Corpse Party
Ain’t no party like a Corpse Party
Corpse Party is good, creepy fun the way God intended.
Ugh it’s so good.
It’s all atmosphere, writing, and details (the nametags, the notes, everything). The game makes good use of audio. I wish more games utilized audio this way.
It’s creepy as shit. Due to the technical limitations, there are no jump scares. There are a few slow-moving chasers but the player character is equally slow, so that provides a sense of urgency. My only issue with the Steam version is the controller joystick is slightly off, but the D-pad works fine.
There are 5 chapters with 33 endings and 84 victim name tags to collect. I feel bad about triggering some of the wrong ends, because they’re horrible and I like the characters. So it’s like… okay, if I touch this ghost I get a wrong end. …Ok… …ok… ok, gonna touch the ghost. …Any second now, gonna touch the ghost…
I’ve been trying to find a compromise between playing nonstop and possibly traumatizing myself versus taking a break and playing something fluffy in-between, but. Ugh. ugh it’s good
Corpse Party
I finished Corpse Party and I am completely satisfied with the experience. I loved the game, I liked the true ending a lot, and I feel like the Chapter 5 wrong/alternate endings are set up in an organic way, so most players will naturally hit a few wrong ends before getting the finale. Playing the extra chapters after the true end might have been a mistake; they’re not very interesting post-finale. But I feel comfortable leaving the remaining cheevs for a subsequent playthrough.
There is a bit of a ? regarding the principal’s apparent sudden personality change and I don’t know if this is addressed later in the series. But I feel like CP presents a very good unresolved ending in the grand horror style. The game does a good job of gradually revealing subsequent layers of horror. Heavenly Host doesn’t just kill you in gruesome ways. It doesn’t just make you suffer the pain of death for all eternity. It literally erases you from existence.
CP does suffer from “let’s split up syndrome,” which kind of passes when it’s a situation where one person is apparently under the influence of the school and behaving irrationally, but makes zero sense when otherwise rational characters decide to split up to “cover more ground” in a constantly-changing space where, once someone is out of sight, you may NEVER see them again.
The Steam extra chapters are kinda hit-or-miss. I only have the first two. The Gentleman chapter was a completely unrelated fetch quest that seemed pretty pointless and rote, but I liked having an extra scene in Meeting of the Minds, especially since we don’t get much information about Morishige in this game and he’s kinda mysterious. I understand he gets more development later.
My main issue, post-Corpse Party, is what the hell do I play next? Having played CP on the heels of Mad Father, I know I have to be strategic about this. Otherwise, I end up with a disaster scenario like playing LTTP, then Ocarnia of Time, and following up with Zelda II. I have a few more RPGM/Wolf/ish horror games to try, but I know this will be the pinnacle of my RPGM-like Horror experience.
As with Yume Nikki, I became interested in the development history and the fan culture surrounding these games. The series is somewhat convoluted release-wise. The original game has been ported and remade numerous times and different versions have different content.
The original game was released in 1996 as an entry in a game development contest. The Corpse Party: NewChapter/Corpse Party: Blood Covered remakes were next, followed by Corpse Party: Blood Covered… Repeated Fear. The Steam game is a Corpse Party: Blood Covered variant.
The second game is Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, and the third is Corpse Party: Blood Drive. The latest game, Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient, is incomplete and has not been translated into English. There’s a romcom spin-off. Then there are the fangames. The Memories of Fear team has translated a number of the Japanese PC releases into English.
I’m a little annoyed that I need a Vita to finish the series (that’s two more notches for the Vita) and a 3DS for the definitive version of the original game. But considering it took about two decades to get an official English version on PC, I’m extremely happy to have witnessed the hot mess that is Seiko Shinohara and the English localization:
