Games I Played in 2025 - Parascientific Escape: Cruise in the Distant Seas
Parascientific Escape: Cruise in the Distant Seas is an escape room visual novel with simple puzzles. Developed by Intense, Cruise in the Distant Seas is the first game in the Parascientific Escape trilogy, a 3DS eShop exclusive series. I bought them before it closed down since they were cheap and I wanted a few visual novels on my 3DS, especially exclusive ones.
Cruise in the Distant Seas has a cast of four main characters, with the player controlling Hitomi Akeneno, a high school girl with psychic powers. The world of Parascientific Escape is an alternate reality Earth where people are born with psychic powers at times, and also includes some fictional countries. Hitomi is unique in that she is the world's only double psychic, having both Clairvoyance and Telekinesis, which are used for puzzles throughout the game's runtime. However, Clairvoyance might be a misnomer or a mistranslation, because all it means is that she can see through things when focusing, such as being able to see what's in a closed drawer or a safe, rather than being able to see the future. Hitomi is a pretty good protagonist, as she's headstrong yet kind, and often reacts to situations in ways that make sense, starting off in a panic and then needing to calm down. She's also kind of silly, and tends to get distracted and lost in her thoughts. She's characterised a bit like a lovable idiot at times, especially when her best friend is involved.
The other supporting characters are Chisono Shio, Hitomi's best friend, Merja Amabishi, the heiress of a massive company, and Misaki Himekiri, a popular singer. Chisono is logical, book-smart and pragmatic, unlike Hitomi, and thus acts as a very good foil to her. The two often bicker like real close friends would, whether it's making fun of each other for their flaws or just lighthearted teasing, but their deep bond is very obvious. Merja is the youngest, being sweet and optimistic, but also lonely and a bit spacey. Misaki is the oldest, and is a kind singer with a dark past who acts a bit like a voice of reason when Chisono is being too logical and not empathic enough. All three are actually pretty fun characters, but it feels like Misaki gets the short end of the stick: she is the only one without psychic powers (Chisono is a telepath and Merja has psychometry) and she often kind of slips into the background unless you specifically use the Talk option in the menu.
The story of Cruise in the Distant Seas takes place on the Idinaloq, a luxury cruiser funded by Amabishi, a powerful conglomerate. Hitomi was sent an anonymous letter by someone claiming they knew about her father and her sister; with the former being dead and the latter being missing, Hitomi finds herself going on the Idinaloq and Chisono, naturally, refuses to let her go alone. Hitomi eventually slips away to the location mentioned in the letter and finds herself locked in a luxury suite as bombs go off on the ship. In her attempts to escape, she finds Merja sleeping in the bedroom, and after introducing each other and investigating, they find another letter that says that Merja has a bomb strapped to her neck, and sets up a "game" for her to try and get it off to prove that she isn't worthy of being killed like the rest of Amabishi within three hours while the boat sinks. One of the conditions is that only three people may help her, hence why only Hitomi, Chisono, and eventually Misaki are the characters seen in the game.
From there, the game is divided into four chapters (plus the Prologue I mostly summed up), and it's a pretty breezy story: the game lasts about 4-5 hours and can be finished in a single sitting if not used for entertainment during commutes. The difficulty is low, and the puzzles are more on the rudimentary side. Even if somehow stumped, there are hints accessible on the menu that give more than enough information to figure things out. The gameplay is similar to the Ace Attorney or Danganronpa series' investigation sections (I have seen Zero Escape mentioned as well, but I haven't played them yet, so I can't say), with still images of an environment on the bottom screen that is interacted with using the stylus to look at, examine, and interact with objects in the room. With maybe one or two exceptions, everything in the game is clearly shown in the rooms and can be clicked on accurately without feeling like you need to be overly precise. A handful of times, an object was near the sides of the screen, however, and clicking there makes you change locations depending on where you are, which was a little annoying.
You also get an inventory and can interact with objects using your items, but a nice quality of life feature is that even with an item selected, you can still interact with objects normally until the item is usable, in which case a new prompt will be added under the "Look" prompt. This is a great feature, far preferable to constantly seeing "I can't use that here" text on everything you click and needing to always open and close the inventory. The menu also has a handy "Examine" option, which shows you everything that is interactable in the room you're currently in, with things you haven't interacted with being displayed as question marks. This is a great way to make sure the player doesn't miss something, which is so easy to do in this genre. When doing puzzles, the game can be a bit cumbersome, such as needing you to investigate every single key on a phone and press 'dial X' to dial a number, but nothing outrageous, just a little annoying.
The big mechanic for puzzles is using Clairvoyance and Telekinesis. These psychic puzzles make Hitomi use Clairvoyance to, for example, see what's inside a locked drawer and then use Telekinesis to unlock it. The way this is handled is by using the stylus to light up small parts of the obscured image one area at a time during the Clairvoyance section, and then using Telekinesis to move objects and achieve your goal once you can see what you're doing. These are never really difficult, but the last few are actually pretty annoying. The main reason is how cumbersome it is to use Telekinesis: you select an object with the stylus, then decide if you want to move or rotate it, which will put you either in Move or Rotate mode and spend one Telekinesis point. Afterwards, you can move or rotate the selected object as you wish (though rotating is done in 90 degree angles, movement is freeform across an axis), but as soon as you switch to a different object, you'll need to spend a Telekinesis point again to move or rotate it again.
