A good story buried underneath tons of unnecessary mechanics.
What They Say:
“Buried Stars” is a new mystery adventure game developed by Team Largo and LINE Games Corporation.
◆ Murder at the scene of the collapse of Survival Audition
A collapse that broke out at a live broadcast of a survival audition TV show.
A fatal incident occurs in front of trapped performers and staff.
Who is the murderer? Why… How could this happen?
Content:
I’m a sucker for any good visual novel that even remotely sounds like a rift on the usual Zero Escape, Danganronpa, and Kara no Shoujo style. If it is mature, gritty, and probably full of twists and turns, I’m interested. So, it didn’t take long for me to warm up to Buried Stars, a game that is quite the unique take on a darker, murder mystery visual novel.
Buried Stars quite literally gives away the premise in the title: several stars of a reality TV show are in the middle of recording when the studio collapses and they are buried underneath a ton of rubble. Danger and suspense abound as the trapped survivors have to make it for the night until a rescue team can reach them.
It doesn’t help, either, that the characters aren’t exactly the biggest fans of one another for various reasons, be it rivalry or the simple fact that they are competing against one another in the competition. And to top it all off, there are some darker elements awaiting as not everyone is likely to make it out alive.
Overall, from the onset, I was intrigued by Buried Stars, even if the premise of having them buried under a collapsed building was a little goofy in my opinion. But while the premise is great and the story is actually good, there is a lot to Buried Stars that (pun intended) weighs it down quite a bit.
Buried Stars deals with a much smaller cast, for the most part, than other visual novels of this ilk like Danganronpa and so on. As such, you really do get a lot of time with the various stars and begin to understand their motivations, who they are, and their complicated backstories.
With such a small cast of characters, everyone is rather solid in their own way and I didn’t find anyone too annoying or forgettable, but there weren’t too many amazing standouts in the same regard. Everyone was just pretty good and filled with enough personality to keep the story flowing.
As for the story itself, it is in the same boat as the characters where it is actually pretty good with the branching paths and various endings, serving a solid suspenseful plot that has enough twists and turns to keep it going. And to make it all flow even better, the game has some of the best art and character designs that I have ever seen in a visual novel.
Given the unique K-Drama style take on a visual novel, the developer Team Largo has given Buried Stars a fascinating art style that is so much sharper and richer in color than I expected. The quality of the art alone is impressive and had me invested in keeping going, even when the game itself wasn’t that great.
While the story, characters, and absolutely brilliant art are the better parts of Buried Stars (flaws included), actually playing the game was something I had a lot of issues with. Normally, I will find a visual novel like this so riveting that I have to keep going nearly nonstop until I finish it.
But that wasn’t the case with Buried Stars. In fact, there were times, especially in the first half of my playtime, where I didn’t have any desire to play at all. This is not because of the localization and writing, which was actually great, but the gameplay. Buried Stars is jam-packed full of unnecessary gameplay mechanics that hurt it more than help it.
For starters, one of the earliest that you are introduced to are keywords. These words are important plot elements that you can ask a character about during conversation sections. Then using those keywords and choices, you can learn new keywords to then take to other characters and progress the story.
During these conversational sections, you are able to learn about the characters more and potentially raise your rapport, or relationship, with them. This unlocks further information about each character and can potentially affect the story and what path you end up on.
At the same time, conversing with the group can also bring down your sanity level, which is yet another mechanic on top of everything else. This controls how sane the main character is and can actually result in a game over if it reaches zero. Then on top of that, there are the investigation sequences, parts where you piece together different topics in your mind, and then the social media network.
The social media network is noteworthy and novel in theory, as you are able to go through an entire social feed and see what people are saying about your situation and directly to your character. You can even respond to the fans and it will affect your sanity and so on in the process.
But the problem with Buried Stars is that it has too many mechanics and so many of them aren’t really fun to use. The social media aspect was cool at first, but I quickly got tired of scrolling through what felt like filler content (which could be indicative of my view on social media in general).
And then the conversational parts where you have to go through keywords with the other characters severely crushed the pacing, in my opinion, and slowed the solid story to a crawl. So many of these mechanics were unnecessary for me and dampened the experience rather than made it better.
Fortunately, there is still a good story in there but it does feel like the game itself is creating hurdles for you to reach it. While I do recommend Buried Stars, especially for fans of the series, know that the gameplay is the biggest hindrance in your way. I would have much preferred a standard visual novel with some investigation at times with only the occasional choices and that’s it.
In Summary:
Buried Stars is a game that hurts itself by trying to be too different and do too much to stand out among the other visual novels in the genre. It succeeds in being unique, but at the cost of having way too many mechanics that felt unnecessary and certainly lessened my experience.
It’s unfortunate because the actual characters, story, and writing are unique and well done, but it can be a slog at times to get there. With the stunning visuals and character designs, I definitely do think Buried Stars is worth checking out for fans of the genre, but it might not be the best for newcomers.
Grade: C
Developer: Team Largo
Publisher: Line Games Corporation
Age Rating: Teen
Release Date: July 30, 2020
MSRP: $49.99
Platform: Switch (reviewed), PS4
This review was done with a review copy provided by the publisher. We are grateful for their continued support.
