Flam Evaw Review

Flam Evaw has full English support and while it doesn’t have quite as much content and the translation is fairly mediocre, it is extremely funny with solid branching paths and happens to be one of the best in the genre this year.

In Flam Evaw you reprise your role as detective Kurosawa and continue following the Rainbow organisation that preys on women. This particular adventure takes you aboard cruise ship. Two admirers from the first game, Kitty and Wan Xiaoxiao, return as your employees. They directly interact with you and each other a lot, which is fantastic. Two new women join the fray as main characters. The psychotic killer, Aiko, wants to murder Rainbow members and you are in the crossfire. The righteous South Korean policewoman, Xu Yinzhen, is chasing down Aiko and Rainbow. Both have intriguing pasts to uncover.

The game is incredibly funny. Kurosawa has hilarious dialogue, like when he learns the ticket price of the cruise ship. After you accidentally kiss Yinzhen, she appears in your cabin and waits in bed. One of the best lines is when Aiko says, “Are you trying to kill me with a ramen fork?” while she enjoys a spa with the others.

Detective aspects have been tweaked. You still choose between speech or hacking, which alters scenes from, say, drinking at the bar to infiltrating a computer. You collect clues and make deductions by selecting the relevant items for the posed question. Not going down some paths means you won’t find clues to access some dialogue options. But the clue system is cumulative in classic mode, so the story adds layers nicely and you can skip investigation stages on replay.

There are a good number of branching paths and several satisfying endings. You can team up with either Aiko or Yinzhen a few times. You can go it alone in the finale, if you have enough speech / technical ability, and this leads to some brilliant finales. It was a little tricky to max these stats, and to balance justice and affection for the other endings, but the way it works makes sense.

Translation is not that good though. Name and gender issues are common, although some of the latter was part of the story. The clue text is generally better than subtitles, and the subs are still an improvement over the previous game—nothing missing or mistimed. Audio is nearly all live recorded (awesome) and the four main actresses are outstanding in their distinct roles. It will take about 4 hours to finish and around 11 to see everything. One of the good endings teases that more is coming, possibly with a Japanese theme, and I am looking forward to it.