I just got done playing Return of the Obra Dinn, and I have to say it was an artistic af mystery game, and it really deserves every accolade it gets. Took me about 12 1/2 hours to complete all the mysteries and 100% the game, though it definitely wouldn't have taken me that long if I weren't a dumbass and actually took notes and paid more attention and didn't make stupid assumptions that led me into dead ends.
I really enjoyed it, not a lot of games offer such an in-depth investigative experience, while at the same time not being obtuse about it. I managed to get a lot of the mysteries through educated guesswork, and at the time I thought that was what you had to do because actual solid information is so rare, but looking back it seems like you could actually 100% the game using nothing but solid deductive reasoning and no guesswork at all.
The game does give you a few freebies, but only enough to be able to complete the game, if you want to get ALL the mysteries, you're going to have to make real extensive usage of your zoom in button to examine scenes, backtrack to previous scenes and look for new clues as you get more context, listen to audio clips over and over again, and slave over every precious detail your book gives you. And I did all that, and I said Fuck It, and started making good guesses, and I think the only reason I got all of them was because I got lucky before I got bored. Now, I'm POSITIVE that I didn't need to make guesses, but that's what I did, cause I just couldn't suss out whatever clues you needed to be able to discern the identities of the 30 or so crew members that are never explicitly mentioned by name by anyone anywhere, are never in any conversations, possess no material clues as to their identities, and the only reason you know they exist is cause they're milling around in the background in too many scenes to ignore.
I did get to make some good deductions though, and those moments were the best. I'd be revisiting an old scene looking for clues, notice a small clue that changes everything, and the Ace Attorney Theme starts playing in my head for how fucking hyped I got. I also made some startlingly bad deductions, as I'm sure I wasted more than an hour looking at scenes, wondering what the fuck just happened, going to google to look at naval hats, zooming in on people's shoes and socks like that means shit, ignoring the obvious evidence in front of me, and then when I finally guessed the correct answer I think "Oh, I'm a dumbass, the answer was right there the whole time...". Now, I'm still not sure HOW I could have found out some of those identities without guesswork, but I'm fairly sure that it's possible and I'm just stupid.
I highly recommend, the art style is spectacular. I played on Commodore 1084 style cause that was easiest on my eyes, but they all give the impression of the game being from old shitty adventure games from the floppy disk era, while not being shitty and being awesome instead. I don't even know what you'd call it, I want to say noir, but that's not exactly right, it's like being in a mystery novel made into a black and white movie. Of course it was made by the same guys that made Paper's Please, so you can trust that it transports you to another time and culture.
My only gripe with it is that the voice actors for some of the characters just seem off ever so slightly, with the most obvious one being the Captain, who doesn't sound like an older sea captain, but definitely sounds like a fresh faced millennial who's never gotten his hands dirty once in his life. He's a prominent character, so his unfitting voice broke my immersion fairly often, but that's obviously a very subjective nitpick.
So go pick it up while it's on sale, and for the love of god don't spoil yourself on anything.