What if Scooby-Doo, Ring, and many more had a baby?

TL;DR:
A visual novel + point-and-click adventure hybrid that starts like a chill penpal mystery, then hits you with “What the hell did I just play?” energy. Five endings. All unhinged. I came for the small-town suspense, stayed for the crackhead twists. Finished all endings and got 100% achievements in 8 hours.
Drama Mode is hilarious. VN fans? You’ll probably vibe.
Would send fake letters again. 8/10.

Longer ramble below.

Gameplay:

Classic VN structure: read, click, choose.

Mixed in with point-and-click investigation (searching rooms, questioning people).

There's also this “Max Mode” thing—basically a QTE-lite moment where you yell at suspects. Silly but kinda fun.

Branching is light. 8 main chapters are the same, then it diverges for the final 2 based on your choices.

5 endings total, all completely different flavors of madness. One of them had me staring at the screen like I opened the wrong game.

Story:
Starts off slow—you're tracking down your high school penpal who may or may not have committed murder. Pretty normal. But once you hit the endings? Bro. Each route goes off the rails in its own genre. One’s like slice-of-life, another’s thriller, one feels like sci-fi fanfic. None of them connect logically and I respect the chaos.
My first ending made me go “what the ♥♥♥♥” out loud. Not because it was bad. Just because it was so left-field it did a drift into another genre.

Presentation & Voice Acting:

Fully voiced in Japanese and it's solid. No complaints there.

Here's the twist: this game is a revamped version of the original Root Letter, but with live-action actors instead of anime sprites. They call it Drama Mode.

You can toggle between live-action and original anime-style anytime. Drama Mode looks like a J-drama shot on a shoestring, which makes it 10x more entertaining. I kept it on for the cringe laughs alone.

Didn’t play the original, but apparently this version adds 4 short epilogues too. Free content is free content.

Personal bit:
I actually own the original Root Letter. Never played it. Saw this version on sale, thought it was a sequel or something, and only halfway through realized it was the same game with extra stuff and live-action chaos.
Still don’t regret it. 8 hours, all achievements, 5 endings, and a mental breakdown later—I had a good time.

Should you buy it?

If you already played the original, maybe not worth it unless you’re curious about the live-action gimmick and epilogues.

But if you’re new? This is the better version. Has more content, toggleable art styles, and it goes on sale often.

For VN enjoyers, it’s weird in a fun way. Not the deepest plot ever, but definitely a memorable one.

Final Score: 8/10
Unpredictable, charmingly awkward, and occasionally insane. A short ride through mystery-town that detours into “what just happened” country.
If you like visual novels with a twist (and don’t mind a bit of jank), I say give it a shot.