Beautiful, heartfelt, and underwritten: The Shell’s fantastic finale is also its most underwhelming mystery.
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As far as video game trilogies are concerned, it's a bit of an elusive format to get just right and one that I don't think has many—if any—greats among it. Blame it on whatever you’d like: the struggle of a cohesive story that spans three whole works not being derailed by particularities of game development, the expected evolution of both visuals and gameplay to keep pace with broadening narrative horizons, or the apparent impossibility of resisting the urge for lucrative prequels, spin-offs, and further sequels—for some reason, it’s an uphill battle compared to older forms of media. A proper trilogy is something more than just three games in a series. That there is an expectation of evolution is more than fair, but it needs to make sense, only reaching its apex after being taken through the three-act structure. There needs to be planning and there needs to be restraint.

Finishing my playthrough of The Shell Part I: Inferno left me with some of those expectations, While the game wasn't without its faults, it still felt like the start of something greater—so much so that even when Part II: Purgatorio reinforced the first half of that sentiment rather heavily, I could still tell there was an apex to reach.

And reach it Paradiso did. In most ways, it is a satisfying wrap-up to the games that came before. The problem is in a cast that’s woefully underwritten and a mystery that relies more on circumstance rather than calculated detective work.

For those not in the know, The Shell is a trilogy of thriller hybrid visual novels, heavily inspired by film noir and Renaissance-era literature. For one final time, detective Reiji Tokisaka must comb the streets of post-World War II Tokyo for answers to mysteries both new and old in the wake of yet another strange case whose victims are maimed to resemble a newly discovered painting from a famous local artist. Having reviewed both of the previous games, this is the third time in a little over a year I’m writing out some variation of this synopsis, and I can’t help but feel that I'm somehow underselling the game behind it every time despite its faults.

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To build off the spiel from the start of this review, Paradiso certainly ticks many of the checkboxes you’d expect of a finale. The Shell is a series written in a way that frequently leaves nothing to the imagination, all the while swinging for some themes that require a delicate touch. Social commentary, love, obsession…all make for topics that the game earnestly tries to explore while drawing heavy parallels with, of all things, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, so it was always a little bit strange that, regardless of how successful it was in doing so, it presented them alongside graphic violence carried out on characters that simply couldn’t shake off that air of moe ditziness that permeated the way they're drawn.

You’ll find none of that here. Even when it sticks out a bit from the glossy backdrops that look as plain as they’d come out of any other VN, the character art in Paradiso is a dead-on fit for the noir story that stitches everything together. The sprites look sharp and textured in a way that puts some real grit behind them, almost as if these people are fraying at the edges from everything they’ve been through over the past two games.

If I’ve again brought up the series’ aspirations to present a serious story with mature themes and lofty inspirations, then surely I would have lambasted it for undermining itself with tacked-on pornography by this point, just as I did in the previous two reviews. Thankfully, this at long last realized seriousness encompasses more than the character designs. While sex is still important in Paradiso, the writing is focused on the relationships that it’s a part of, rather than treating characters as sex mazes you have to navigate for some deadpan hentai on the other end. Here, it's limited to a handful of scenes that come about much more naturally, with a clearer sense of direction and artistry behind them.

It wasn’t at all surprising to see the series realise its potential in this way. The first two games are otherwise full of great writing, so their lack of tact always felt like compromise rather than limitation. The writing in Paradiso is thus the best in the series when it hits its highs, but it's surprising just how uneven it is. While it succeeds in the difficult task of keeping returning characters compelling for a third time by finding new spins that all feel natural, not everyone gets that treatment. A lot of important motivations and events are hard to suspend disbelief for, the central mystery fairly predictable despite the curveballs it throws, and Reiji's assistant Masaki, billed as the game's secondary protagonist, mostly sidelined as comic relief, with even a dedicated ending being unable to salvage his arc that kind of just gets forgotten halfway through the game.

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Speaking of endings, Paradiso has a few. Most of these are game over states you’ll land on if you sufficiently mess up during one of the halfhearted deduction segments written as if they don’t want you to fail. Already toned down in Purgatorio, Paradiso does little to revive the tension these brought to the first game—where one negligent choice could lead to death or different outcome hours down the line. While that approach brought its own host of issues, neither sequel replicates that sharp sense of danger that persisted through Inferno.

The good endings we get, however, are great. The lack of player involvement and more complex motivations robs them of that big murder mystery moment where all the puzzle pieces fall into place, but they remain emotionally resonant. Reaching them, however, is as inelegant as it possibly could be, as Paradiso needs to be read through a whole three times before you even get the option of unlocking the true ending. The first time you clear it barely concludes anything, and even as the next two playthroughs unlock new dialogue options and hours upon hours of additional scenes, neither makes for an exciting immediate replay.

While new scenes are sprinkled throughout the story, most of them come at the end. A smart text skip function that automatically stops every time you come across unread text is much appreciated, but the lack of any kind of chapter selection obliterates any semblance of pacing as you blaze through huge parts of the story, experiencing new scenes at wildly different points in time in rapid succession. There is a certain vibe to it—a detective poring over the same evidence, over and over, looking for a breakthrough—but spending sometimes tens of minutes fast-forwarding through something you’ve already read never makes for a satisfying narrative experience.

If the quality of The Shell is measured by how much its murder mystery tickles that analytical part of your brain, then there are much better titles out there. If it's measured by how successfully it realizes its artistic ambitions, then the result is rather mixed. If it's measured by how far and how consistently it carries its characters and themes, then that's where Paradiso's greatest strength is—in making it a worthwhile trilogy rather than a standalone experience. Through both the good and the bad; through the thorns and to the stars.