I'm still playing through the game for review for my site (which doesn't give scores) and I'm at the end of the third chapter. So these are more like "work in progress" impressions than a full review.
But so far, I'm pretty disappointed in it. The shooting segments aren't flat out bad, but they aren't really any good either. It gets a little more interesting with the puzzle room sections, but even then, they aren't that hard and you don't even really need to "beat" them. Toko exists as a limited use "win" button and you can use her a lot. It's like the developers realized that a lot of fans would be playing this game for the story instead of the shooting stuff, but if so, why did they bother to create a half-assed action game and just make it an adventure game like the others?
The story itself is fine, but nothing has really happened that grabbed me the way the previous two games have. It's neat to see the outside world but outside of the basic premise it's the usual post-apocalyptic stuff except with sordid children instead of zombies. Some environments are boring. Some environments are really cool and colorful and surreal, as they should be.
The game sorely lacks a central villain. Monokuma was always a threatening presence in the main games because he was cracking terrible jokes one second then murdering people the next. Ironically in this game he's EVERYWHERE since almost every enemy is based on him, but none of his personality is. Instead the roles are taken up by the five kids, who haven't proven themselves to be much more than weird and irritating (although I like their casting as RPG heroes).
There is some stuff that's really dark and the sort of thing I've not really seen dealt with in a video game and I'm still sorting how I feel about it. On a broad level though, Danganronpa isn't just "dark", it's "darkly comedic", it's a series where someone is murdered by getting dipped in tempura then fried in a volcano. Outside of a few goofy references for fans there hasn't really been much here that's funny.
Komaru by design isn't all that interesting of a character (like Makoto was at the beginning) and Toko was far from my favorite either. Most of the DR characters are one dimensional and that was never particularly a problem since there are so many of them. But here all Toko has done so far is complain, berate Komaru, and fantasize constantly about Byakuya-sama. I'm at the point where it's showing some character development, but this has been like ten hours of this stuff so far.
The cutscenes are really inconsistent, some are handled with the in-game 3D engine with character portraits, some are pre-rendered CG in a similar style, some are cutscenes done in the style of the anime, and some are the animations using "flat" characters like the execution scenes in the other games.
The game has the "Kingdom Hearts problem" where it's really weirdly paced, you walk for a few seconds, get a cutscene, walk a few more, maybe shoot a few more guys, then get another one. It gets a little smoother in the later chapters, at least.
I think the Game Informer review is too harsh, but unless the game gets massively better in the later chapters, I'm really baffled by all of the 8s/9s, and this is coming from someone who loves the first two games.
