Very fun game, albeit pretty damn hard.

I found the differences from the normal Persona gameplay to be fun and interesting, but there were some moments where the game ramped up in difficulty and seemingly wanted me to use skills that I didn't have, either because I got rid of them or never fused personas with those skills in the first place.

The interactions between the Persona casts are cute and make the game more fun. Zen and Rei are great new characters, maybe the best spin-off characters I've encountered so far? And the incredibly emotional story that unravels throughout the game is amazing.

Very important to note: If you are looking for a game with a story like Danganronpa, this is not it. It is a spiritual successor, but it's trying to be it's own thing.

This game has a super strong start, but from then on it's really got its ups and downs. Once the ball gets rolling near the last 1/3 though, it's a steep incline till the credits roll. Unfortunately, my biggest complaint when it comes to RainCode is that the mysteries felt a little too easy? I had figured out a large amount of the mysteries during their respective investigations, so the mystery labyrinths were a bit of a slog, just waiting for Yuma to come to the conclusion I had realized a while ago, which wasn't a problem I ever had in the Danganronpa series.

I overall enjoyed the game and am excited to see what comes next, but I can't help but miss the immense character depth and intricate themes of Kazutaka Kodaka's previous work.

The interactions are the main draw, but the gameplay just sucks so bad. The board game mode only has 1 board, and you need to play through it with a character to be able to use them in the RPG mode. So, to have a full party of 4 characters, you would need to play 4 runs of the board game. Then, you'll eventually reach a point where your characters are too weak to be able to make it much farther in the RPG, so you now need to play the board game a bunch more times with higher rarity units, and it's the most boring gameplay loop I've ever experienced.

Luckily, the micro-transactions are entirely unneeded. They exist, but it's fairly easy to get enough coins to get more units.