3.5/5 ★ – rg9400's review of The Séance of Blake Manor.

Conceptually, this is perfect for me. You arrive at Blake Manor to investigate the disappearance of a young woman during a gathering of mystics who are there to try and conduct a grand séance. Investigating people, using analytical skills to profile them, observing clues in the environment, following webs of mysteries to make hypothesis and deduce what happened, and figuring out the different supernatural elements. All great. The problem is that I think the mechanics aren't supported enough by the story, characters, or other elements of the game. The game is just too easy. It never really felt like I was flexing my logical muscles. After just going through someone's bedroom, you could easily figure out their mystery. The game shows this complex logical map for every mystery, but I almost never actually needed to use it because the hypotheses were super easy. Instead of logic, I spent more time just finding enough clues to actually get to the stage where the game let you make a hypothesis, even if it was very evident. I only had this issue twice, but it was frustrating because the clues I needed to find were hidden. This is exacerbated by the game just having too many mysteries. Every character has their own, but because there are like 20 characters, this results in a lot of them feeling very superficial. Some of them are interesting, but the game kind of rushes through moments to prevent any single one from lingering too long. Like there are some really significant developments or confrontations that are very quickly brushed away. I think the game would have been much better had it focused on just a few characters and really fleshed them out. The other problem is that the game has you solving all these side stories, so when it comes to the main mystery, it is more or less left until the ending. It just prevented that storyline from having the impact it should have. You do learn clues sprinkled throughout, but I wish we got more about the central conflicts. In terms of performance, this might be because I played on a Steam Deck, but the game takes a lot of time to load screens in between areas. This started to grate on my nerves as I had to navigate a lot, and there are lots of zones. Overall, I do really like the concept, mechanics, and setting. It's really cool, but I just felt like it didn't meet my expectations by the end. I feel like the Golden Idol series is kind of similar but a bit better with the actual deduction aspects