The visuals are gorgeous, both in terms of quality and design. The dialogue and characterization are pretty darn good, too. Interactive elements (investigation and trial dialogue) are very basic, but it's fun they're included and impressively seamless.
The writer does a good job of creating situations that get your mind buzzing with intrigue and possibility. I personally go to Danganronpa for the murder mysteries, which were clearly not the focus here (each investigation uncovers ~2 pieces of evidence), but I had fun instead focusing on the overarching mystery, which definitely was a priority. Bizarre events, jarring revelations, and vague, tantalizing clues abound. I got totally sucked in. Then the ending happened.
Endings are hard, and I don't like to fault someone for not sticking the landing. But this ending revealed that there would be no reveal. Everything is either exactly as it appeared all along or completely unexplained. I felt like a dummy for trying to play along and piece things together as we went. The story is just completely incoherent. Here's a list of things off the top of my head that didn't make sense (spoilers):
Echo can time travel or something. This is never explained.
The trigger for Echo's time traveling is that they die. But there are two bad endings where Echo just dies. What makes these different is never explained.
Echo was in the game despite never having signed up for the program, which is set up as a big mystery. It is never explained.
At one point, Echo flips out like a computer and goes into binary and error code. This is never explained.
Sei and Pandora are given cards explaining they have allies on the inside (I think), and regardless are definitely suspicious. Bizarrely, Pandora starts showing hers to people, and Sei hides hers in a public room instead of just keeping it locked up.
The Program has a psychic, because psychic powers exist apparently. It is made clear the psychic needs to use a visual and an audio trigger to affect someone. At one point later, several characters are affected by the psychic without any sort of trigger.
Echo decides to exploit their power during a trial by voting for someone and seeing what happens. Instead of waiting to hear if the vote was right or wrong, Echo runs into the execution, and much is made of how the execution involved needles. Upon returning to the present, Echo procedes to use none of this worthless information, instead bringing up the rather obvious additional wound on the body they've known about since the beginning.
The game ends by replaying the first scene, but several details are different (Echo's ankle is broken instead of sprained; they get out of the car and call Ashley's house). None of this is explained.
The Program wants the best ultimates, and it's suggested the game is about weeding out the chaff. But the winners are immediately put into suspended animation tanks to run the subsequent games, where they waste away and die.
Several participants in the game were killed before it started. It's said Cyrus is responsible, but we still don't know why, when, or how they were selected.
Cyrus is suggested to not really be as evil as he was acting. This goes nowhere.
Gaea lets Pandora die, despite giving Pandora a card saying she was safe.
I feel I must reisterate: Echo can time travel or something, and this is never explained.
Towards the end, Zero "starts sounding different" and allows the cast access to secret areas. This is never explained.
I strongly suspect this is simply an unfinished project. There were two fake-out death discovery drawings which likely were originally meant to be real murders. Several intriguing details that really seem fruitful for surprising twists (Echo's mystery talent, Echo's mystery kidnapping, the fact that one character is a twin of another character, etc) end up going nowhere.
I don't begrudge the creator here; this is a huge undertaking, and I got to look at their lovely art for a few hours and spend time with some likeable characters. But it's the worst of both worlds to slap on a pat, baffling ending that either ignores the game's earlier mysteries or reveals there was nothing mysterious happening in the first place. It would have been better to release a literally unfinished game and tell the rest of the intended story to fans in a blog post. We understand how much work this is. We respect and appreciate your talent. But this release, as it is, makes the story trip over its own feet.