Lucid9: Inciting Incident

Being a high school student is not as easy as it looks, at least not for a high schooler. It takes a lot of effort to be popular, and it’s also quite difficult to maintain good grades at the same time. Obviously, all this becomes a joke once the adult life begins, but that doesn’t make it any less real for the children that have to endure those four long years.

Lucid9: Inciting Incident is a visual novel in which you play the role of a high school student named Yama Ishimoto. The game itself is pretty straightforward, in the sense that every visual novel fan should know what to do from the first few minutes of gameplay. In essence, most of the action does not involve any actual input from the player, except the occasional choice that affects the direction of the plot.

Speaking of which, the story is pretty interesting and engaging from the start, not to mention the fact that it involves a decent number of characters. In short, you investigate a series of brutal murders that take place around the school, together with your wannabe detective friends. The action takes place in the near future, so there might be a few ideas and concepts that are not very realistic.

To make matters more interesting, you are presented with choices along the way, choices that affect the way everything ends. Besides the fact that the story changes as you are playing through it, there are multiple endings you can reach as well. This makes it very easy to enjoy multiple playthroughs, at least if you are the type that likes to go back and see what would happen if you said or did something else.

As for the visual quality, the artwork is pretty much spot on, at least if you are a fan of anime and the usual colorful style found in most visual novels. The backgrounds are very detailed and moody, and the character design is impressive as well. Not much can be said about the soundtrack, on the other hand, although it’s possible it grows on you after a few hours of listening.

In the end, Lucid9: Inciting Incident’s greatest feat is that you actually feel like doing something, given the fact that you are constantly investigating clues and following leads. On the other hand, you shouldn’t expect world-shattering revelations either.