Suda51 before starting his own studio, Grasshopper Manufacture, actually got his start making games for a company called Human Entertainment and so I decided to go back and check out some of his past work and the first game I decided to sink my teeth into was Moonlight Syndrome on the PS1.
It may have been a mistake to start with Moonlight Syndrome because from what I can understand, it's a sort of alternate universe type story based on a game called Twilight Syndrome but I was already an hour in when I realized so I just kept going.
The game follows the adventures of a high school girl called Mika who lives in a town where a series of progressively fucked up things are happening. Mika takes it upon herself to investigate these strange happenings after a road accident kills one of her class mates and we get to join her on her weird and dark misadventures.
Game play wise there isn't really a lot to talk about since Moonlight Syndrome is essentially a visual novel. You control Mika or one of the other characters moving left or right along each of the games areas but there isn't really anything to do other than watch the walking animation and listen to the loud footstep noises. You do this until you meet another character or hit an event trigger and then more story plays out for you. They story is presented in a number of chapters and while the main characters lines are all denoted with text NPCs all get weird PS1 CGI and voice acting. There are a couple of moments in the game where you have to solve a "puzzle" which usually involves finding an event trigger or talking to a specific character. For example there's one bit when Mika is investigating an apartment building and you have to find someone living in room 9 on a certain floor. If you just count the doors you go down you'll end up at the wrong door because in Japanese apartments a room 4 doesn't usually exist and the idea of calling that a "puzzle" is a bit sad really.
Overall though, Moonlight Syndrome is a weird game that I think is worth checking out if you're a big fan of Suda51s more modern titles. It's fun to go back and see what he was doing early in his career. As far as I know though, the game doesn't have a fan translation and was never released outside of Japan so unless you can read and understand Japanese you may be shit out of luck. If you do though, give it a go, it's not overly long and it's quite an interesting little game. MAYBE check out the previous titles first if you really want to get into the series though.
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