The Letter - Horror Visual Novel

The Letter is an incredible visual novel where every decision you make matters. The voice acting is fantastic, and most every character has a memorable personality and story save for maybe two of seven main cast. The soundtrack is amazing, with each scene changing from serene and warm, to cold and haunting, to run-for-your-life fear. I feel that the constantly changing art styles may be a tad jarring, but overall it adds character to the experience. The story is fairly basic and easy to piece together, but it still held me captive until I had finished a single route and went back for more. I had an wonderful time saving (or not saving) my favorites, seeing them grow, and watching as my decisions created untold butterfly effects throughout. It was a great time, the jumpscares and horror elements really weaving into a grandiose story. Loved it!

Excellent horror CYOA. The choices matter, the characters are likable, the story is interesting, and you will get multiple playthroughs out of it (each being decent in length). I highly recommend this game.

I originally played this on Mobile and as soon as I saw it was available on Steam I purchased it. My favorite visual novel ever! Spoopy and great story!

If only there were a mixed rating. The Letter is a horror visual novel. It is nearly fully voice acted, has ample choices that do affect story and is decent in length. I would give this a big thumbs up if it weren't for a few things. Namely, too many choices. Trying to complete all achievements and get the true ending is a pain in the damn ass. The other thing that drags it down is that the story ultimately doesn't make any sense. I suppose if you get the true ending it would answer who wrote the letter, why 5 people, how it targets people and why, is it just the letter or has it to do with the mansion? I've done like 30 playthroughs trying to get it all done and most of the guides out there are crap. All in all if you have the patience to spend your precious time getting the true ending to understand the whole reason for this game existing, great. Otherwise I'd just get it on sale and play it at your own pace, just don't expect to have your curiousity sated. Also for steam deck owners, you'll be disappointed that button prompts for events that occur in game are not natively given controller options even though they're on all console platforms. You'll have to configure on your own or play on desktop.

This is a very good story, with an excellent focus on character relationships.

This review will contain vague spoilers, because I can't really talk about the faults and why I didn't give it 5 stars otherwise. While this is my favorite visual novel in existence and I absolutely recommend it, just those words alone would be a little dishonest, because the only other VN I can even name without Googling is Katawa Shoujo (the one about the school for disabled kids). I had to stop and think to even remember that I got Saintmaker, another horror VN by the same people as The Letter, in this same purchase. Haven't played that one yet. So why is The Letter my favorite? To be blunt, I like The Grudge, and I'm pretty sure YangYang Mobile does too, because the ghost in this story is made to be very similar to Kayako Saeki even when it doesn't quite make sense. She does the O-mouth thing, the croaking death-rattle, the marionette movement, the appearing and disappearing anywhere at any time in a blink, but instead of the white dress, she wears a tattered, purple maid outfit. And she can smile! The other, much more noticeable difference is that she isn't just a mindless force of hatred and fury. This ghost can think and speak, and does both with malicious intent. There's not much more I can say about the ghost without considerable spoilers, but once I learned her full story, I ended up liking her (as far as murderous monsters go) a lot more than Kayako. This partly where my "even when it doesn't quite make sense" sentiment comes in, because for the most part, there's no actual reason for her to look the way she normally does. Her behavior in general raises some questions that aren't quite answered by the given explanation, either. My main problems with The Letter are the signs that someone changed their mind about a few things only when it was too late to fully rewrite them, so they could only ret-con, and the scars of that surgery are plain to see when you get to them. There are details that don't quite make sense or only serve to harm the quality of the story overall. The biggest example is how in one chapter, the ghost's behavior changes for no discernible reason, pulling from a bag of tricks it previously hadn't touched, then goes back to business as usual right after. While I still enjoy the content of that chapter, it could be entirely cut from the game and nothing about the rest of the plot would change. It's like they wanted to tell a completely different ghost story and just stabbed it into this one. Still, these are pretty mild...

It was my very 1st horror visual novel game. The many routes ive seen, and still have yet to uncover kept me wanting more...as well as a step by step guide to find the true ending grrr.. i streamed this game msny times, memorized the soundtrack, and bought many copies to give to my friends so they can experience it for themselves