Just finished the first trial and it was pretty good. I'm probably the millionth person to bring up how unnecessary the minigames are but yeah, they're a weird inclusion. So far, I feel indifferent about them, though. I might get annoyed once the difficulty ramps up.
But anyway, I'm enjoying the story and the characters (also, the soundtrack!) and I can't wait to finish the game so that I can read some of the impressions in here as well as the spoiler thread.
On your first run, don't worry about the Monokuma tasks and focus more on raising the stats of each character. (Focus one to three on cleaning while the rest gather). You can aim to build the tools.
On the social aspect, aim to max out everyone's free time events before aiming for the trips with them.
Their cleaning/gathering stats carry over as well as their heart levels from the trips.
Finish all the FTEs first time through (pretty sure you can't get the character endings until you do this, as that's at least how it works in the original version of this mode in the second game called Island Mode). First run should focus more on increasing everyone's stats over completing the goals, I think. It can get tedious over time, so, unless you're going for the platinum, don't feel any pressure to keep going on for it.
Finished the trial in chapter 03. I actually figured out the culprit and the MO really early so that whole process felt pointless. I did enjoy the case itself, however.
Just finished chapter 2. There was a good bit of misdirection in there and a nice trial sequence. I'm curious, do the later chapters get easier due to lack of possible suspects? Even with ch 2, it was fairly easy to figure out just because there weren't many available suspects that made any sense. And as the cast shrinks, I have to imagine that gets worse.
I guess you could say I was left with some despair at the end, although mostly caused by the game's shortcomings. First, the game's strongest aspects are without a doubt the presentation, from the visuals to the soundtrack. Then we already get into "iffy" territory with the story which does have its high points and manages to stay somewhat interesting throughout BUT the resolution to most mysteries is painfully predictable, including the reveal
of Junko as the mastermind. I mean, I was suspicious of her death since the very beginning but after seeing the red fingernails, I pieced it together very quickly.
The rest was just going through the motions.
And in general, the game thinks it's more clever than it really is when in reality, the second half of the final trial is erratic and unsatisfying, and, like I said, the cases aren't particularly mind-bending. At the end, important questions aren't answered and the contextualisation of the whole affair fails to grant any impact to everything that happened before that.
Moving on further down, we reach the writing and the class trials. The majority of the characters are stereotypes (which is fine) but even stereotypes can be handled with finesse. At least half of the characters that remain by the end offer some interesting facets. It's not like they killed off a ton of interesting ones to reach that point.
Moving on, the writing during trials is a hot mess sometimes. You have to continually deal with ambiguities that prevent you from taking care of things you figured out an hour ago. The fact that obvious details are sometimes discussed in exuberant fashion paired with the poor phrasing of highlighted statements makes it rather frustrating. It's almost as if the writing was compromised on purpose to artificially increase the difficulty since the answers are so obvious or something. It's more likely that it's simply not very well written, though.
Be that as it may, I *wish* the writing was the only thing off about the class trials. The minigames are atrociously superfluous, with the exception of the rhythm game that manages to be tolerable. It's almost funny how the ambiguities of the writing translate to visual ambiguities for the closing comics, for example. The Hangman Gambit is a joke and is cleary included for the sole purpose of avoiding another multiple-choice box (which, by the end, you'll be happy to see those because refuting simple statements in a debate gets annoying beyond belief). I could go on and on about the poor decisions involved in designing those minigames.
In the end, I still enjoyed it. From a moment-to-moment perspective, the game gets a lot of mileage out of its atmosphere and presentation. If only the writing didn't suffer from hammering home a lot of obvious or annoying points (and characters) one too many times. If you're used to the sharpness of Ace Attorney, the quality of the cases pales like decaf does compared to Godot's coffee. It's actually funny how ZE goes overboard with its story where, inversely, DR falls flat and seems awfully tepid by the end.
So despite being rather critical of the game, I'm still planning to check out School Mode and play the sequel, albeit not until next year.
Just finished Chapter 3 and one mechanic really really bugged me about the trial:
For the life of me I could not get through one of the interrogations. Unfortunately I don't remember which one exactly but basically it was one where you had to absorb a weak spot and fire it back. I knew about this mechanic but what I DIDN'T know/expect is that you could absorb a weak spot and fire it at an earlier statement. So in this particular sequence you had to absorb the last weak spot, replay the dialogue and fire it at an earlier statement. I didn't think this was possible and I think the help message even said you absorb a bullet and fire it at a later statement.
I was trying to play this out realistically and didn't know this was possible.
Playing through this at the moment. Just finished Chapter 1.