There's also the fact that it can get pretty finicky in multiple ways. Just tapping an object doesn't always work, and sometimes you have to briefly hold the stylus on it for the move/rotate options to appear which is really annoying. Then there's the fact that if even one pixel of an object is touching another, you can't rotate it properly or move it past it. This leads to wasting your Telekinesis points to try and make things just work when it looks like they already should. The psychic puzzles aren't terribly fun without being overbearing or too plentiful, but they're far from interesting either way. At least you can restart the puzzle at either the Clairvoyance or Telekinesis part at no cost, which is nice. It just feels like more could've been done with Hitomi's powers.
The biggest issue in Cruise in the Distant Seas, however, is its shoddy localisation, which I expected to an extent since this game was made by a small team of about 20 people in Japan. The dialogue generally flows well, though it can be a little dry, and there's the occasional typo. However, whether it's a mistranslation or something that changed during development, there's at least one time where something is mentioned that simply doesn't exist or is even just mentioned before it can be accessed, which can be very confusing on the spot. Most unforgivably, though, there's a point in the game (illustrated above) where the text flat out gives you wrong information about a puzzle. It makes the game come across as pretty low quality, all things considered.
There's also an easter egg puzzle that is overly difficult (by the game's established standards) and cryptic for no real reward, and the basis of the puzzle is explained... after you figure it out? Not to mention that this easter egg puzzle gets added to your menu without really telling you, and makes allusion to something that doesn't appear to exist in-game for more information (perhaps tied to a room that is mentioned but never visited). It's pretty strange all around.
It has to be said also that the story doesn't end in a particularly fascinating way, and it very much feels like the first game in a series, rather than a standalone entry. Not much feels resolved, and the game sort of ends pretty abruptly without feeling like you're solving the last puzzle. Instead, it feels like any other chapter, and then it ends. There's a little post-credits scene that's pretty nice at least, but otherwise, it's not very satisfying. Though not a big deal, there's also a bit of a lack of urgency in the writing, and it's easy to forget that you're meant to be on a sinking ship.
The visuals are overall nice, with the environments being clear, as mentioned, and the characters are in that sweetspot of being a bit bland visually, but also recognisable. The art style for characters is also pretty pleasing, but there's a bit of an issue where the mouths and eyebrows are drawn so thinly that it can be hard to properly see them with the 3DS's screen size, so smiles and frowns look very similar unless you squint. There's nothing special about the facial expressions either, though Merja gets some of the more expressive ones.
It's hard to tell who did the music and who did the sound effects and jingles, as Naofumi Tsuruyama, Takuya Hanaoka and Kayoko Matsushima are all credited under "Sound". Nevertheless, the game's soundtrack is very small, totalling nine tracks including the one jingle used in the game. It's an effective soundtrack, with some nice piano on the more chill tracks and more upbeat drums and electric guitar on the exciting tracks. The puzzle theme also feels like it'd fit in Danganronpa, being EDM. Something the game lacks, however, is any kind of voice acting or text sound, which makes the whole thing feel dryer than it should. The soundtrack is serviceable and easy to listen to, but the lack of voice acting does diminish the weight of the game's story a bit.
PROS AND CONS
PROS
• Interesting setting with a pretty good, simple story that has a surprising amount of world-building.
• Merja, Chisono and especially Hitomi are all likable characters that are easy to root for.
• Nice visually, with rooms being clearly drawn and characters having a nice art style overall.
• Puzzles that are fun without being too esoteric.
• Good quality of life features I wish were in more games like this, such as a list of examined objects and a good hint system.
CONS
• Misaki feels a bit left out in general.
• Unsatisfying ending due to leaning hard on being part of a series rather than a standalone game.
• Psychic puzzles are uninteresting both visually and in gameplay, with janky moments and controls.
• Some pretty bad localisation moments, including a puzzle being flat out wrong and things being said out of order.
• A bit too easy overall.
• Lack of voice acting or text SFX.
WORTH PLAYING?
It's a bit hard to say whether Cruise in the Distant Seas is worth playing without having played the rest of the trilogy, so I'll have my full thoughts about it once I'm done with it. I'll say that as is, it's a fun enough, breezy little escape room game with a cool premise and some nice quality of life features, though it's marred by some moments of bad localisation and dull psychic puzzles, the latter of which are truly disappointing since they're the whole point and what theoretically makes this game unique.
Being eShop exclusive means that this is no longer available for purchase. It does well as a handheld game to play a bit every day on commutes, but I can't see it being super satisfying to play in one full sitting as it'll feel like it goes by so fast that way. We'll see how I feel about the rest of the series in due time.
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As a note, all pictures used in this review are from this full playthrough of the game by Hikariヒカリ. It was played on emulator, hence the mouse cursor visible in the screenshots. Since this game is unavailable for purchase now, I'd recommend watching a playthrough such as this unless you're so interested you decide emulate the game.
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