Recent reviews by Æpel Pusi

have you ever lost a 20 minute fight to a single bad roll?
do you want to?
then this is for you.
while the story is good, i can't, and won't, recommend the gameplay part of it, unless you're really into card battlers with difficulty spikes going higher than the stratosphere.
may the rng gods bless you, cause they sure as hell didn't bless me.

went in completely blind, besides knowing that at some point near the ending the game loses all sense of realism and goes bonkers, didnt expect this though. it's genuinely incomprehensible how quickly the game loses the adult noir-thriller vibe of possible struggles with mental health (with a sanity meter no less) and goes all WOINKY DOINKY ANCIENT MAGIC CURSES SUPERPOWERS SECRET CLAN plus adding EVERY conspiracy theory they could come up with and jamming it right in the middle of what seemed to be a pretty mature and interesting story.

i think i must be losing my ♥♥♥♥, but isnt this story completely nonsensical and deranged. how did anyone take this seriously from around the late-middle point where it essentially becomes an emo superman game? the flashback child sequences are absolutely horrible both from the story and gameplay perspective. how did Carla become the main love interest after me having NO INPUT WHATSOEVER, she literally lays down near you at one point and you have sex because..? i didnt get this plot and i dont think there's much to get. all the poignancy that could've remained from the first few chapters has successfully fizzled out around the mid-point mark with the introduction of fantasy ancient magic and hitherto unexplained superpowers. when taken separetly the two unfolding stories are okay and could be interesting, but exactly at the midpoint where they converge is where the plot completely lost me. the plot's structure is also incredibly rigid, so the whole concept of consequences doesnt really stick or make enough of an impact on the story to be interesting. if you're interested in the premise, look up the synopsis online, but prepare to be disappointed.

besides that, the controls are absolute hot burning garbage. not just because its old tank controls, that much is excusable, but often times i would find myself having to point my controller's left stick diagonally right and back to see a slight right turn in my character's movements, often times feeling like im simply suggesting movements for my characters rather than actively controlling them. plus the game doesnt offer "full controller support", its partial at best. the d-pad remains unused and the buttons have not been updated accordingly, it took me over a minute to brute force what (L) and (R) buttons on the controller the game was asking of me to use. (the answer was the RB and LB bumpers). that's not nearly as bad as the keyboard controls which imply using mouse movements to mimic the right analog stick inputs, that are now a staple of quantic dream's games, and its just not the same. plus the game has no "back-walk" function, if you press the "S" key when moving the character will simply stop, without moving backwards or turning the other way.

this feels pretty lazy for a port, im glad it exist for preservation purposes, but the story's just so awful that im not going to let it occupy my mind for any significant amount of time, as in the hands of Quantic Dreams (or specifically David Cage) even an interesting premise is doomed to be a complete waste of time.

i have no idea why people are recommending this.

sure, the art is great, but that comes with a caveat. some characters (especially the main cast) are reused from earlier danganronpa titles, with Halara being the obvious stand-in for Kyoko and Desuhiko having the same Forte as Tsumugi, but swapped (as Tsumugi couldn't "cosplay" real people and Desuhiko can Disguise himself as anyone he's met), Zilch is Gundham Tanaka and the list goes on. very few characters actually feel wholly original and its obvious the writers are at their wit's end. i also hate having to play the "inexperienced detective" role every. single. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. time. i feel like Shuichi, Yuma, Makoto (from danganronpa 1, not the afterwards anime arc) and Hajime are absolutely interchangeable.

the town itself is visually quite pleasing, unless you know the languages Spike have scrambled to create the adverts in-game, as those, sadly, make no sense.

the music feels indistinguishable from danganronpa. i get trying to have the same general "vibe" as danganronpa, but you could at least bring some new life into it. this is just a copy of what we've already had.

