Special Report Division

Special Report Division (jap. Tokushu Houdoubu) is a visual novel adventure game in which players take on the role of an investigative TV journalist who explores the secrets of supernatural phenomena. The title was created by Japanese studio Nippon Ichi, well known to fans of jRPG strategy games. The game is one of the special anniversary projects, prepared on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the developer's existence.

The title is structurally similar to the popular Ace Attorney series. In each chapter, we must resolve the new case by hearing witnesses and collecting evidence and guidance. The game is divided into three phases. In the first journalist we play in, the assistant and the journalist go to the place of an inexplicable event, which may be for example the appearance of a ghost in an abandoned holiday resort or a mysterious fire. Then we collect testimonies and take photographs or other documentation. The second stage is editing the program in a TV studio. We look at the evidence separately and decide which version of the events we will present to the audience. In the third one, we see the finished material presented by the presenter. Depending on our decisions, i.e. what we show and what we omit on the air, we will unlock various game ends.

The title was created in the visual novel convention. So we are dealing with static two-dimensional portraits of characters and backgrounds depicting subsequent events. Most dialogues are dubbed by professional actors.

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Last updated on August 14, 2015