I have a few questions:
1)
There are windows/trees in the dining hall. Why does no one comment on this?
2)
Hana, Sakura, and Sayaka were in the Dining Hall after midnight...but the nighttime announcement by Monokuma clearly says that the doors to the Dining Hall are locked after 10pm. Is there an explanation for this?
Playing through this at the moment. Just finished Chapter 1.
I have a few questions:
1)
There are windows/trees in the dining hall. Why does no one comment on this?
2)
Hana, Sakura, and Sayaka were in the Dining Hall after midnight...but the nighttime announcement by Monokuma clearly says that the doors to the Dining Hall are locked after 10pm. Is there an explanation for this?
Finished Chapter 2. It's a tad annoying how unperceptive the main character is. I called the
boy->girl
angle a long time ago. Didn't expect that
Mondo was the killer
. Not a bad case, but not that satisfying...though at least it wasn't as obvious as the first case.
Now on to Chapter 3. The
murders
just happened, so I'm going to try to predict what went down:
No idea what happened to Kyoko. My best bet is that she figured out the murderer so has been incapacitated somehow. The clairvoyant guy (can't remember his name) can't be found either, but I think that's just to implicate him as the murderer. The murderer obviously seems to be Celeste to me. She "survived" the first attack to clear her name. Now, she has a strange power over Hifumi, so I'm betting he's her accomplice. Possibly gave his life to help her (whether he's actually dead or not I'm unsure). When his corpse disappeared, he walked to the Repository...hence the lack of drag marks from his "corpse". He hid and as everyone went to the Nurse's office, he got Taka and dragged him to the Repository. When you find Taka missing and start searching, the Repository is locked. It magically becomes unlocked so it seems obvious that it was unlocked from the inside by Hifumi who wasn't yet dead.
So those are my thoughts. Let the investigation begin. The game's starting to get pretty interesting. Also, with regards to the plot:
Seems as though a catastrophe of some sort went down outside the school. I'm guessing we're actually at least a year or more into the future, judging by the school letter that says it needed to shut down. The bolted windows and air purifier in the physics lab make this seem like more of a fallout shelter than anything. There are other hints too, with Monokuma referencing "The Tragedy" and saying that getting new magazines is impossible. So I'd say we're in some sort of post-apocalyptic future.
I will be interested to see how things play out. I might be wrong, but if not, I appreciate that there are enough hints to piece things together on my own.
Doing the final investigation now. Just got some vital statistics on
Mukuro
. Interestingly, the stats match
Junko
exactly. So that means that perhaps
Junko and Mukuro are twins and are both the ultimate despair
. If not, then it's just possible that
Junko's body was used as a decoy for Mukuro, who's still alive at this point.
edit: yeah, this case is painfully obvious. Sucks that I have to go through yet another super lengthy class trial when I already know the answer. That seems to be the general theme to this game.
edit2: oh my god. Everyone is an idiot during this trial. Trying to find the most complicated way to explain the case when the explanation is so obvious.
edit3:
So it was Junko. But it still makes absolutely no sense how they should have come to that conclusion. The far more obvious answer was that Junko and Mukuro had similar vitals and therefore a fake tattoo was put on Junko's hand making it seem like Mukuro was the one who was killed
. Hopefully when the rest is revealed then this might make more sense, but as it stands, it feels really farfetched.
edit4: Well that was unsatisfying.
So besides Chapter 2
where I didn't figure out that it was Mondo...I don't know how you could
, the cases were all incredibly obvious from start. Called every one from the start of each investigation. Even called the final twist. Besides that, the major plot points are never answered as the game simply focuses on themes rather than specifics, which is pretty unsatisfying. Not to mention idea that
two girls took over the school, wiped everyones memories, installed machine guns, death traps, and created a highly sophisticated bear-bot filled with explosives
Doing the final investigation now. Just got some vital statistics on
Mukuro
. Interestingly, the stats match
Junko
exactly. So that means that perhaps
Junko and Mukuro are twins and are both the ultimate despair
. If not, then it's just possible that
Junko's body was used as a decoy for Mukuro, who's still alive at this point.
edit: yeah, this case is painfully obvious. Sucks that I have to go through yet another super lengthy class trial when I already know the answer. That seems to be the general theme to this game.
edit2: oh my god. Everyone is an idiot during this trial. Trying to find the most complicated way to explain the case when the explanation is so obvious.
edit3:
So it was Junko. But it still makes absolutely no sense how they should have come to that conclusion. The far more obvious answer was that Junko and Mukuro had similar vitals and therefore a fake tattoo was put on Junko's hand making it seem like Mukuro was the one who was killed
. Hopefully when the rest is revealed then this might make more sense, but as it stands, it feels really farfetched.
edit4: Well that was unsatisfying.
