The primary purpose of this strat is to skip the interview at Central Police Station with the sailor, James Jessop, and the entire trip to the Bus Station. I am not sure if this strat would be too viable in a category other than 5 Star because essentially what you are skipping altogether is: -Going to Central for Jessop interview -Conducting Jessop interview -Going to Bus Depot -Tracking down Bus 249 to speak with driver

During this entire sequence you grab 2 clues which are thought to be necessary for 5 star rank - the Bus Route Map and the updated 'Victim Last Seen' from the bus driver.

So the way it works is to visit the Hobo Camp BEFORE going to the Taraldson house at 43 Emerald St. The hobo you are looking for won't be around. Now, continue with the case as normal. After leaving the Taraldson residence, KGPL will notify you through the scanner that the hobo has been seen at the camp.

Continue on to Baron's Bar and do the chase scene with Richard Bates. After you catch him and do an interview - do NOT use any phone, this is the time you will be informed that Jessop is at Central Station. Instead, get into your police vehicle and Rusty will put out the APB on the taxi from there.

After speaking with the taxi driver continue to the Hobo Camp and confront Ackerman. Afterwards, return to Central and you can conduct the final interview with Ackerman and end the case. Even more interesting is that this interview will only have 2 questions instead of the normal 3 - Cole will not have the option to ask about Ackerman's alibi, but not getting this question does not affect 5 star ranking.

Following this the end Case Report will look like: Clues: 17/17 Questions: 12/12 Case Notes: The bus driver who delivered Theresa to her death might have like a chance to testify. Rating: 5 Stars

What's interesting about this is that you will have only picked up 15 clues following this route, but the game credits you for the clues you could not have possibly gotten from skipping the bus depot. Also, there are only 12 questions total because without Jessop's interview (4 questions total) and Ackerman's missing question of his alibi.

Now if you were to have Cole use a phone to put an APB out on the taxi, you would have been informed of Jessop waiting at the station, and neglecting him would net you a 4 star rating with the same case notes. However, through this route KGPL never gets the chance to notify you of this witness therefore allowing you to skip it entirely.

Oh I didn't see this until now, pretty much never expected anyone to ever post anything here :P

This sounds really interesting and I'm gonna mess around with it for sure. I'm really glad to see someone work on this game. Are you working on routing out the whole game? Because I'd love to see a run of that, but I cannot bring myself to routing all of it for 100%.

Actually, I stumbled across this just playing around casually. Finding this strat in particular actually started to make me question how minimal you can do the cases and still get the 5 star ranks.

Turns out, most of the 5 star guides online are insanely thorough to ensure players get the 5 star. As for right now, I am slowly making my way through the game to try to cut corners on a lot of the cases. Although I haven't done a great amount of routing for vice and arson cases, I may still record a 5 Star No Skip run to just get a baseline time up. Even though using skips is faster, which I am all for, I kind of like the challenge of having to do the driving (which is a primary reason people miss the 5 star rank on cases.)

Yeah that's the thing. I've said many times that if 5 stars just came down to following a walkthrough and doing everything it wouldn't be bad, but there's so much stuff you can skip out on because of how the game seems to calculate your rating.

For the first case of traffic, The Driver's Seat, the route for 5 stars is surprisingly similar to any%. This got me pretty excited, but I've done enough routing in this game. Don't think I'll ever actively work on 5 stars, but like I said I'd love to see a run.