The 25th Ward: The Silver Case (PS4)

Note: This review contains spoilers for The 25th Ward: The Silver Case.

After the positive reception to The Silver Case, Suda51 developed a sequel, The 25th Ward, but released it for mobile phones rather the initial planned console release under the idea that he could get it out more quickly. Unfortunately, this meant that the game only saw a Japanese release and as soon as the game was eventually shut down in 2011, The 25th Ward became lost media or, as Suda51 put it, a “ghost game”. Once the remake of The Silver Case performed well, however, Suda51 decided to resurrect The 25th Ward as a full remake, The 25th Ward: The Silver Case, rather than a simple remaster and released the completed game through publisher Nippon Ichi Software in 2018. This release meant that international fans of the Kill the Past series could finally experience another chapter. As much as I enjoyed The Silver Case back when I played it, however, the unnecessary tedium in The 25th Ward, both in its writing and gameplay, made finishing it more of a chore.

In the years since The Silver Case, a successor to the 24 Wards, the 25th Ward, advertises itself as a utopian metropolis and promises a perfect orderly lifestyle. However, the chaos brought on by the return of serial killer Kamui Uehara threatens that peace.

The story of The 25th Ward is divided into three story points, each told from different perspectives and handled by a different writer in the original mobile release. “Correctness”, written by Suda51, follows Makotaro Shiroyabu and Shinko Kuroyanagi from the 25th Ward Heinous Crimes Unit (HC Unit), who work with a new recruit to investigate a string of deaths within a high-rise complex. “Matchmaker”, written by Masahiro Yuki, follows Shinkai Tsuki and Yotaro Osato from the Regional Adjustment Bureau, a shadow organization dedicated to preserving the 25th Ward’s lifestyle without alerting the HC Unit. “Placebo”, written by Masashi Ooka, continues the Placebo scenario from The Silver Case and features freelance reporter Tokio Morishima, who wakes up in a boat stationed in the 25th Ward’s harbor with no memories and gets roped into a series of investigations by the mysterious internet user Slash.

Each scenario follows a different cast of characters.

Much like The Silver Case, the differing storylines in The 25th Ward can theoretically be played one at a time, but are best understood when alternating between between Correctness, Matchmaker and Placebo in order by chapter number (Correctness #00 and Placebo *00; Correctness #01, Matchmaker “01 and Placebo *01; etc.). When played in this order, the unexpected interactions between the three stories have a more immediate impact and the progression of the overall storyline makes a bit more sense. The elements of postmodernism from the original game also come back in different ways depending on the scenario, including a twist involving the interface that I never saw coming, and the main theme of “Kill the Past”, in which the protagonist either directly confronts past events they are at odds with or destroy some relic of their past which burdens them in some way in order to move forward with their lives, comes back in full force. The 25th Ward also introduces a new theme, “Kill the Life”, which is explored in how multiple parties seek to destroy the supposedly utopian way of life in the 25th Ward.

Perhaps due to the presence of multiple writers, each scenario feels different from each other, with mixed results. Correctness focuses more on catching the player off-guard, for better or worse, which makes it harder to follow than the other scenarios. While the characters in Correctness can have some interesting depth, the dialogue sounds very loose and features a lot more swearing, especially from the foulmouthed Kuroyanagi, who is hard to like at first. Matchmaker, on the other hand, held my attention more consistently, as it had more interesting character dynamics and offered a unique window into the lives of one of the game’s antagonistic forces without making them feel less threatening. While Tsuki and Osato don’t always get along, they make a good team and show that they really do care about each other’s well-being, even after they learn major revelations about their pasts. As for Placebo, Morishima’s story is more exciting than the Placebo scenario from The Silver Case, but is still far more text-oriented than Correctness and Matchmaker and has the slowest pace. There’s even an entire chapter dedicated to reading multiple paragraphs of (admittedly insightful) diary entries between short bursts of Morishima interacting with a turtle carving in a bar, which quickly gets frustrating.

The Placebo scenario is more text-heavy than Correctness and Matchmaker.

What doesn’t help with trying to understand the overall story, however, is the more blatant connections with the Kill the Past series. While it makes sense for the game to expect players to have familiarity with The Silver Case and Flower, Sun, and Rain, the uneven distribution of the games instantly creates an unnecessary barrier of entry for US fans. Newer players can still buy The Silver Case for modern hardware, but Flower, Sun, and Rain only saw an international release through its suboptimal Nintendo DS port back in 2009. Due to low sales numbers, however, it’s a bit pricey on the secondhand market, ranging between $80 and $200 on eBay at the time of this writing. Since Flower, Sun, and Rain is required for certain twists to make any amount of sense in this game, it would be helpful if that game received a modern remake as well, if only to make this one more easily accessible.

For the remake, Grasshopper Manufacture added four new chapters that weren’t originally in the mobile release: *00 UTSUTSU, #06 white out, *06 YUKI and #07 black out. *00 UTSUTSU adds a prologue chapter to the beginning of the Placebo scenario, which seemed added to better connect the game with Flower, Sun, and Rain, though I can’t confirm how well it accomplishes this. The other three act as a finale of sorts for the game, though with mixed results. Part of this comes from how they reinforce the connections with other Kill the Past games. For example, *06 YUKI, which follows a completely different protagonist and offers a very interesting storyline with a unique presentation, makes a connection with the Twilight Syndrome and Moonlight Syndrome games, which never saw an official release outside of Japan. Players can enjoy this chapter completely on its own, though more hardcore fans would likely get even more enjoyment out of it.

