PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid's Curse

Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse is a tense, thoughtful sequel that builds on Square Enix’s cult mystery with a more intimate setting and a culturally grounded curse rooted in Ise-Shima folklore. Through timeline manipulation, bad endings, and careful deduction, it challenges players to rethink assumptions while exploring grief, guilt, and tradition. Though fairly linear, its layered narrative, strong character work, and confident reliance on text over voice acting create a deeply immersive experience that lingers long after the credits.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse is a sequel that is firing on all cylinders. While not as overtly horrific as the first game, it nonetheless shows that the developers have a clear understanding of what did and didn't work in The Seven Mysteries and still have plenty of ideas about how to make things compelling. An excellent game for those who've played the original and those who are new to the series, The Mermaid's Curse is well worth a shot.

While it lacks the jaw-dropping twists of its predecessor, Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse is an excellent supernatural story that weaves historical and mythological tales into an intriguing and often deadly mystery. If Square Enix continues to put such effort and care into these games, I hope Paranormasight can become a new long-running series.

PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid’s Curse may not be as consistently creepy as its predecessor, but it is just as enjoyable with an arguably more coherent storyline, singular goal between protagonists, and characters you want to invest in. The tricks we found novel in the first game are still surprising in the second game (despite our awareness of their existence), the writing still superb, and the aesthetics still engaging. If you’re looking for a visual novel to get utterly sucked into, PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid’s Curse beckons…

Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse might not be the scariest follow-up, but it doubles down on effective storytelling, better writing, and better characters. What you end up experiencing is a crafted story that will linger in your thoughts as you play. My mind would drift to The Mermaid's Curse when I was in public, getting groceries or in the car on the way home, and it was because of the incredible writing that I'd scramble home to pick up and continue uncovering clues to learn the truth.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse is just as intoxicating and surprising as its predecessor, but has an integrally different tone and flavor to its surprisingly heartfelt love story. It’s a new classic for the visual novel genre.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse is just as intoxicating and surprising as its predecessor, but has an integrally different tone and flavor to its surprisingly heartfelt love story. It’s a new classic for the visual novel genre.

A gem of a game with quirky characters and an intriguing plot that's hard to put down, Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse is a game that I believe everyone should experience.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse has some small hiccups here and there. But much like its predecessor, it’s a gripping visual novel with waves of reveals that come crashing down. It’s not as frightening, but you’ll still be swept away by the currents of its raw and moving story.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse is nothing short of phenomenal. It’s a master class in storytelling, using the most of the visual novel genre to make for a truly unique game that kept me engaged and enthralled from start to finish. You owe it to yourself to play it.

I was enthralled by the mystery and story of PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid’s Curse. If you like mystery stories with a supernatural twist, I can recommend this game without any doubt. The cast of characters is a lot of fun, the ways in which the story unfolds are cleverly done and there’s even a dash of meta elements that make the game a lot more memorable. As a newcomer it has made me very excited to go back and experience the first game in the series.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse deftly weaves together fiction and legend to create a dramatic mystery that hooks you in from the very start. The Mermaid's Curse nails the payoff with aplomb, while delivering on the most compelling and morbid summer vacation you'll ever experience.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse delivers a much more intimate mystery by focusing on personal emotional arcs and a cast of characters that feel really well-developed. The experience, though, is occasionally weighed down by a lot of expository lore dumps. Nevertheless, it is a clever mystery game that manages to stay interesting until the very end.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse is a more refined and fun journey than the previous entry in the series. It brings a spooky and entertaining narrative that works well with more focused gameplay elements that the series is improving upon.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse is not a game you rush through. It doesn’t hand you the ending, it invites you to dive for it, piece by piece, like a diver searching for a lost pearl. Its pacing can be deliberate, its story demanding, and its branches sometimes unfurl more slowly than players might expect, but there’s elegance in that patience. This is a game that doesn’t rely on cheap scares or gimmicks. It leans into mythic depth, human emotion, and story mechanics that respect the player’s intelligence. It draws you into a world that feels real, yet steeped in the uncanny, and it stays with you long after the ending, gently urging you back for another dive. And please, search for the True Ending. It’s so worth looking into the mechanics behind it. Trust me.

The brilliant visual novel is almost as good as its predecessor, once again offering a thrilling case for fans of mystery and crime with great puzzles and an overall fantastic presentation.

In Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse, everything feels familiar if you played The Seven Mysteries of Honjo. It cultivates the same structure, tone, and even soundtrack, but with some fine-tuning to the gameplay and a narrative that doubles down on psychological suspense. It has no direct ties to the first game, so you can jump right into the sequel and enjoy it to the fullest without the previous experience. Square Enix continues this visual novel series with immense personality. It delivers a complex, layered story filled with twists, supported by a simple yet efficient game design. The meta-narrative touches remain the star of the show, binding story and gameplay into a creative and immersive package that is simply hard to put down.

If you have never played a Visual Novel and were always curious about the genre then PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid’s Curse and its predecessor are as good a place as any to start. Combining a fantastic cast of lovable characters with a grounded but very paranormal story is a joy to play through. Added on top are great visuals and a lovely soundtrack. Smaller issues with the controls for controllers or sometimes greatly exaggerated sound effects hamper the fun only very slightly.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse is a compelling supernatural mystery that, although not as creepy as its predecessor, still features a gripping narrative with plenty of twists and satisfying puzzles.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse is a confident, atmospheric sequel that builds on the strengths of the original while introducing a chilling new legend to unravel. Its blend of branching choices, investigative depth, interactive flashbacks, and understated supernatural tension creates an experience that feels both familiar and freshly refined for Switch 2. It is a tightly woven mystery that leaves a lasting impression.

The final riddle's convolutions are forgiven by its payoff... [Issue#422, p.119]

It’s spooky rather than scary but with a great script and characters, and some smart puzzles, this is a must-play for anyone who enjoys the kind of stories only video games can tell.

Continuing directly in the vein established by the previous chapter, Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse offers another interesting and disturbing tale, immersed in a Japanese maritime atmosphere. The writing is good and, as usual, the world-building draws us perfectly into the situation, although the more strictly playful parts are even more diluted and less interesting than those in Seven Mysteries of Honjo.

Paranormasight is back, and The Mermaid's Curse has another supernatural tale to tell that's full of twists, turns and horrifying events. The non-linear format here makes piecing together the story ever so rewarding, and once again it's a title that's not afraid of breaking the fourth wall to great effect.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse is a masterclass in atmosphere, successfully blending Japanese folklore with a "summer horror" aesthetic that keeps you uneasy from beginning to end. While the lack of voice acting and slow opening hours may prevent some players from truly enjoying this game, The Mermaid's Curse is a great visual novel that honors its predecessor’s legacy while offering something new.

The music creates a great atmosphere, and it's great that the game demands full engagement and doesn't just hand everything to you on a silver platter. The possibility of failure will be frequent, which is also unusual for the genre. It's a shame there's no voice acting to enhance the experience, and the graphic style clashes strongly with the horror genre.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse starts slowly but once it finds its rhythm, it delivers an unforgettable adventure. Recommended as one of the best visual novels on the Switch for fans of the genre.

The Mermaid’s Curse may not quite be as strong as its predecessor due to a less eerie atmosphere and slower narrative burn, but it’s a quality return that’s worth celebrating nevertheless. What’s within is more textbook visual novel storytelling that plays with the idea of interactivity, delivering picturesque imagery and a real sense of unravelling every thread of a mystery. The world is a better place with fine and considered pieces of work like this getting to exist beyond one-offs. The case may be closed on more paranormal affairs once again, but I’m only hoping and praying Square Enix doesn’t keep it closed all that long.

If you’re also a fan of the oppressive, grim nature of the original game, The Mermaid’s Curse might also give you a bit of whiplash. Lots of scenes take place in broad daylight, with seemingly no sign of anything weird or supernatural. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the story involves exploring past events, historical context, and interrogating various characters. You’re certainly not going to be using curses every five minutes to kill an NPC, and overall, it never feels particularly unsettling or scary. It’s still well worth your time, though, even if it doesn’t match up to the original.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse is a technical improvement over Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo. It still has some problems that should have been flagged during quality assurance testing. The cursor should just be dropped from all sections that aren’t point-and-click. But the narrative is fantastic, and the “Choose Your Own Adventure” chapter structure makes the experience feel more like a game, and less like a novel. The stylistic visuals mask Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse’s low budget, and the music is constantly phenomenal. I’m not sure if the first game has been patched, but Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse is enough of an improvement that I might give it another try.

Some improvements and some regression make for an enjoyable albeit flawed experience and the first entry eventually wins out.