Vera Blanc: Ghost In The Castle Review (PlayStation 4)
Vera Blanc is a mystery/detective game. Take on the role of Vera Blanc, a young and beautiful woman with an extraordinary power: the ability to read other people’s minds! The game plays like a visual novel/adventure game with two endings for the mystery and a collection of challenging minigames.
Pros:
- Nice hand-drawn comic art graphics.
- 111.5MB download size.
- Platinum trophy.
- Six save slots.
- Game text settings- skip speed, and auto-forward time along with after choices set.
- Presented like a comic.
- Choose your own adventure come visual novel gameplay.
- Mini-games aplenty but can be turned off.
- Choose your won responses and actions.
- Multiple endings.
- Introduction acts like a story starter but can be skipped if you want.
- A good story.
- Save when you want.
- Collect clues and update your casebook with names, descriptions, etc.
- Many playthroughs are needed.
Cons:
- A lot of reading.
- Jacking all settings up to fast and skipping text can see you finishing the game in minutes.
- No voicework.
- No mini-games make it less immersive.
- Graphics - 7/107/10
- Sound - 7/107/10
- Accessibility - 8/108/10
- Length - 7/107/10
- Fun Factor - 7/107/10
Summary
Vera Blanc is a visual novel game with a lovely comic book style presentation. You can change and adjust how the game plays which is always nice, by this I mean you can turn mini-games on and off, choose text speed, and if you can skip or auto skip text. What this can do however is stop it from being a “game” as it were and makes it a case of pressing a button every now and then and it basically plays itself. No matter how you play it you will always get branching story choices which will change the course of the game as you try and solve the puzzles. The story is a good one if you are prepared to dust off your reading glasses and jump in. You can fail and have to restart and that will happen a lot, so of course, the game has multiple endings for this very instance. Trophies are easy if you play the game properly as you need to progress the story so unless you are lucky with selections, it will be a long road. Overall Vera Blanc is a good spin on a genre that can feel tired but they add a visual style that is both eye-pleasing and easy to follow.