#06 white out and #07 black out, however, feel a little jarring compared to the earlier Correctness chapters, as they were written at a later time. While #06 white out does provide an interesting bridge from The Silver Case, as it contains the entirety of case#25:whiteout prologue from that game’s Transmitter scenario, it leans a bit more on pop culture references, even featuring an entire conversation about Buffy the Vampire Slayer that doesn’t really contribute much to the story. As interesting as the rest of the chapter is, it really shows just how Suda51’s writing features far less subtlety than it used to.

This lack of subtlety, however, comes to a head with the game’s final chapter, #07 black out. Despite only lasting five minutes, it crystallizes just about everything potentially frustrating about Suda51’s writing. During the climactic Mexican standoff, two characters just repeat Liam Neeson quotes back at each other while commenting on how odd it was that they were quoting movies that came out after 2005, adding in a quick aside about Back to the Future for good measure. After this, when a third character appears, the game nukes the fourth wall by offering the player a choice in how the game ends, the only time such a choice is possible, while acknowledging that The 25th Ward is, indeed, an adventure game.

Following this, the game displays a list of 100 possible endings, mocking the notion that visual novels should let the player affect the outcome at all (even mocking the player by telling them they wanted this). Most of these endings are joke endings, some of which feature Suda51 gushing about things he likes while others reference other Grasshopper Manufacture titles; one of them even leads directly into Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes, where Kamui Uehara interacts with Travis Touchdown. Only after viewing all 100 endings does the game let you view the True Ending, which once again breaks the fourth wall. As the process would take about 8.5-10 hours, since you can’t skip the five minutes of dialogue preceding the choices, I just watched the ending on YouTube, which the game acknowledges as a possibility, and thought it wouldn’t have been worth the tedious exercise to view legitimately. One might wonder if Suda51 really couldn’t have come up with a way to make his point without making it so tedious.

If you're playing this for No More Heroes III, this is the only ending you need.

Speaking of tedious, the gameplay of The 25th Ward feels very similar to The Silver Case, but with some differences. Film Window returns as the primary engine for visualizing the story, which helps give the game a unique flair alongside the rather unique presentation of the title menu. Instead of a command ring, players rotate a die in the lower right corner to perform actions or in a pop-up window in the center to solve puzzles. Rather than move along a track toward interaction points, players instead highlight an option that appears on any of the four sides of the screen to get to their next set of choices and, ultimately, their destination.

Unfortunately, it’s pretty easy to not know what to do to advance because the game sometimes expects you to pick the same option, like Look, multiple times in a row before letting the player continue. The new Chat puzzles in the Placebo scenario also rely a bit too much on trial and error, since you have to choose the correct response based on the flow of the conversation, but a single mistake kicks you back to the beginning of the chat, potentially erasing a few minutes of progress. As such, the temptation to just follow a walkthrough quickly sets in and it’s hard to blame anyone for doing so, as I ended up following one just to get through the game faster and avoid much of the unnecessary tedium in navigating the world and solving puzzles, especially since it can get pretty complex and one later chapter has a major beginner’s trap.

Other puzzles are pretty easy, since the game just tells you the answer.

Admittedly, as much as I found the story interesting in places, I ended up falling asleep a few times while playing. Starting some sessions while tired certainly didn’t help, but even after proper rest, the overwhelming amount of text that players must read, even after making it scroll faster, and the near lack of player agency made for a less engaging experience than The Silver Case. I eventually took breaks between chapters just to avoid accidentally missing text or adding unnecessary time to the game’s counter (my final time read as 15H48M instead of something lower and more reasonable).

On the upside, The 25th Ward impresses visually, with a different art style for each scenario that gives them a unique atmosphere. Film Window still looks great as a unique way to present visual novels and remains something I wish other developers would play around with, with unique touches like highlighting the speaker in an image and briefly flashing their name as a reminder. While chat logs have the same appearance as the rest of the dialogue in the game, with the arrangement the only difference, the text logs in *06 YUKI actually have a different appearance that looks more visually interesting. Perhaps from the game’s nature as a full remake, it seemed that it took some influence from the No More Heroes series, with some graphical flair more reminiscent of those games (even borrowing a sound effect for successfully solving a puzzle). Some blemishes still slip through, however, with bad centering on at least once movement choice and a few typos outside of text and chat logs, where they would seem more natural.

How did this slip through?

Although there is no voice acting, the music is one saving grace of the game, with memorable tracks from multiple composers. Frequent Grasshopper collaborator Akira Yamaoka provides the music for the Correctness scenario while Baiyon and Erika Ito handle Matchmaker and Placebo respectively, with some additional tracks by Masafumi Takada. Having a different composer for each scenario is actually a nice touch, as they contribute to creating and maintaining multiple unique atmospheres. If I found a physical CD, I might consider buying it.

Despite the stronger points of the experience, however, it’s hard to recommend The 25th Ward: The Silver Case to anyone outside of Suda51’s most diehard fans. Even discounting the difficult requirement of playing Flower, Sun, and Rain beforehand, the tedious gameplay and jarring difference in writing quality between the pre-existing and newer material can potentially turn players away from finishing what they started. If you want to get into Suda51’s catalog or the Kill the Past series in general, start somewhere else.