So besides Chapter 2
where I didn't figure out that it was Mondo...I don't know how you could
, the cases were all incredibly obvious from start. Called every one from the start of each investigation. Even called the final twist. Besides that, the major plot points are never answered as the game simply focuses on themes rather than specifics, which is pretty unsatisfying. Not to mention idea that
two girls took over the school, wiped everyones memories, installed machine guns, death traps, and created a highly sophisticated bear-bot filled with explosives
Your complaint about the killers being obvious is remedied in 2 somewhat due to the way that the cases play out. I've still been able to figure out the killers ahead of time, but it hasn't been neat you over the head obvious like this game. I can't really say more without delving into spoiler territory.
two girls took over the school, wiped everyones memories, installed machine guns, death traps, and created a highly sophisticated bear-bot filled with explosives
I have to decide between pursuing Kyoko's lie or letting it go. What happens if I pick the wrong choice? Is it game over or does the game continue? In the latter case, does it affect the story?
I have to decide between pursuing Kyoko's lie or letting it go. What happens if I pick the wrong choice? Is it game over or does the game continue? In the latter case, does it affect the story?
There's also the fact the first case is pretty much a tutorial by how simple it is. From case 3 up until the end of Danganronpa 2, all cases were much better in my opinion.
About to start this for the first time. Could anyone comment on the difficulty settings? There's apparently one for logic and one for battles.
If it helps, I play the Persona games on easy because I only care about the story, not the grinding. I also like logic puzzles, Layton and whatnot. Should I do hard logic and easy action? AFAIK you can sort of change it on the fly, by restarting a chapter or something like that.
About to start this for the first time. Could anyone comment on the difficulty settings? There's apparently one for logic and one for battles.
If it helps, I play the Persona games on easy because I only care about the story, not the grinding. I also like logic puzzles, Layton and whatnot. Should I do hard logic and easy action? AFAIK you can sort of change it on the fly, by restarting a chapter or something like that.
DR1 is pretty easy even if you go hard for both. You can save at any time and even if you lose you never go far back. I definately recommend hard for the logic option and for action it doesn't matter that much.
DR1 is pretty easy even if you go hard for both. You can save at any time and even if you lose you never go far back. I definately recommend hard for the logic option and for action it doesn't matter that much.
finished it a few days ago and yeah, it wasn't that great.
most of the stuff is so painfully obvious and easy solvable unless they present you some shit you couldn't possibly have know during the trial.
in the trials you don't feel like you're figuring it out one by one, you just get annoyed and have to wait until you get to the point where you can finally select the one thing you knew all along.
i think one of these is enough, i won't be playing 2.
VLR and 999 are way superior to this. (they are the only other VN i've played)
also when they ask you if there's anything suspicious about the photos i immediately thought: "yeah Celeste is obviously photoshopped in/wearing the same shit with the same pose in every picture" and then they are "x's face is always covered". lol
So...i just started yesterday and i LOVE this game! The mechanic of the game, animation...everything is so different yet so mesmerizing. I am not gonna leave this game till i'm done!
Chapter 1-
Can't believe this is the beginning and already 3 down. Sayaka turned out to be a bitch and Leon is a piece of garbage. Love the animation of Leon's punishment. Can't wait to start Ch.2
also when they ask you if there's anything suspicious about the photos i immediately thought: "yeah Celeste is obviously photoshopped in/wearing the same shit with the same pose in every picture"
So...i just started yesterday and i LOVE this game! The mechanic of the game, animation...everything is so different yet so mesmerizing. I am not gonna leave this game till i'm done!
Chapter 1-
Can't believe this is the beginning and already 3 down. Sayaka turned out to be a bitch and Leon is a piece of garbage. Love the animation of Leon's punishment. Can't wait to start Ch.2
This chapter was definitely insane! Mondo's secret ? And she turned out to be a boy? also, the trial was insane! i went in thinking genocide jack is responsible, which i knew was toko ever since we talked to her at her door, then i suspected byakuya then it's mondo? my mind was blown! And he's punishment? the CHILLS! And who the heck Mr.evil bear was talking to?!
I'm curious about this as well. Someone above mentioned $10 but I don't ever remember it being that low.
I've got a bit leftover in my wallet and am thinking about getting this during the sale, but not sure I want to pull the trigger if I can expect it to be at $10 at some point.
