Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse review – a fishy mystery

A criminally overlooked visual novel from Square Enix has received a surprising sequel all about mermaids.

In February 2023, Square Enix quietly announced horror themed visual novel Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries Of Hojo via a Nintendo Direct, with an equally low-key release just a month later. It was a remarkably clever experience but flew under most people’s radar, including ours at first, due to a lack of marketing, and is unlikely to have been a big seller for Square Enix.

So, those fans that there are were pleasantly surprised when last month’s Nintendo Direct announced a Paranormasight sequel – subtitled The Mermaid’s Curse – would be releasing for Switch 2 in just a couple of weeks. Which was great news, even if there was a sense of déjà vu in how it was being handled.

Whether this new game will be a bigger hit or not remains to be seen but the way developer Xeen has approached this sequel essentially turns the series into a horror anthology, akin to Supermassive Games’ The Dark Pictures series.

Despite its ghost story inspirations, the first Paranormasight wasn’t especially scary and The Mermaid’s Curse is even less so, opting more for creepy vibes and grim imagery, which do clash nicely with the summer island setting.

It’s less a horror story and more a paranormal mystery, with you jumping between multiple characters’ perspectives as they pursue their own goals; all of which are tied to the myth of mermaids and whether their flesh can truly grant a person immortality.

Games like this live or die by their plot and, thankfully, The Mermaid’s Curse’s non-linear storytelling is very effective and paced well, regularly and cleverly hiding key details that you only become aware of upon unlocking new chapters set earlier in the story’s timeline.

The story being told from multiple perspectives means some plot details tend to be repeated one too many times, for the sake of getting characters up to speed, but it’s arguably a necessary evil to ensure you don’t forget them either.

The main cast are excellent too (the double act of fantasy author Avi and psychic sidekick Circe are sure to be fan favourites), all of whom have distinct personalities that allow for engaging and often surprisingly funny interactions, supported by fantastic and expressive character art.

For something that clearly has a small budget, with limited character animation, The Mermaid’s Curse is a pretty game to look at and since so much time is spent watching people talk to one another, The Mermaid’s Curse uses effective camera work and some presentation flourishes to keep things visually interesting.

The game has definitely benefitted from skipping the original Switch, although it strangely has no option for mouse controls, despite this being exactly the sort of game it’d be useful for.

It can be hard to keep track of everything, since you are often bombarded with a lot of info and encouraged to read newly unlocked files that offer further context to character backstories, locations, and the various myths the story draws from. A lot of them are purely flavour text but you’ll sometimes need to apply knowledge from them to progress.

Admittedly, most of The Mermaid’s Curse is spent simply examining objects and choosing dialogue options in the right order, similar to the old Famicom Detective Club games, but unlike those you’ll rarely be stumped on what to do next..

Unlike its predecessor, more of an effort has been made to include proper puzzles this time around, such as locating where a treasure is hidden on a map or figuring out how to open a mysterious box. There are still too few of them for our liking, though, compared to ones that just involve inputting the correct answer to a question. Those can be satisfying to solve too, but hardly interactive.

The only significant gameplay deviation (and wholly new addition) is an incredibly simplistic diving minigame. All you do is swim about and collect sea creatures to rack up as many points as possible before you run out of air.

Barring the game’s opening act, diving seems like a pointless aside, but it is weirdly moreish, especially as you improve your stats like swim speed, and is slightly more integral to the story than we first thought. It’s also mandatory for completing the game’s one side activity: collecting hidden bird stickers.

Where The Mermaid’s Curse really shines is in how it integrates certain gameplay mechanics into the story. It’s difficult to explain without spoiling too much but, just like the first game, this is a story that can only be told through the medium of video games and would lose something if it was ever adapted into a TV show or anime.

It’s a shame, then, that the story loses some steam right at the end. There are a couple of last minute character revelations that retroactively change what the story’s really all about and while they don’t contradict anything, we can’t help but feel they’re tacked on.

Plus, reaching the true ending requires some outside-the-box thinking that the game never trains you to consider beforehand, with what hints it gives coming across as either too vague or misleading.

The solutions are clever in retrospect, but you’re unlikely to stumble across them by accident. We genuinely don’t think we would’ve ever figured them out without some outside assistance and it made for a rather frustrating conclusion, which was an issue we had with the first game too.

Fortunately, that’s not enough to scupper the entire journey and we’d still be open to more abstract puzzles like this in a sequel; they just need slightly more generous signposting. At the very least, Paranormasight now has a winning formula for further stories in its supernatural universe, assuming enough people play and enjoy this one.

Formats: Nintendo Switch 2 (reviewed), PC, iOS, and Android
Price: £19.99
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Xeen
Release Date: 19th February 2026
Age Rating: 16

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