Urban Myth Dissolution Center review — Specters in the city

Azami Fukurai has always been able to see ghosts flickering at the borders of her vision. After discovering a flyer for the Urban Myth Dissolution Center, she breathes a sigh of relief, hoping they will be able to rid her of this burden. However, after descending into the underground foundation, she quickly learns that she won't be rid of these spirits so easily. Under the guiding hand of the center's director, Ayumu Meguriya, Azami must learn to understand her strange power and unravel the myths before they spiral out of control.

Urban Myth Dissolution Center is a blend between a visual novel and a detective adventure game, where you'll play through various chapters that each feature their own case. Each case features a combination of four main gameplay sections: social media research, investigation, identification and dissolution. The first two are largely where most of the gameplay comes in, with the latter two sections being short deduction sequences during key moments of the story. 

When first taking on a case, you'll begin by looking around on social media to gather information about the urban myth in question. By examining various posts, you'll find keywords that will grant clues to the nature of the culprit, or sometimes open up new search terms that let you delve deeper into the rumors. A lot of this section is sifting through largely unimportant posts to find what you actually need to move the case forward; a needle in a haystack essentially. Sure some of the social media posts were interesting, but for the most part, I was just clicking through these to get to the actual investigation portions of the game.

Once you've completed the research, you'll be able to go hands-on with the investigation. It's here that Azami shines as she has access to a mysterious ability called Clairvoyance that allows her to see traces of people in the past. These often take abstract forms, but give hints as to what suspects may have been doing when the crime was committed. The investigations themselves often involve just clicking around the environment and gathering clues, along with interviewing people on location. After the initial search is finished, the Urban Myth Dissolution Center Director rings you up to ID the urban myth. This section has you answering a few questions to nail down the nature of a crime, which can then be attributed to a popular urban myth.

The final phase of each case is dissolution, where you enter a deduction sequence to finger the culprit using the evidence you've gathered. These often have you leaning clues against the nature of an urban myth to prove that the culprit is actually a real person and not an otherworldly being. While these wrap-up sections were often quite basic, I did enjoy learning more about the lore of the various urban myths that Azami encounters. The game never really becomes scary or exerts any feeling of the characters being in real danger, but it was still fun to deduce how the criminals would mimic these strange legends. I do wish that the Clairvoyance ability was used in more creative ways though, as Azami typically uses it in the same fashion for every case.

My biggest gripe with Urban Myth Dissolution Center is how predictable and easy a lot of the cases are. I could smell the culprit from a mile away during the first case, and the following chapters didn't put up much of a mystery either. I really didn't feel like the story was gathering any steam until at least halfway through the game, which means there's a lot of dragging yourself through to that point. The deduction segments were also rarely (if ever) challenging. Even if you pick a wrong answer there aren't any consequences, you just try again until you get it right. There is a hidden story going on beneath each case that was enjoyable to unravel, but you won't see any real payoffs until the final chapter, so keep that in mind.

Even though there are a lot of low points in the story department, the game tended to be carried by the beautiful visuals and enjoyable soundtrack that accompanies it. While pixel graphics are nothing new, the moody 2-tone blues and detailed characters did some heavy lifting for the game's style. Even if some cases were a bit on the slower side, I could enjoy the game from an artistic standpoint, which helped me get through the approximately 14-hour playtime it took to finish all six chapters.

While it's hard to call Urban Myth Dissolution Center an outright bad game, I'm not able to find a lot to love about it either. If you enjoy visual novels, it's pretty middling in the narrative department, and when it comes to the mystery/detective genre, it falls a bit below-average for me. If the premise of an easy-to-access mystery game about the occult intrigues you, however, perhaps this game is still worth adding to your library.