First case murder is seriously dumb (spoilers, now with second case also)

[TCPippin]

Haven't progressed past first case, so no spoilers beyond that, please.
However, I need to vent, because the case is probably the worst so far.

1) Everyone's inability to move in pitch black darkness. I can understand having troubles with navigating cluttered storage room, but dining hall and corridors should pose no such problem - just put a hand to a wall and don't move your feet too fast.
2) Why bother closing fire doors? It would take a long time, they might squeak, and you don't need a light source in the corridor because of 1.
3) To recover his earring, Gundham managed to get a lighter on a very short notice. I seriously doubt Buyakuya would confiscate one from anyone, much less from a cook who has to work with a gas stove, so there's no point in lugging around hot plate, and the whole "pitch darkness" situation becomes even more absurd.
4) The entire murder plot hinged on someone crawling under the table to get the knife. But the tables aren't that big (Byakuya's carcass just about fills its width), so you don't need to crawl, you just reach under it with one hand. For same reason, you don't need luminous paint - you'll find it by feeling around.
5) No matter how huge the gaps between floorboards are, voice coming from under the floor wouldn't sound the same as the voice coming from a person next to you. Granted, Ibuki is a cloudcookolander, but she's still an ultimate musician and would be able to tell the difference.
6) Last but not least - timetable. Once the light went out, Hanamura had to pull the skewer from the meat, leave the kitchen, walk down the corridor to the storage room, grab the tablecloth and wrap it around his body, descend through the trap door and crawl a few meters to the spot beneath the table while making little to no sound.
Oh, and he expected to do it all faster than it'll take for Nagito to reach under the table and grab a knife (and he didn't know his initial positioning - it would be totally reasonable for Nagito to hang around the rigged table, in which case grabbing a knife would take 15 seconds tops).

All in all - it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t. I love you, Danganronpa, but this one is inexcusable.

[Protocol27]

I may be wrong since I'm basing this off memory, but I'll still say it regardles because you never know.
I believe the stove was necessary because the killer had to go below the floorboards, and they used the light to find the exit. There was no way they would of known the power would be turned on by Monokuma after the murder.

2. I think the fire door would create a wall, it's never stated the others knew about the fire door, minus the killer and first suspect because they had plenty of time to be inside the cabin. The killer also would of have to closed the fire door beforehand to know if it would squeak or not.

3. The lighter could of either been taken my Byakua (because paranoia) or was inside the storage closet and Gundam happened to find it.

4. I believe the reason Nagito went underneath the table was because if he just lifted the cloth, the glowing paint would of shown. Also, it wouldn't be smart to try to find a knife in the dark because you'll risk stabbing yourself so the glow paint was necessary.

[Mr. Manual]

5) I don't believe you. If you raise your voice loud enough, it would sound just like you're in the room.

6) I kinda believe you. However, logical or not, it happened, which means the little bugger is, according to the facts, faster than you give him credit for.

[Pikaman20008]

You say that it's impossible that Teruteru did all that in such a short timeframe, but before that you admonished him for getting a light...which would have made him move faster. It doesn't matter how open a space is or how well you know it. If it's pitch black, you are going to go slower to feel around where you are whereas if you can see, you can walk normally. Also, Nagito used the glowing paint and crawled under the table in order to expediate matters. He didn't know how long the blackout was going to last, so he did everything he could to make sure he could get the knife as quickly as possible.

[Ace Winterhold]

I know, you are angry but wait a little more...you need to keep your rage sealed until the Chapter 5, when you can release your iner monsters against Spike Chunsoft

[TCPippin]

@Protocol27
1,3 - That's what my point number 3 was about: you don't need a stove, you can use a lighter. Gundham managed to find one in less than an hour. And no, it wasn't in either safecase - we've been shown contents of both. Plus, the kitchen is big and Buyakua obviously didn't fine-comb every nook and cranny (otherwise he would've found the knife under the table) so killer could've easily hidden it during the day.
2. The doors aren't obscured, disguised or concealed, so "knowing" about them offers no real advantage - anyone entering the hall can see them plain as day.
Closing the fire door gives no real benefit and possibly raises a lot of red flags. Suppose that during the blackout someone comes out of the dining hall and tries to make his way to the kitchen, only to suddenly find a wall where there should be none? That'll certainly raise some questions. And if you don't manage to get back in time to open it before the blackout ends - well, that'll be an even bigger screw-up. Or if you get caught red-handed opening them? It would be hard to explain why you felt the need to screw with them in the pitch darkness.
4. Nah. Unless you have unbelievably soft hands, you'd need an extremely sharp knife to hurt yourself that way. Try it at home: put a knife on the table the same way it was in the game, close your eyes and search for it - either by moving your hand across the surface slowly or by brining your hand up and down.

About the fire door - is that even a normal thing? I mean, in the event of fire someone is supposed to stay behind, manually close them and bar them to prevent fire from spreading? What if someone's left behind them in enclosed area - are they doomed once the doors are closed? I literally have never seen something like that in my life.

Originally posted by Mr. Manual:

5) I don't believe you. If you raise your voice loud enough, it would sound just like you're in the room.

