Glass Rose scores 7/10 in the verdict of The Games Market editorial team.
Once Upon a Time
Glass Rose, a refined investigation between past and present!
by Simon Larocca·May 25, 2025
From Capcom’s busy forge, many multi-genre productions have landed on the consoles of the last two decades. Resident Evil and its epigones revived dynamic adventures with horror elements, certainly; however, the Japanese production house has never rested on its laurels, and its various internal creative departments have worked hard to find new ideas for the ever-changing video game market.
Glass Rose was released in 2003 in Japan for PlayStation2 (it would not arrive here until the following year), following in the magnificent and bloody trail of survival horror gems like Silent Hill and Forbidden Siren, just to name two at random, but Capcom had a bold hybrid experiment in store for us; let’s see why.
Grafica poligonale as per usual, let’s say, and pre-rendered backgrounds that convey the villa’s three-dimensionality quite well, the game’s unique setting in question, undoubtedly giving us the feeling of playing a Capcom game from those years thanks to its illustrious zombie predecessor by Mikami.
La storia di Glass Rose drops us into the shoes of Kagetani Takashi, a rookie reporter who finds himself visiting an old, uninhabited villa in the present day (2003, the year the game was released): unfortunately, however, Takashi’s curiosity is repaid in the worst possible way, because an invisible force hurls him back in time to 1929, when the house was not only far from being in decay, but neither were the people who lived there. The Yoshinodou family, involved in the mystery that connects two seemingly distant moments in time, will in fact be the key to reaching the end of the game and discovering the truth.
Il gameplay of Glass Rose, contrary to what you might expect from reading my introduction, has nothing to do with the martial and confident movements of Leon Kennedy and Chris Redfield: the perspective is third-person, but it does not follow your avatar closely and only through a cursor on the screen will you be able to move Takashi within the various locations: by clicking on the characters you will unlock long dialogues with them to glean information and solve the numerous puzzles scattered throughout the rooms and floors of the mysterious mansion.
A halfway point between an exploration game with medium-difficulty puzzles and the need to read and examine insurmountable walls of text with everyone you meet along the way, Glass Rose presents itself as a point-and-click attempt to infuse the hazy atmosphere of a mystery with the typical dynamics of a supernatural story.
Il fulcrum of the game, in fact, is based on the ability that Takashi develops during the involuntary time journey he undergoes: he is able to discover hidden truths in the minds of his interlocutors, more or less willingly, by speaking with them. On screen, this skill of Taka (we’ve taken a liking to him) activates by literally highlighting the parts of the dialogue in the caption that interest us, and if we hit the mark we will unlock other dialogue strings that were previously inaccessible to us. The sensation is that of being faced with a story with a strong narrative imprint, carefully scripted and with a particular taste for Art Nouveau as a source of visual inspiration, a concept reiterated by the game’s creators several times and in multiple interviews.
But it is precisely this double-edged sword that cuts Glass Rose deeply, in my opinion.
The pace of the game is rather soporific. The amount of dialogue present is enormous and while on one hand it provides elements of worldbuilding that are very solid and a noteworthy characterization of the characters, on the other it greatly undermines the aspirations of players not accustomed to game slowdowns of this scale.
Glass Rose is not for everyone, refined like an imperfect Mont Blanc that not everyone will like. But as they say in these cases, don’t say you don’t like it if you haven’t tasted it first.
7
Pro
Puzzles of varying difficulty to be solved within a time limit, otherwise the game will end. A nice challenge, all things considered.
Alone, or almost alone, for those who love narrative and psychological adventures where the textual and reflective part is predominant
Contro
Extremely slow pace and a plot without particular peaks; the story is rather guided, and there are no side quests to shake things up.
Interesting project, but only partially successful, lacking the personality of other Capcom titles
Mi chiamo Simon Larocca, e sono un videogiocatore, collezionista e amante della cultura pop in tutte le sue forme. Vado al cinema ogni volta che posso, leggo da quando porto gli occhiali, quindi da sempre, e ho la passione per lo storytelling in tutte le sue forme, così dirompente da farla diventare una professione. Ma come direbbe Doc di Ritorno al Futuro, non ci sarebbe presente se non si guardasse al passato con rispetto e ammirazione, ed è il Simon bambino di più di trent’anni fa, anno più anno meno.
Simon Larocca
Mi chiamo Simon Larocca, e sono un videogiocatore, collezionista e amante della cultura pop in tutte le sue forme. Vado al cinema ogni volta che posso, leggo da quando porto gli occhiali, quindi da sempre, e ho la passione per lo storytelling in tutte le sue forme, così dirompente da farla diventare una professione. Ma come direbbe Doc di Ritorno al Futuro, non ci sarebbe presente se non si guardasse al passato con rispetto e ammirazione, ed è il Simon bambino di più di trent’anni fa, anno più anno meno.
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