Here are my thoughts about the game:
Good points:
- A lot of the sprites and artwork (including the UI) is very well done, and I liked how there were a large amount of CGs in this game.
- The main backstory for the killing game was unique and interesting, and it managed to be different from the backstories for the official Danganronpa games
Bad points:
- Most of the characters were boring in my opinion. I felt they lacked the charm and feel that made the characters from the original games funny or intriguing. Zero kind of acts like Monokuma, but just not as good. In my opinion, he lacks the wittiness that Monokuma had. With the way the characters are written in this game, the game didn’t make me feel like I was playing a Danganronpa game and instead just another generic murder-mystery game.
- There’s barely any exploration for the Daily Life parts of the game. I barely get to see what most of the rooms are like before the murders happen. How am I supposed to get a feel for the murder environment if I don’t know what it’s like?
- The investigation sections were very lacking. You’re mainly stuck investigating only 1-2 rooms, and even then there’s only 1-2 pieces of evidence that’s actually influential during the trial discussions anyways. While you are able to talk to the characters in the investigation, they don’t say anything important.
- The class trial discussions are very rushed and unsatisfying. Having Zero just flat out tell you what to talk about during most of the first trial really takes out the suspense makes the whole discussion dumbed down (I know it's just the first trial, but since the game only has 3 class trials anyways, having one trial made just to baby you is a bad idea). Another problem is how there are no truth bullets for the Nonstop Debates; all you have to do is simply click on a statement and hope there’s something wrong. I guess it could be due to limitations for the game engine, but having no truth bullets really takes a lot of the thinking aspects away from this minigame. Additionally, I don’t like how the all the culprits just give up and admit they’re the killer once they get called out. Most of the killers in the original games usually put up a fight and try their best to defend themselves, which keeps the suspense going to the end. However, having the killers in this game give up easily just makes solving the mystery a lot less satisfying in the end.
- Some of the story/narrative ideas just don’t make sense to me. For example, in the 2nd trial when you get the bad ending, why does the game tell you who the real culprit is? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep it a secret for when you try to get the good ending? Additionally, everything about the “time-travelling” ability that Echo had just makes no sense. What is the ability? Where did he get it from? Why didn’t it activate during the 2nd trial when he was going to be executed? It just felt like that plot point was thrown in as a really cheap way to fix plot holes or reduce the amount of discussions needed for the trial later.
There are some other minor things that I didn’t like, but these are the biggest issues with the game in my opinion.