Nintendo Switch Critic Reviews

I enjoyed Kotodama a great deal. It's just surprising enough to keep the narrative interesting, and the colourful humour and cheerful fan service certainly help make the game a delight to play. Could it have been more? Yes, certainly. There are plenty of moments in Kotodama that you'll think to yourself that it could have been much more than a straightforward fanservicey romp... but the developers have achieved exactly what they set out to do, and have done so with such precision and panache that it's a real joy to play anyway.

Kotodama is an entertaining visual novel, not very interactive, but ir does have some good ideas. If you like high-school stories, it can be a good choice.

Kotodama: The 7 Mysteries of Fujisawa is going to appeal to a very niche audience, but if you fit into that category, you're probably going to have a good time here.

Kotodama: The 7 Mysteries of Fujisawa brings some recognizable elements to this visual novel and its visual presentation and interesting characters will prove to be appealing points. The same thing can't be said, however, for its overly simplistic puzzles, repetitive soundtrack and especially, its plot gaps, which stand in the way of forming a meaningful, coherent story.

Kotodama could have been a perfectly fine mystery school adventure if it didn't leave you blindly groping in the dark through repeats of repeats for a tiny morsel of fresh content. Failing that it could have been a decent brain-teaser if only it had the depth of even the most casual of free-to-play phone puzzlers. It could even have been an actually erotic visual novel if your lead's "People I've met but without their clothes on" fantasies ever went anywhere, real or imagined. Kotodama is in every way too much of not enough; the individual elements do not work well on their own nor gel together to form something new and there is no unique fusion going on here, nor even a basic feeling of quality to the individual elements. Pick whichever part intrigues you most about this title then seek it out elsewhere.