Preview: Urban Myth Dissolution Center

Shueisha Games have made an appearance at PAX East 2024 after releasing Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimensions. This weekend they are showcasing Urban Myth Dissolution Center for the first time in North America, a visual novel adventure where you have to solve a variety of cases involving cursed relics, rental properties with shady histories, and dimensional anomalies.

During my playthrough at PAX East 2024, I was able to solve one case and it featured Ayumu Meguriya, Jasmine, and Azami Fukari who are just a few of the main characters you’ll run into. The Urban Myth Dissolution Center comes with a lot of dialogue allowing you to actually connect with the characters involved.

The investigation involved Social Media and you have the point of the case we played through was to figure out who broke into a building and pounced on another person. So, Jasmine and Azami had to coordinate each comment on the post that came with a photo to see if anyone had something unusual to say. It takes a couple of minutes to eventually figure out the first case, but the point is that there’s a lot of dialogue that will connect you to these characters being built up.

You get to learn about Jasmine which actually her real name is Yasumi Tomarigi. She’s an onsite operative at the Urban Myth Dissolution Center. As the cases progress you’ll get to know her personality better as she works with Azami, the game’s newly-hired full-time part-time member for the Urban Myth staff.

What I will say about Urban Myth Dissolution Center is that I love the direction of its pixel art and for a game of this caliber the cutscenes were better than I anticipated. If there was a game I could compare this to in some ways it would be Persona with solving unusual crimes and yeah this is not a JRPG, but it has that setting of figuring out weird mysteries with a group of co-workers or friends.

Shueisha Games could have something special here with Urban Myth Dissolution Center. Currently, the release is set for late 2024 with it coming to PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch.