Recent reviews by neopetism

ACHTUNG

Released with "coming soon!" features but also a fully functional cash shop with its own premium currency and timed skins.

Real classy.

A bit of poison on my blade, then let's go!

I finished Yuito's playthrough but about halfway through the game felt like a slog to play. It feels like you see most of the enemy types in the first few phases and the rest of the game just has higher level versions. About 3/4 of the skill tree are passives so combat doesn't really change a lot either.

Some of the characters are okay, but both the protagonists are walking cliches. Yuito is your standard dense shonen protagonist and Kasane is the stoic ice queen character. Your squadmates have quite a few offenders of this as well.

The story can be summed up by saying time travel is dumb.

Not really a hard no, I've had a lot of fun with this game. It also starts to feel like a slog at points and it feels like the further you get in the game the more bugs there are/general jank. Quests won't update or give you misleading/wrong markers. Spelling errors and general writing quality seems to go down. Example: Lamashtu is listed at "Chaotic evi;". Voice acting becomes more sparse. The game is just really front-heavy when it comes to quality and then it noticeably dips quite a bit.

I haven't finished the game yet, but I've gotten to a point where it feels like I'm spending the majority of my time traversing mountains on the world-map and doing kingdom management.

EDIT: Alright, finished the game. My kingdom management complaints only increased tenfold. Before the end chapters you're in some content draught where all you do is raise your kingdom stats for the better part of 4+ hours. If you spend your time exploring you'll be behind the curve and eventually lose to consistent DC40 problem cards and even if you did manage to explore the next chapter triggers after an extreme amount of in-game days. The final chapters were pretty enjoyable to play through, even though there was a ton of story railroading going on.

Get it on a sale. The game is vibrant with a good OST and the story is unique, but I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed every moment of the game.

Over 90% of the game involves platforming back and forth on the island to discover clues for your possible leads and then talking to the entire cast of characters each time you find more evidence. Some evidence is locked behind Starlight upgrades that are obtained through very tedious methods.

You can technically start the trial at any point in the game. The way the trial works is you select a culprit and just click on every piece of evidence you've collected. After collecting all the evidence the game allows you to, you basically have the full story on how the crime happened. How you select who is guilty, however, is up to you. There is no "true ending" and it's possible to have multiple different "correct" answers. This is probably the most frustrating aspect of the game.

I enjoyed myself overall but with enough caveats that I would recommend waiting for a sale.

I'm giving it a thumbs up because the visual novel aspect of the game was good. Everything is voice acted quite well, the visuals are pleasing, the OST is decent, and the story is interesting.

As an RPG, it's probably as bare bones as you can get. There are no side quests, no items, no stats, no currency, no decisions (besides one), nothing. It is as on-rails as you can possibly get, your only decision is at the start where you pick the element of the main character. Each character has a skill-tree, but because you have limited skill slots this ends up meaning "pick 3 skills".

The gameplay is done in the style of Dragon Age or FF12 where it is real-time with pause and your AI can be set up to certain triggers. Which is neat except for the fact it's also done very simply. I spent the whole game only pausing and switching characters when a character got full mask gauge on normal difficulty. Resource management outside of the mask gauge isn't really a thing. There are no consumables, health regenerates to full between battles, and companions can be revived in the middle of fights by anyone for no penalty.

TL;DR: Gameplay is secondary to story - if the story looks interesting, give it a shot.

I'll give it a "meh". I love TRPGs and the aesthetic of this game looked really appealing so i was excited for it. The actual skill trees are pretty bare bones but the gameplay and soundtrack are solid. I actually really enjoyed myself up until the end and then couldn't bring myself to complete it. The game operates in the same fashion as Rogue Legacy or Dead Cells where the game doesn't expect you to complete it on your first try and it gets considerably easier the more times you play through it.

Unlike those games, this isn't a roguelite so your gameplay experience is going to be more or less the same on subsequent playthroughs. This is fine in itself until the final boss where the game requires actual grinding. Before this point, bosses can be dealt with by learning the bosses moveset and changing your tactics accordingly on subsequent runs. The final boss just throws a ton of unavoidable damage at you to the point where you have to make sure you have a bunch of adequately leveled characters in your graveyard with good memories. The game at this point becomes a slog.

Both the visual novel and gameplay sequences are both fine on their own but the flow of the game is awful. There's only a few minutes of uninterrupted gameplay at a time before the game shifts to a few minutes of VN. Each chapter of the game does this back and forth until the boss fight then there'll be a cutscene or anime short, then you repeat for the next chapter.

There are tons of VNs with gameplay elements like Utawarerumono or Baldr Sky that make it work. There's also plenty of games with VN sequences like Yakuza 0 that make it work. This game, in my opinion, goes for some middleground that ends up not working. If you're really REALLY into Danganronpa enough to deal with jarring transitions for the whole game just to learn more of the story and fluff, go for it. Otherwise, I wouldn't.

EDIT: Me calling the gameplay "fine" is very generous. It's one of the major reasons the game feels tedious.

Fun timing based Mario & Luigi-esque turn-based combat and filled with quirky and dark humor. Every thing you examine in the game down to the identical looking boxes has their own unique and often humorous description which makes exploring in the game a joy. The game presents many choices but only three of them have plot significance and effect the ending. I didn't have any personal issue with this, except that I tended to overthink all of my choices. Oh, and the soundtrack is great. Highly recommended.