the mysteries are okay. chapter 2 and 4 are fun, with chapter 5 throwing some pretty cool horror adjacent imagery into the mix. chapter 3 feels like a major waste of time, considering nothing of value happens there at all. pretty much every case ends with a very convenient deus ex machina (character A appears and pulls some kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ outta their ass, plot's resolved, you leave) plot shenanigan and everyone just brushes it off, time and again. this has no impact of the class trials in danganronpa.

if you've played danganronpa, you'll find most of the same minigames here. hangman's gambit, or Shinigami Puzzle as it's called here is back, and its still the worst one. having to guess the correct wording of what exactly the writers wanted out of you is just not fun. sometimes its ridiculously banal, like guessing the word (___ herring), while some had to be brute forced as you're on a time limit and have no time to think, while the letters keep spinning.

i have no idea why the implemented a level up system, as it makes the already trivial cases even easier, with some upgrades outright removing incorrect statements from your selection. i ended up not even investing in anything besides health in case i needed to brute force something (but that never happened) and shinigami puzzles. ♥♥♥♥ shinigami puzzles.

overall, i thought this game has the easiest cases out of the games Spike has released so far. most of the cases and MAJOR PLOT EVENTS are just so out there and easy to guess. the game doesn't throw in any curveballs either, its very VERY obvious.

the plot itself is bad. this has to be some of the laziest writing from Spike that i've had the displeasure of experiencing. the plot just awkwardly meanders around the "main mystery" for four chapters, with the last chapter being a walk through a completely linear environment to hastily resolve the "main mystery". none of this feels earned nor does it feel like i actually had a hand in uncovering anything, the main baddie just kinda dumps you in the last area, while you undergo some revelations. it has almost no relation to the past cases. the whole thing when the main character whines about you outright murdering the culprits of all the cases also makes no sense in the end, as you essentially haven't killed anybody and everybody is immortal, besides the fact that they're now zombies??? . and the ending is just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ asinine, with a few MASSIVE, GLARING plot holes. such as
1. why is the person that's responsible for kidnapping and murdering hundreds of, albeit, death row inmates, gets to walk free in the end with them remaining in the GOVERNING POSITION in the city?
2. how is that every single homunculus (every """living""" being in kansai ward) didn't go through a massive existential crisis after finding out they're
a) not real people, but copies
b) they've KILLED the original people they were copied off
c) have been FEEDING and LIVING OFF OF HUMAN FLESH
3. how come the kansai ward became OPEN TO PEOPLE, IF THAT'S A HUGE POSSIBLE DANGER TO EVERYBODY. every single homunculus living there could go berserk if they just forget their "sunscreen" or are randomly killed or die in an accident, as they will soon be reborn as a mindless zombie, that will FEED OFF OF HUMAN FLESH. same thing for normal people visiting kansai. this is legitemately some Umbrella Corporation kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ virus shenanigans, but the game treats it as THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION?
overall this feels like as another "ah whatever it didnt matter" ending, like the one in danganronpa V3, but where that game kinda emphasized you moving on from the final case with resolve, this one *almost* ends with a whimper, pretty much letting you leave everything in the hands of the person that tried to kill you mere minutes ago for trying to expose the truth. and it would've ended like that if only shinigami hadn't pulled an emergency exit out of her ass. deus ex machina strikes again.
at least they didnt say the whole thing is a lie, unlike a certain danganronpa game... i have a deep resentment against that one.

this is almost danganronpa V3 ending levels of garbage and i cant believe they've managed to outdo themselves here.

i can't in all honesty recommend this game. it feels like a very subpar experience, lacking in every area, especially when compared to games that came before it and the ones it's desperately trying to imitate. the spark is not there and it's really disappointing.

the latest and imo most entertaining entry in one of the best horror visual novel series currently available in the west
pls pick this up it really deserves a chance
gorgeous art and an entertaining story with an ending twist you could see coming a mile away but w/e shrug
the way this game didnt get the recognition it deserves is crazy, its a very good time