Paradise Killer [Xbox]
Playing through Kaizen Game Works’ Paradise Killer on Switch back in 2020, I fell in love with it, and hoped that it would one day come to Xbox. That day has come, and I’m just as in love with it as I was before. Paradise is run by The Syndicate, an elite group of immortals who create these islands to please their Gods - only, after a while, they end up tainted by demonic forces, leading The Syndicate to pull the plug, and move on to the next in the series of Islands.
You play as Lady Love Dies, an investigator who was exiled many Paradise iterations ago, after falling victim to deception by the god Damned Harmony. Now, after 3,004,769 days in exile, she has been summoned back to Paradise to investigate after a horrific event has occurred. During the transition from Paradise Island 24 to 25, all of the Council members have been murdered - and Lady Love Dies might just be the only one who can solve the mystery.
You’ll need to scour the island for clues, and talk to the remaining inhabitants to find out what pieces of the puzzle they hold. A demon named Shinji can be found all across the island, there to ask questions, put doubts in your head and just to generally get in the way a bit - but they’ve also scattered a bunch of Blood Crystals for you to find, which are a unique currency that can be used to purchase drinks from vending machines and to fast travel around the island, but also to buy information from a certain busty, goat-headed, underground secret-trader. As you uncover more and more of the information, you’ll no doubt find yourself toying with different ideas as to who the culprit might be. Is it as they say, and the killer is already in custody? Or are there greater conspiracies at play?
The visuals on Xbox Series X are fantastic, and whilst they weren’t bad by any means on Switch, the improvement is definitely there. It has been upscaled, and they’ve also implemented ray tracing to further amp up the beauty. Character designs are interesting, with many character backstories telling of where in ‘the real world’ they hail from, much of which inspires their looks. There’s limited voice acting, with each character only having a few recorded lines that will play depending on how your conversations are panning out, which is a bit of a shame, as having it all would have really added to things.
The funky vaporwave soundtrack by Barry ‘Epoch’ Topping, who also provides the voice of Doctor Doom Jazz, is fantastic. I raved about it in my review of the Switch version, and I’m gonna do it again here - it’s one of my favourite game soundtracks, which is why when it came out on vinyl, I had to have it. You can find the tracks on speaker systems around the island, so that you can listen to them at any time via your trusty laptop Starlight; and a few extra songs have been added to the soundtrack, from the B-Sides release, and these can be unlocked from a few corrupted looking vending machines.
As well as speaking with the other members of The Syndicate that are left on the island, getting information out of them and building your relationship with them (with you even being able to hook up with a couple of them), there are points of interest and items located across the world that you can find and investigate, using Starlight to record information for you to look over later. There are also other secrets that you can find, including various stone tablets, bottles of whisky, keyrings from gacha machines and more. There are a few foot baths available to use which will give Lady Love Dies some skills that make your search a bit easier, including a meditation that unveils secrets, and a double jump as well as a dash ability, that prove to be very useful when trying to reach certain areas.
Overall, the experience on Xbox has been greatly improved over the Switch version, and with it being available on Game Pass, it’s a brilliant way to open it up to new players who might have hesitated at dropping the money on it, and with additional content added since the original release, you’ve got plenty of reason to dive back in, too. You can of course still purchase it on Xbox for £16.74, which is still a great price, and with tonnes of collectibles to find and varied quest lines to go down to figure out different branches of this intertwining mystery, it’s a game that keeps you hooked from start to finish - even on a second run. The end trial is down to your decisions, so the whole thing can be wrapped up in all manner of ways - with you finding absolutely everything out and having full evidence to back up your decisions, or just winging it 10 minutes into the game. Your choices will lead to the fates of the guilty parties, so you need to make sure of who you accuse before you execute them.
In the end, we decided to give Paradise Killer the Collecting Asylum rating of 9.5/10.
Are you interested in Paradise Killer? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Fellow Traveller for the Paradise Killer Xbox review code!
