Adventure Gamers - Forums

The second game of the J.B. Harold series, Manhattan Requiem, was released today on the Japanese eShop for the Switch, and it includes an English language setting. No news whether it’ll be released in Western eShops too at the moment.

The ]J.B. Harold games were developed by Riverhillsoft in the eighties (from which later Level-5 and Cing spawned). The series was written by Rika Suzuki, who is here best known for her Cing DS adventures like Hotel Dusk and Another Code/Trace Memory. The games have been released in the West in the past (TurboGrafx), but of the more “recent” ports (the DS and iOS ports), only iOS Manhattan Requiem was released in the West it seems, back in 2011.

The first game in the series, Murder Club, was also released on the Switch a few months back, but that didn’t include an English language setting. I have no idea whether they will be adding it, or that Manhattan Requiem is an exception because it was already released in English on iOS before. (The current versions of the J.B. Harold games all feature new graphics, and I don’t know if the text of these “new” versions differ from the versions that were released in English in the past).

It’s a pretty classic Japanese command-style adventure, so you’re mostly just talking with suspects about the case, which will give you new leads to ask other suspects about, etcetera etcetera until you get enough evidence to do house searches/get people in the interrogation room. I’ve only played Murder Club, but it was sorta non-linear in the sense that you could start with any suspect and ask them about any topic: starting with suspect A on topic B might put you on the trail of suspect C, while starting with suspect D might’ve pointed you to E. On the other hand, it’s also very linear in the sense you could just ask all questions to all suspects again and again, and you’d reach the end too.

I myself use pre-paid eShop cards for the Japanese shop, which are available at sites like Play Asia or Solaris Japan.