AI: The Somnium Files

I picked up AI: The Somnium Files on a whim recently, when I was desperate for something to play and didn’t have the budget to buy something new. I purchased it from the PlayStation store a few months back on super sale and completely forgot about it. I had no expectations, and ended up really enjoying it!

Let me clear the air by saying I’m a huge Danganronpa fan. Despite their problems, I’ve always really enjoyed the series’ style and mystery solving mechanics. I figured AI: The Somnium Files, also developed and published by Spike Chunsoft, would be up my alley.

Differing from the high school setting of the Danganronpa games, the protagonist of AI is an adult man (probably in his early 30s) who’s a detective for the Tokyo police. His name is Kaname Date. He lost all of his memories and one of his eyes six years ago, and the overarching plot of the game is figuring out how and what happened.

One of the big gags of the game is that Date is obsessed with porn, and that’s often used during the combat sequences. It’s often brought up by the game’s female characters (Mizuki, his child roommate and Aiba, his AI in particular). I always found the use of this humor uncomfortable, especially when being mentioned by a minor. I expected it though, as the Danganronpa series is riddled with uncomfortable, out-of-place sexual humor as well. If that’s to your taste though, you’ll probably enjoy this game.

Another problematic stance this game takes is in its characterization of Mama. Mama is a fat trans woman who’s old friends with Date and runs a local bar. She’s an informant, so you visit her a handful of times throughout the game. She’s motherly and kind, and a bit flirty. Unfortunately, the other characters in the game are regularly transphobic and fatphobic towards her. They refer to her as things like a “monster,” or a “giant grape.” Mama is happy and doesn’t mind, but it’s uncomfortable seeing how she’s treated, even by her old friend. I look forward to the day when Japanese games aren’t like this anymore. My patience towards their use of fat queer people as a joke is gone.

I found a some of the other characters to be compelling, and was always excited to see more of them. Mizuki was very well acted, and I liked her standoffish nature. Iris, a young internet idol, was also always a joy to see. Date’s boss, Iris’s mother Hitomi, and Ota Matsushita (a fan of Iris’s) + his family were also all fun to learn more about.

An important gameplay mechanic is psyncing. Most of the game is clicking through several different locations to look for clues and interview characters. Standard point-and-click mechanics. Psyncing is where they switch things up. Date works for a special unit of the police force called ABIS. Their purpose is to get information, no matter what, and they have a special psync machine that allows them to do so. It puts the suspect to sleep, and lets the officer enter their dreams for 6 minutes to look for clues pertaining to the investigation. During these sections, you run around as Aiba in the body of a young woman.

I never found the psyncing to be much fun. They’re kind of like puzzle rooms, but nonsensical. The option you need to pick to progress is never clear or linear, and you’re timed in the rooms, so making too many mistakes can be punishing. I often had to replay the psync sections a few times to get them correct. Sometimes I had even figured out the solution, but the inputs kept taking too long and forcing me to restart. At best I found the psyncs neutral or tolerable, at worst a frustrating nuisance.

The best part of the AI: The Somnium Files is its use of branching paths. I ran into my first “ending” around 5-6 hours in, and was shocked that I had learned so little. The game encouraged me to play through again, starting from a branching segment from earlier on in my playthrough. I did so, and the differences were WILD. AI is kind of like Nier: Automata, in the way that you really have to see every ending through to solve the case and get the true ending. It was super worth it! There were so many fun twists and turns. I liked seeing how much Date’s relationships changed with each playthrough. In one path he and Mizuki were extremely close, in another they couldn’t even look at each other.

Ultimately, I had great time with this game. I flew through the 25ish hours in about two weeks, which is fast for me. The mystery kept me guessing until the very end. I also enjoyed the soundtrack! I definitely want to check out the sequel from last year, Nirvana Initiative next time it’s on sale. I’d recommend AI: The Somnium Files to any anime mystery fans! There is fun to be had here!