I really appreciate the brevity of the narrative. As much as I love these mystery VN adventure games, they can drag on quite a bit. Paranormasight was very direct wasted no time on fluff, which was nice. I'd also argue that it plays a pretty big role in how effective the final twists are; so many of the big reveals in this game are telegraphed way ahead of time: Nejima being the janitor, Michiyo possessing Yakko, Namigaki killing Michiyo, Ayame being Tsutsumi's daughter, etc. It was a bit of a letdown, but I was able to accept it in exchange for how quick the pace of the story was.
But that assumption was also why I thought the story was more or less solved by the end: Ayame was Nejima's lover reincarnated, possessed by the spirit of Ashino to take revenge on Seiman by resurrecting him or whatever. It all checked out, and fit right in with how the story had been told up to that point. The perfect setup for a last-second rug-pull; Nejima was a lying bullshitter, there was never any resurrection nor possession, and Ayame was just kinda insane. It didn't take long to figure out that the story would loop back to Yoko and Shogo at some point, just by nature of Checkov's Gun, but I wasn't anticipating her being the mastermind full stop; the narrative just hadn't telegraphed any of its reveals like that. Clever stuff.
I also appreciated when the game would let you solve the mysteries yourself. It was pretty obvious who killed Jonouchi and Iwai, and I was pulling my hair out for a bit asking why nobody was questioning the cause of death, but the game letting you solve it yourself was much appreciated. Figuring out the true story of the Honjo Incident was also a lot of fun. The Storyteller in general was a highlight, hope he returns in future games.
I do think the story loses its momentum once daybreak hits, though. I'm not a big horror guy, but the tension and atmosphere of the nightime segments completely outclassed anything that followed. The mystique of the curses was inevitably gonna falter; once you know how they're triggered, there's no more fear of them triggering, regardless of whether the characters themselves were privy of that knowledge. But while the curses were active, and you had no knowledge of how to stop them, that shit was proper terrifying. They could've built an entire story just around that mechanic, maybe even having the actions of characters influence whether a character in another route entirely was susceptible to a curse, but that sadly never materialized. Kinda underwhelming after how many opportunities you get to kill people with Shogo, definitely set the game up to be something more than what it was.
I don't mean to completely disregard the narrative here, it's good. Nothing that will really stick with me outside of the meta stuff, nor will the characters, but they're all compelling enough to be engaging throughout the whole story. There were a few that didn't really amount to much of anything, Mayu in particular, but the reverse applies for them too; nobody will stick with me in a good way, nor will I remember anyone being egregiously bad. The story and characters did their job, credit for that.
Knowing that more Paranormasight games are seemingly planned has me hopeful though, there's a ton of potential here. Especially if they adapt different "folktales" from various cultures. A series of horror-inspired mystery VNs revolving around ghost stories from around the world sounds incredible. But even if they only stay in Japan, there's still a ton of potential, and I hope they continue building on it. Hell, they could easily bring a few of these characters back in the future: the three sidekicks and Yakko could easily show up in a future game as part of the Paranormal Bureau, or something related.
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