Have you heard of this game? If it hadn’t been making the rounds in my social circles, I would have completely missed it. I did not see any coverage for this game at all when it came out. I follow some game journalist / critic folks who usually pick up pretty much everything of interest to me but this game remained completely under the radar. That’s a bummer because Misericorde may actually be one of my favorite visual novels of all time. You play as Hedwig, a nun living in a monastery in 1482 England. Not only has she left society behind to live a secluded life devoted to prayer and servitude, she actually went one step further and chose a life as an anchoress. Day by day, Hedwig sits in a cell reading scripture, copying books and offering religious advice to anyone who seeks it. She lives a completely isolated life, an existence cut off from the outside world. Everything is fine until one day… the door opens, Hedwig’s space is violated and in comes the mother superior with a gruesome tale and a mission. One of the nuns has been murdered, quite brutally so and the one suspect is a farmhand who seems rather unrelated to the crime. Since you are the only nun with a perfect alibi, it is now your task to act as impromptu detective, spy on your fellow oblates and find the true culprit behind this brutish act of violence. As a huge fan of The Name of the Rose and Pentiment , this setup alone had me intrigued from the first minute. Hedwig is such a weird and perfect protagonist for a game like this. Just like the player, she has no real grasp on the reality around her. Since she spent her entire life in a dark cell, even the most simple facts of life are a mystery to her. You walk around the monastery asking about everyday affairs, politics and the clash between orthodoxy and lived reality. Like Hedwig herself, we as players get to know Linbarrow Abbey , its inhabitants and customs and we even peek behind the veil to uncover one or two mysteries. What I love about this game is that the suspense never lets up. From minute one, you feel like something is wrong about this place. Hedwig has strange visions about demonic beings lurking in the shadows, she hears sounds that really shouldn’t be there and she develops a paranoia that may actually be more than the product of her imagination. As you slowly make your way towards solving the case, more questions pile up and instead of getting to the bottom of the mystery, things actually start to get even weirder. All the while, Misericorde also deals with themes of isolation, madness, shame, inferiority… self-hatred. Hedwig truly is a miserable little wretch; one that I sympathize with a lot. Imagine the situation she finds herself in. After being cut off from life for 20 years, someone storms into her room, makes her break her vows and imposes a nigh impossible task to solve. To make things worse, she then has to face the realities of monastic life, the bickering and scheming, the lack of devotion and the fact that this is also a place for women outcast from society for various reasons. There are many tensions and intricacies here; say something wrong and you may have made an enemy for life without even knowing it. There is also a lot of love, trust and true comradery among the sisters. You get to know each and every member of the order and by the end of the game, you have a pretty good idea about who they are and what their backstory is. Despite the fact that the cast is rather large and the game hasn’t much to work with in terms of visual distinguishability between the sisters (they are all wearing habits after all), it’s remarkable how unique every character is displayed. There is much personality in the mimic, the posture and the way they talk. Every sister feels like a true individual and I grew fond of them all by the end, even the ones that do and say pretty despicable things. I also love the humor. Even though the setting and the plot invite a very serious tone, there is plenty of humorous banter as well. The entire framework of how the story is told is used to great effect here. What I mean by that is that the events of the game aren’t just presented by a neutral narrator but by Hedwig herself who tells the story to another unknown anchoress in the future. That way, she comments on her own actions, making jokes about her behavior and criticizing her past self, it’s really funny. There are some things that I have to criticize though. Even though the pacing is great overall and I never really got tired of continuing the story, there are some exceptions here. Some scenes (for instance the night in the eponymous Misericord) just drag a bit without adding anything of value to the narrative. It’s a minor thing and the writing is really strong overall but it did bug me a bit occasionally. Another problem is readability. The game’s color scheme is black and white which does wonders for the atmosphere but makes text really hard to decipher sometimes. When there is white text displayed on a mostly white background, things just start melting into an unreadable mess sometimes. Add to that the fact that there are quite a few typos (especially towards the end) and visual clarity really starts to suffer. Then there is the music and let me start by saying that the OST is fucking fantastic. There are like a billion songs and it’s incredible what the solo-dev put on the table here. However, some pieces feel really out of place and break the immersion for me. Again, just a minor nuisance among an ocean of greatness but I had to bring it up. Lastly, I just wish the game would tell us more about Hedwig as a character. She finds herself in a pretty interesting situation, don’t you think? Why does one become an anchoress, choosing a life of complete isolation? Why does one end up in a monastery in the first place? You find answers to these questions for some of the other sisters but for Hedwig, the backstory remains rather clouded. Maybe this is something that will be tackled in the sequel but I just hoped to get a little more insight into her life here. These minor points of criticism aside, I had a blast with this game. Among the relatively small number of visual novels I played (and this really is a visual novel in the strictest sense of the word with no interaction or branching paths or anything), this is one of, if not the best. I was glued to the screen searching for answers; I needed to solve this mystery and the writing was so intricate and gripping that I never lost that eagerness to go on. This is only the first of three games which sadly means that you won’t get a satisfying conclusion in the end. However, I am not disappointed by this. Quite the contrary, I can’t wait to dive into the next game and learn more about the sinister plot that takes place at quaint Linbarrow Abbey. If you’re at all interested in detective stories with a medieval setting and a mystical twist, get this game, it really deserves more attention.
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