. First, the slice-of-life is boring.

Genuinely boring. I don’t know what to say. So boring that after a while you just don’t want to read it. The script’s Japanese is questionable — tons of pointless katakana written out on purpose makes it feel rock-bottom low. Without a main plot you’re surviving on slice-of-life, and you botch that too. Combined with the same few looping BGM tracks and the painfully few CGs you wait forever to see, what’s supposed to keep you reading?

Maybe the writer figured slice-of-life can’t hold attention, and since this is an eroge, fucking is the most direct approach — so the game added lots of sex scenes. But those are just like the slice-of-life: no beginning, no end. “One day. XXX came over, we fucked, we finished, XXX left, Mission Complete.” What is that? Even an erotic novel needs some story arc. These HCGs written like a vending machine — what are they supposed to do? By the way, these HCGs have nothing to do with the main plot either.

There are tons of missions, some unlocking others, but the main-plot missions are few and far between. By the end of chapter one, the plot has advanced a tiny bit. By the end of chapter two, it’s advanced another tiny bit. I couldn’t take it and skipped to the end, only to find the story is really stupid.

Basically: the protagonist has psychic powers — he can see people’s emotional fluctuations and see things others can’t. One day someone says some cats in town have died. He investigates and finds the cats were poisoned with drugs. He traces it to students at school taking drugs, possibly the ones who did it. Then he finds the school nurse might be making the drugs, then discovers a haunted house in town full of garbage, with rumors about it — maybe the drug users, the drug makers, and the haunted house are connected.

Finally, after a bunch of haunted-house investigation and various other investigating, the culprit just walks out. Turns out it’s a lolicon using ether to abduct and rape and murder little girls on the street. The end. Every investigation thread before that is left dangling.

The other plotline is the protagonist exploring his own powers. Sorry, my Japanese is limited, and so is my brain — I genuinely can’t tell what the writer was jacking off to with that series of stupid plot points about the protagonist’s memories being tampered with. All I know is using his powers gives him a massive sex drive. The rest, do whatever you want.

Because the story is non-linear and stuffed with boring slice-of-life unrelated to the main plot, the game ends up in a state of “completely incomprehensible.” The Japanese on Critique Space angrily gave it 40 points, and Japanese players said they couldn’t understand it either. That made me feel better — turns out it wasn’t just my bad Japanese and broken brain.

Angry Japanese players aimed straight at the scriptwriter, even going to the scriptwriter’s blog to flame him.

“Truly the best garbage game of the year. I suggest you stop paying this guy to write scripts for games in the future.”

So how should we evaluate Tantei Seven (Detective Seven)?

A good idea, an interesting concept, online updates, post-launch missions as DLC, and a powerful system — these are the things this game should have succeeded with. Bugs can be plentiful, but fixing them isn’t a big deal. Besides, I started playing at version 1.50, and the bugs were almost gone — except for an error when saving, though it still saved fine.

But it’s still a garbage game, because the script is garbage.

The scriptwriter can’t tell a story at all. His writing is on par with Takeda Hime, lost in self-indulgence, naively thinking that adding a bunch of hardcore sex scenes will earn people’s approval.

But sorry — even dicks take days off. Not every dick gets hard on command. A shit story is a shit story; stuffing in more porn images doesn’t fix it.

Our dicks have dignity.