A good game for sure, but I have mixed feelings.

It is in some ways the purest detective game I have ever played. You are so gradually led through the suspects and different hypotheses ruling certain guests out. As a result, the final "clue" which narrows down the culprit is not surprising at all so does not feel particularly shocking. As a whole though you do go through a pretty methodical detective process whereby you figure out why everyone is here and everything that happened in the manor.

I think why it feels fairly straightforward is the fact that in truth the game has a pretty cool "why" for the culprit, but spends the entire (long) game suggesting that "who" is the most important fact.

I suspect that most people if forced to guess the culprit at the end of day one would do so correctly. This makes the final reveal fall flat. But the actual reasoning why is quite well written and pretty interesting. However, at least as far as I can tell, the use of magic in this game makes it so this cannot really be figured out until close to the very end of the game. While I wouldn't expect to get it correct, part of the fun of reveals in detective stories is showing specific clues that explain exactly why the explanation you hear was obvious in retrospect. The problem is that with magic it's all quite nebulous, and so while the "why" makes good sense after the fact, it is not like pentiment where there are specific clues that only really match up with what happened.

It gets especially egregious when more and more excuses need to come up as to why you cannot investigate some places, and the immersion basically disappeared by the middle of the second day where it was obvious "where" the final clues were going to be but the game kept insisting it wasn't. The "why" is not obvious and would have made for a good mystery story, but the eliminate suspects framing buckles the entire game around "who" which ends up not being as interesting because the clues you get are much more opportunity than any motive.

The first day is the best, because you actually have many leads, all giving you lots of information and intersecting with each other. Plus, you feel as though you do not have much time thanks to the fact interactions always take 1 minute (a good system in general, except that often it is not clear what to prioritise).

Overall, this game is a well written narrative game with an interesting setting, strong lore and story. The problem is that it hinges the entire gameplay loop on in my opinion one of the least interesting parts of the mystery, the "who". Partly this is because of how the mystery itself is interesting. It isn't that there is a dead man behind a locked door and here are 12 schedules, but a story about power and betrayal in 19th century Ireland. The other part is that the game fumbles hard how obvious it makes the who. I don't want to spoil anything, but suffice it to say that there is one "gamey" reason immediately obvious on the first day, and one line of questioning immediately obvious on the first day.

I recommend as a narrative game. I do think it is a detective game, just not a very good one.

I'm not entirely sure I would call this a deduction game, it is more in line with a visual novel or an adventure game.

There are no failstates other than just taking too long, people will freely tell you most of their schedule, you spend most of the game traipsing around arguably locked rooms and mentioning something you found inside a person's own room to their face has zero consequences, you can open a door to another guest's room in full view to someone and it's going to be fine. No one interferes with your work, nothing important can be found earlier than intended. The presence of the supernatural makes you question if it's real for all of the first couple hours, if that.

That you spend most of the time walking across empty hallways in a game that tells you time matters but time only passes when chatting, doesn't really help matters.

Puzzles are fair, good writing, engaging story.