Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus - The Awakening of Golden Jazz

 Switch
Metascore
tbd

No score yet - based on 2 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 2
  3. Negative: 0 out of 2
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  1. Digitally Downloaded
    Jun 4, 2019
    90
    There aren't many visual novels that are presented as well as Alternate Jake Hunter Daedalus: The Awakening of Golden Jazz. It's stylish, slick production that borrows from the classical masters of the crime fiction genre, while adding some genuinely creative approaches to the visual novel that help to make it both feel fresh and hard to put down.

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User Score
4.4

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 5 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 5
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 5
  3. Negative: 3 out of 5
  1. shoebill
    Apr 30, 2021
    4
    I wouldn't recommend this even though I got it on a massive sale. At full price, it'd be just insulting. This is an investigation visualI wouldn't recommend this even though I got it on a massive sale. At full price, it'd be just insulting. This is an investigation visual novel, but it's highly linear and without much user creativity or problem solving (unlike an Ace Attorney or Famicom Tantei Club).

    There is an overarching story, but at any given moment, you're mostly working on smaller cases. I got a mild enjoyment from solving these cases - there's about as much mystery as an episode of CSI, but that can still be fun. The big problem with the cases large and small is that none of them are satisfactorily resolved. The game has multiple endings, but doesn't give you any sense of which one you're progressing towards, until you suddenly hit the end and didn't learn anything. Allegedly, the ending is determined by the choices you made throughout the game, but a lot of these choices are pretty similar (things like "you knew my grandpa?"/"I'm here for my grandpa") and it was hard to tell what was impactful. I was really surprised that the choices changed whether I as a player ever resolved the meta-story, and I'd have to replay the game in order to get a different ending. Nor did I really find out what happened to the one-off cases I solved, either, other than finding the criminal.

    If you play visual novels for the art, run screaming from this one. The backgrounds are just photos that have been rasterized, and not even decently modified (say, to remove random people in the background of the photos). They aren't even thoughtful photos - the "small town" backgrounds are obviously still in New York, with lots of high rises visible. But even more than that, the character art is atrocious. People appear as mostly static paper cut outs on top of the photorealistic backgrounds (which is especially weird when the game hasn't edited out REAL humans standing right behind their paper counterparts). Although you get full body figures, there's minimal animation other than faces, and the faces are deep in the uncanny valley. The game doesn't properly commit to a realistic or an anime aesthetic and ends up with anime eyes above creepy teeth-mouths. No thanks. The lack of animation and the eerie faces also meant that none of the emotional moments really connected; I think this game would have genuinely been better as a solely text-based game.

    The music, on the other hand, is pretty decent. Yeah, it can be repetitive, but I actually remember the soundtrack after I put the game down. I can't say that for many games I played as an adult.

    Overall, even if you're a viz nov nut or love investigation games, I wouldn't bother with this. Watch a few episodes of your favorite crime show instead. The redeeming qualities don't make it worth playing a game that doesn't resolve the mystery and has such off-putting art.    … Full Review »
  2. TavioM
    Apr 20, 2021
    8
    Good story, tedious pace. Also as a fan of visual novels I was expecting more drawn art to help the player imagine better the important scenesGood story, tedious pace. Also as a fan of visual novels I was expecting more drawn art to help the player imagine better the important scenes such as in the ace attorney series but they just tell you most of the story through text, as if you were reading a book… Full Review »
  3. Williamtkc
    Apr 18, 2021
    1
    I am giving this 1 score just because of the interesting 360 envronmental interface, the rest of it is total garbage and completely wasted itsI am giving this 1 score just because of the interesting 360 envronmental interface, the rest of it is total garbage and completely wasted its potential. The story is linear and boring, feels like doing series of fetch quests in RPG, but without the RPG part. The game system made Saburo as an annoying retard and I feel extremely difficult to immerse into the story. "I arrived in front of the supermarket." -> "I 'll head inside." -> "I arrived at the supermarket." Seriously WTF? What are you, 3 yr old? These kind of unnecessity dialogues are killing the tempo and atmosphere to the already uninteresting, keep finding and clicking the blue thingy game. Not even worth with 90% off.… Full Review »
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