Unfortunately mid :(

10 paragraph andy incoming but I'm sad I didn't like this game as much as I wanted, since I really like Danganronpa and ADORE Phoenix Wright (at least the original trilogy) but what separates those games from this one are the characters.

The main character Junpei suffers from a lot of anime protag problems like being the only one who can solve anything and generally not "getting" what's going on until it's explained to him, but those two sentences contradict themselves, leading to a confusing mess of a character. He's not as bad as like, Makoto from DR but at least Makoto was consistent... In fact, all the characters besides Seven and Snake were either bland or insufferable.

Clover is fucking crazy, Lotus doesn't do shit, Ace is a boring villain unless we're in a flashback and I know I'm supposed to care about June but I really don't. It's a situation where if you don't like the MC and his girlfriend, you won't enjoy the story it's trying to tell, and this is one of those cases for me.

I did hear from the friends I played this with that the DS version has June's perspective on the bottom screen and Junpei's perspective on the top screen and that definitely would've helped to make things less confusing, but by the time we got to the first ending, I was ready to stop... but we had like 5 more endings to do.

The concept of telling your past self solutions to puzzles you wouldn't otherwise know by literally restarting the game is awesome and crazy unique but the fucking Force mind reading and projecting puzzle solutions to the future or past just opens up a can of worms that this game could only explain by stringing it all together with duct tape and silly string. So June died in the past, but organized this game in the future to... allow herself to live? Huh??????

Credit where it's due, Snake is really interesting and the twist he's blind was built up very well and Seven joins the (very very small) list of blue lives that actually matter for saving those kids, but besides those two, I didn't get much out of this game.

Maybe if I played it entirely by myself and more consistently, I would've been a lot more invested, but I also experienced all the Danganronpa games the same way, by playing them in a group with friends, and it didn't hinder my enjoyment then. Who knows truly...

Also, I know it's not fair to compare this game to other visual novel/puzzle games when they're really not that similar, but this game doesn't really stand on it's own to me. THIS DOESNT MEAN I don't want to play the sequels, as I'm sure those games will be less obtuse and refine what did work in this game, but this was just a rocky first step.

Sorry Zero Escape fans, don't crucify me 😰