It's not about volume, it's about pitch. You will sound somewhat muffled. It may fool an ordinary person that just had a shock due to sudden blackout, but for a musician who managed to remember everything perfectly, the difference should be noticeable. Not to mention that killer's voice would come not from the door, but from the opposite side (Buyakuya was murdered in the far corner of the room, remember).
Also, there should've been a sound of door opening if someone really came through it - it's an old building and cleanup crew didn't have the time to oil the hinges too. So the students could've picked that one clue too. But that's already in the nitpicking territory.

Originally posted by Mr. Manual:

5)6) I kinda believe you. However, logical or not, it happened, which means the little bugger is, according to the facts, faster than you give him credit for.

Sure, in-universe it all happened how the writer wrote it to be, but that doesn't mean that some things are less believable than others.
For a better timetable, consider this: Teru could leave the kitchen early. He knew when blackout will happen, so he could walk out of the kitchen at 11:29 with his big meat on a platter, heading to storage room (if someone happens to meet him, he can always abort his plan or claim he's going to find tablecloth to cover his masterpiece for a dramatic reveal). Once he gets to the storage, he gently puts aside his platter and does everything as before.
In this case, Teru is already in his "murdering spot" when the blackout happens, which makes the entire sequence a bit more believable.

Originally posted by Pikaman20008:

You say that it's impossible that Teruteru did all that in such a short timeframe, but before that you admonished him for getting a light...which would have made him move faster. It doesn't matter how open a space is or how well you know it. If it's pitch black, you are going to go slower to feel around where you are whereas if you can see, you can walk normally. Also, Nagito used the glowing paint and crawled under the table in order to expediate matters. He didn't know how long the blackout was going to last, so he did everything he could to make sure he could get the knife as quickly as possible.

I admonish Teru for using stove when he could make do with a lighter, which is a smaller item, a more common item and an item that's easier to conceal on your person should need arise. If you're caught with a stove in your hands - you had to take it from kitchen and so you've been walking around with a source of light very purposefully. If you're caught with a lighter, you can claim you just found it, and been stumbling around in darkness before like everyone else.
If Nagito wanted to expedite matters, he wouldn't have glued the knife to the center of the table. He's already using cord to orient himself - why not ducttape the knife at the end of the table that's closest to the wall, near the very edge so you only need to lift tablecloth with one hand (the same one that's holding cord) and reach under it with another??

Originally posted by SonSoneca The Final Boss:

I know, you are angry but wait a little more...you need to keep your rage sealed until the Chapter 5, when you can release your iner monsters against Spike Chunsoft

Ooooh. Sounds like I'll need to bust out that headache medicine I've kept around since Ace Attorney sequels.

[vulmen.matrias]

Originally posted by Eel:

@Protocol27
why not ducttape the knife at the end of the table that's closest to the wall, near the very edge so you only need to lift tablecloth with one hand (the same one that's holding cord) and reach under it with another??

I honestly believed that Nagito was wholly expecting Teru to kill in the fashion that he did. After all, he completely and purposefully spoiled not only his plan to Teru, but also how to *get under the floorboards* to Teru. I think Nagito was intending to be the one to crawl under the table and die to Teru, but Byakuya jumped under and shoved him out (which Nagito wasn't expecting).

So...it was taped under there as it was, because he never intended to crawl out from under that table. One-way ticket.

And yeah; I'll be waiting to see more rage-posts from you tearing murder cases apart. xD Just ALWAYS make it clear to everyone not to post spoilers past that chapter aaaand... good luck not accidentally getting spoiled. It's easy to slip up, since there are references EVERYWHERE in this game. I love it lol

[LemonLass]

What bugged me is how is a musician like Ibuki have such good hearing? If you have been onstage a lot near speakers and drums and the like you are more likely to have POOR hearing as a result...

[Pikaman20008]

Originally posted by LemonLass:

What bugged me is how is a musician like Ibuki have such good hearing? If you have been onstage a lot near speakers and drums and the like you are more likely to have POOR hearing as a result...

Yes, but she's the ULTIMATE Musician.

[TCPippin]

After a break, I came back and played through case #2. I gotta say, either I've adjusted to the way developers think, or this one is better thought through than the first one.

I mean, I still have some beef with it:
1) Once again, time table is off. We know that Mahiru went to the beach house at 2:30 and that Yakuza appeared in front of the Diner at 3:20-3:30 pm. After a brief chat, he went on his way while Hajime, Soda and two girls went inside the diner only to witness a few minutes later Loli girl running past them in tears.
Which means that entire confrontation between Mahiru and Yakuza took almost an hour, while the clean-up (moving the body, bath, disposal of the bottles, hiding) took only a few minutes. And Loli just happened to wake up right after the killer was finished. Would've been more believable if there was an antidote to deliver to wake her up.

2) When Yakuza came to the Diner, Hajime was staring out the window. So we should know with certainty if he was coming from the beach or not. The impression I got from the scene is that he was coming from the mainland, which threw my reasoning a bit off: until Nagito made Monokuma confess that in this particular case killer doesn't count as one of "body discoverers", I was sure that Yakuza is a red herring and killer acted entirely on their own. But the killer's identity was obvious, it was literally the first name I wrote down as a suspect (yeah, after the first case I decided to start making notes as soon as the proper investigation begins)

But all and all, it wasn't nearly as WTF as the first one.