I gave Staffer Case a positive review based on the fact that the price is good for what it is. The graphics are beautiful -- the model for Thena especially grabbed me -- the music is decent, the concept is interesting, and the cases, when it's focused on the mystery and not the interpersonal drama between the detectives, are engaging with surprising twists.

That said, it's far from a perfect. For one, the crime solving game aspects are rather sparse, making this more a virtual novel with a few evidence sections to give the impression of a crime mystery game, sections which boil down to either immediately knowing what you're looking for, or trying random things before hitting the hint button to tell you which pieces of evidence you're looking at.

The 4 main cases all have a good and bad resolution, where the game conveniently forces a save right before the pivotal choice. However, I often found the correct "True" ending to be a lot easier to follow through than the bad, which feels backwards. The fifth case attempts to bring all of this together, but it falls a little short. For one, it relies heavily on character drama, which for the most part is pretty bad and forced in part due to the time constraints of trying to squeeze this in around the world building in external murder cases, but also because the general dialogue between characters is average at best -- whether this is translation issues or just the script is hard to say.

It's also worth noting that the game ends with a "To be continued!", so you don't get a resolution to the overarching story, but seeing as that main story is it's weakest aspect, that's not a major deal.

All told, good for whiling away 10-20 hours, but it's not something you'll likely think back on once it's over.