>>712908523
Rain Code has moments where it does all click right and it feels like it's one of his best works. I liked Vivia's chapter and it elevated him to the best character in the game, the school mystery is a fun one to solve, the final chapter works well and the twists hit right in it in a way where you can see them coming but also give you that "Oh damn!" feeling looking back, I think Yuma is a good protagonist, and actually do like the more condensed main cast in general. There's some great little cinematic moments, stylish visuals, and the world has some intrigue in it. They even do a fun thing playing on Danganronpa fans expectations without hammering the reference over your head.

But then Rain Code does stupid shit that cancels out the good to settle the final score at a more average level. The villains are mostly non-entities who leave the story as quickly as they arrive, so you never care about those edgelords in the slightest. The dungeon sections look stylish but drag on for far too long to achieve what is a more handholding version of the Danganronpa trials. When the church characters were introduced just as Priest, Nun, etc it was clear we were just not supposed to care about these characters long term and as an early quest does a poor job of setting up expectations for the rest of the game. And the prologue chapter twist is kind of annoying seeing as at least Danganronpa games would have a Free Time mode to help you get to know early death characters.

Also for all the comparisons to other series the game has, the actual story feels more like an edgier version of a Professor Layton story than anything to me: protagonists roll on in to a weird town and uncover a bizarre twist about it, before shrugging their shoulders and moving on to the next weird town to solve the puzzle of.

Still fun enough, would play a sequel of it.