I didn’t expect to be able to play much of Noctiluca II, as it’s a fairly simple choose your own adventure game with a lot of Japanese text. Google Lens did a decent job of translating the text, so I was able to discover multiple endings. There is an English translation of the game, but only in the form of a walkthrough on YouTube, so it doesn’t help that much with playing the game, unless you pick the same options – at which point you may as well just watch the video.

After an explosion on a passenger ship forces you into a lifeboat, you come across a mysterious ship, which you and the people sharing the lifeboat decide to board. Everything is dark, and it takes a while to find someone on board. Luckily, he’s the captain, unfortunately, he’s been poisoned and shortly dies. You’ll discover mysteries about this ship, the original ship, and the group of people on board.

The game is mostly comprised of static images and text, with the occasional sound effect and a couple of decent quality FMVs. Every now and then, you’ll be able to make a choice for your character, however, there’s not that many to make, and for some of them, the same action happens no matter what you put. On top of that, some of the actions may seem like nothing, but lead to a game over.

At a respite in the story, another character asked to play a card game. I felt like being polite and chose the option to play a game. It turns out that we’re both addicted to card games, along with a third person that joins us. We hear some odd stuff, but carry on (the choice to play was the last choice) until a recue team finds us. They inform us that, in the three days we’d been playing card games with no breaks, everyone else was murdered. Time to start again.

I did find out a lot more about what happened, who did it, and reasons why, and it’s quite an intriguing story. For the kind of game it is, it’s certainly an interesting novelty for the N64.

Fun

Remake or remaster?

The series would be a good basis for a game with better presentation – seeing the characters would be nice.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Noctiluca II: Murder Route