Season of Mystery: The Cherry Blossom Murders

The Good
This simple Hidden Object game takes place in Japan at the end of the 19th century. The player accompanies Mrs. Irene Pemberton, who tries to prove that her late husband Richard, a legal attaché to the U.S. embassy in Japan, did not commit suicide. With the embassy staff and the local police being less than helpful and convinced that no foul play was involved, Mrs. Pemberton follows her husband's final steps on her own, picking up clues on the way.

The most striking quality of the game is its beautiful artwork. Backgrounds are wonderful hand-painted scenes of Meiji-period Japan, and especially rare for Hidden Object games, characters fit the style very well, and are painted in a realistic fashion. Backgrounds are very subtly animated. A few rays of sunshine here, some drops of rain there. Also, the hidden objects are drawn in the same visual style, so even when cluttered with a lot of common and weird objects, sometimes in completely impossible dimensions and positions, the scenes don't look like a patchwork but still very pleasant to the eye. Overall, the atmosphere of the game is very nice for such a simple game concept.

The soundtrack is another contributing factor, and a real highlight with some very beautiful tracks. It is a pity then that there are only about five of them, which players will find to be repeated awfully often. However, for most people this is the kind of game that is not played in long sessions, but sporadically for short periods, so it is quite bearable. The music files (which are present in Ogg Vorbis format in the game's directory) actually made it into my collection of game soundtracks, a privilege usually reserved for titles with much higher budgets.

There is also a nice little story to go along with it, which has its share of twists, turns, and surprises. While not mind-bogglingly realistic, and apart from some sub-par lines of dialogue, I found it to be told reasonably well, and liked the vibe with which the game concluded.

The Bad
So far so good for the basic ingredients. It is unfortunate that in their composition, they don't make a compelling enough game.

It is not so much a problem of the single object finding scenes, although they are more on the easy side, and only very rarely present the kind of ambiguous and confusing clues that spice up similar games such as those of the Mystery Case Files series. The scenes are made even easier by allowing players to see the silhouette of any object they need to find at any time (although this feature disappears for a while after too many wrong guesses), and to get additional, positional clues if they are really stuck.

Much more annoying is how often the scenes are repeated just for the sake of it. About halfway through the game, it becomes very apparent that the story revisits most locations simply to get 2 rounds of play out of most in-game locations. This is even less appealing because objects are always hidden in the same place. At least the lighting conditions or weather varies at times. It is still a rather unpleasant way to stretch the game. Most players won't take much more than 5 hours to complete the game anyway.

The mini-games, while a nice addition to every game of the genre, are again far too simple to be much fun. In many cases, the game basically tells players what to click on, and then lets them click it. Games such as the rickshaw one, where the player has to find their destination in the city by eliminating false ones based on a set of clues, I would have enjoyed a lot had they been extended somewhat. The most ridiculously easy are the inventory puzzles. Some scenes have the player find predetermined plot items, which subsequently have to be used in the scene. The game does all but move the mouse from hotspot to hotspot.

Finally, there is no real reward for completing the game. The end credits are accompanied by "clean" versions of the in-game backgrounds, but why can't I enjoy them full-screen after playing the game? Why does the game insist on repeating scenes within the storyline, instead of rewarding me with a scene selection upon completion of the game, so I can choose the ones I liked most?

The Bottom Line
The hidden object gameplay of Cherry Blossom Murders is nothing special. Still, with its superior artwork and music, the game could have stood out from the rest well enough. The mini-games, had they not been simplified so much, could have added some entertainment value. It is the repetitive re-visiting of previous scenes and the overall extremely easy level of play that harm this title's appeal and replay value. If you can find it for a low price and are not completely averse to Hidden Object games, I'd say the game's lovely scenario is still worth a visit, but this won't be a title you return to for its gameplay.