If you’ve never heard of Corpse Party, don’t worry; you’re not the only one. When XSEED originally announced their intention to bring the Japanese niche horror title stateside back in September, I’d be lying if I wasn’t left scratching my head. Originally released for the PC as an indie game created with the help of RPG Maker, the game received unforeseen praise and was later ported to the PSP. Since then, it has seen a sequel as well as multiple manga adaptations in Japan.

Featuring a mixture of 16-bit and modern 2D anime-style illustrations, Corpse Party looks like a visual novel, but it’d be more accurately described as an adventure game. One thing that becomes abundantly clear after watching the game’s teaser trailer, however, is the game’s subject matter. Corpse Party is, without a doubt, a horror game, and it definitely isn’t for the faint of heart.

A brilliant mix of old and new

The game starts off innocuously enough: A group of high school students are saying farewell to one of their classmates, who is transferring to another school the next day. One of them suggests they perform a ritual she read about on the internet known as “Sachiko Ever After” so that they will always stay friends, to which they all agree. They perform the ritual, but immediately afterwards an earthquake suddenly erupts. They awake to find themselves in to Heavenly Host Elementary School, a school rife with murder and disappearances that was torn down many years before. Trapped and separated in an otherworldly school where spirits of the dead torment and brutally murder anyone they find, the group of students and their teacher struggle to keep their sanity as they desperately seek away out.

Corpse Party is probably the most unique game we’ve seen localized in all of 2011, for a number of reasons. At a quick glance, the game can be likened to a combination of the text-heavy visual novel 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, where certain decisions lead the player down a variety of different paths, and Sweet Home, the famous Japan-only survival-horror RPG that is said to be the precursor to the Resident Evil series. There are no battles in Corpse Party, however, and the characters’ HP only serves to provide a marker as to how many times you can survive running into one of the ghosts you encounter in the game.

The game is broken up into five chapters, each focusing on a different group of characters (and sometimes multiple groups). In traditional adventure game fashion, you will guide your party through the haunted school, examining clues as you find them and picking up items that might serve useful. As you make your way through the eery halls, a variety of decisions will present themselves, almost all of which impact the game in a significant way. Make one wrong move and you’ll be treated to one of the game’s numerous “wrong ends,” which spell out certain death for one or more characters in often extremely brutal ways.

Join the party, if you dare

Though the first hour or so of the game is horribly generic, the game’s plot soon reveals itself to be much deeper than you previously assumed, due to the attention given to the various characters. Once your parties are split and they find themselves slowly losing their sanity, you find yourself empathizing more and more. The game draws you in by slowly revealing the various character’s relationships and personalities, along with a horrific tale of the murder of four elementary school children. There are also additional extra chapters that help flesh out the story and the history of the school even further.

The attention to detail given to each character makes it all the more distressing when you realize that anyone can die. That’s right –– in Corpse Party, no one is safe from a gruesome and horrible death, either at the mercy of a vengeful ghost or at the hands of their own peers. And their deaths often happen when you least expect it.

While the game never managed to keep me awake late at night, the combination of the binaural audio, dark themes, disturbing death sequences, and heart-pounding chases made the game both an intense and memorable affair. I’m certain a number of the wrong ends will stay with me for a very long time, and one of the character’s realizations towards the end of the game (I’m being intentionally vague to avoid spoilers) was both heart-wrenching and horrifying. I personally wish there was less fan service rampant in the game, but I also am aware that I am not the game’s target demographic as a 20-something woman. Even so, the panty shots and the fan service-y elements that are especially prominent in the scenes involving the lesbian girl who is in love with her best friend are not only unnecessary but degrade the overall atmosphere of the game. The localization, however, was solid, though it did offer some embellishments to the original script (particularly in regards to the aforementioned fan service), but reading the descriptions of the deaths while listening to the action happen with my headphones on was more immersive then I could have ever imagined.

An amazing experience, not necessarily an amazing game

It may sound like I am all praise when it comes to Corpse Party, but regretfully, that is not the case. While Corpse Party is certainly an amazing experience, the gameplay itself sadly falls short. Running around Heavenly Host Elementary School with often no clue as to where to go got old pretty fast, and some of the decision-making felt too arbitrary. There are a number of times where a ghost will chase you, and running into it by mistake will trigger a wrong end. Unfortunately, there is no text skip feature in the game, so if you reload your last save and make the same mistake again, you’re going to have to sit through the whole extended death scene all over again. In a game that encourages you to explore multiple paths in the story by replaying sequences and making different decisions, having no option to fast-forward through text you have already read is a definite downside.

The retro-inspired music in Corpse Party is catchy and memorable, but the BGM suffered due to abrupt changes and areas where the music would stop suddenly altogether. Luckily the sound overall is superb, from effects like creaking floorboards to the Japanese voice actors they retained in the localization, though there is probably one too many high-pitched girls on the cast. Finally, though I enjoyed the combination of 16-bit and 2D art overall, I did find the character sprites to be a bit lackluster, and wished they had received the same amount of detail as the backgrounds.

With 24 wrong ends, 10 extra chapters, and name tags of other schoolchildren who were trapped in the school and died before you to collect, there is enough content for close to 20 hours of game time. Though the early chapters only take a couple hours to clear each, chapter 5 is significantly longer than the rest. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be driven to go back and play portions of the chapters you’ve already cleared in order to view all of the wrong ends, not only to unlock the extra chapters, but also due to some unexplainable morbid fascination with seeing what might happen when you take a wrong step. It is worth noting that one of the name tags in chapter 5 is unobtainable in the US version, but XSEED is aware of the problem and at the time of posting this review they are looking into a way to fix it. Though you won’t be able to get a 100% complete name tag collection until they find a way to fix the glitch, there is nothing unlocked by obtaining them all.

Props to XSEED for taking a gamble

As a PSN-only download releasing so late in the PSP’s life, it’s a miracle we even have the chance to play this niche Japanese title, but thanks to XSEED, we do. Though the gameplay suffers from a number of flaws, I can guarantee fans of horror and a good story will find this title to be one of the most unique offerings in recent memory. Even if you aren’t predisposed to liking horror as I am, if you enjoy a good story with strong character development and a Japanese flavor, you’ll find yourself right at home here. For those who are passionate about companies taking risks and localizing new and exciting titles: you owe it to yourself to purchase this game and support XSEED in their gamble, as long as you think you can stomach some of the more disturbing themes. With the year coming to a close, I can safely say that Corpse Party has been the most memorable game experience for me in all of 2011. I can only hope that the game does well enough for XSEED to be able to bring out the sequel in the near future.

Editor’s note: A review code for the game was provided by XSEED.

Review: Corpse Party, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating

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