Same disclaimer as the last one (didn't play for real, watched a translated longplay)

In short, I was disappointed. I was expecting it, really, but there's a difference in going from a vague, possibly-exaggerated general perception to sitting down to experience the thing for real and seeing "The oral sex of a court of justice" and "What is a grand LSD" fly by during the opening FMV. Maybe it's because my years of consuming all kinds of media have left me a lot more jaded and skeptical that something about which that kind of sentence can be said is actually going to be genuinely interesting.

What I loved most about Twilight Syndrome —the storytelling— is not entirely gone, but it's now the exception rather than the rule. There's a handful of cases that develop a little like Twilight Syndrome cases (besides the branching paths that actually matter/multiple endings being gone), but honestly, it's surprising we even get that much when you consider the rest of the content. It's obvious that Suda wasn't interested in giving a genuine continuation to the story, and just ended up using this game as a testing ground for his own quirks and characters, which just means that there's a lot less plot/character development and a lot more long-winded non-sequitur pseudophilosophical ranting involving characters that we barely know anything about, and plot points that are completely reliant on paratextual knowledge and very specific interpretations of bizarre scenes, which to put it mildly is a big step down from its predecessor. Without saying too much, all the rumors I heard about dodgy things being done to the original games' characters were true, though if I'm being honest the new ones don't exactly fare much better.

Well, there are also some cheeky references to the Clock Tower games (which Suda wasn't involved with at all), so that was cool. My favorite was "Clock Tower 3 release date", though obviously that one invokes a good deal of humor that didn't even exist when this came out.

I'm not entirely out of hope for The Silver Case being an improvement, although given that I've now doubly confirmed the connection between that game and its predecessors that I was already superficially aware of, whenever said connection comes up I fear I won't be able to disassociate it from the lackluster impression this one left me with.