The new game from the Danganronpa creators is here! Unfortunately, it's probably weaker than most of those, but it's still a pretty good effort. The most interesting part of the game is how much the investigations and overworld are expanded. There are a lot of places to explore, there are side quests, and the city grows in size every chapter. It's similar to Danganronpa's areas in many ways, but much larger in scope. For the most part, this works quite well, but the areas can be a bit too big, and there are frequent loading times. I could see these being better on a non-Switch console. This also affects the side quests, which often have you going back and forth between multiple areas. Thankfully, those quests have high quality writing in general, fleshing out the game world, but they can be tedious to complete for that reason. The trials have also been replaced with a new system called Mystery Labyrinths, which are similar to DR's trials (full of minigames, using clues you find to defeat enemy arguments, solving world puzzles, etc.). Labyrinths work alright, but they're not as fun as the trials are, since it's usually just the protagonist and one or two other characters in there. Though the minigames might be a little better than DR's, losing the thrill of arguing with your friends is a substantial downgrade, since that was DR's high point. Worst of all, there are a ton of gameplay sequences in the Labyrinths that just aren't that fun. You get a bunch of canned animation, and often run through long hallways where nothing of interest happens. Why are there walk and talk sequences instead of just regularly advanceable dialogue? They could've knocked hours off the game by cutting these parts down. The recaps, like the comic books at the end of DR trials, are pretty tedious to watch play out too. Really makes me wish you could manually advance them.

In other aspects, the game's pretty swell. Masafumi Takada is back with more great music, the character designs are as over the top as ever, and the cases are all fun stories. Some of them are a bit easy to solve, but none of them are outright bad. To me, the DR games all have cases that I'd consider black marks against the overall games, but that's not true with Rain Code. I at least enjoyed every chapter. The overall story of the game is a fun mystery too, as they usually are with DR games, and it all comes together in a pretty logical way, with hints delivered throughout the game. The cast is maybe the strongest aspect. I didn't like the MC at first, but he gets some good development as the game goes on. Shinigami, your partner, adds a lot to the game's fun factor, since she's with you at all times. The other detectives are all interesting in their own ways, with Halara being my favorite of them. The cases are more like Ace Attorney, where each case has a new cast, and those casts are all good. I'd like to see another Rain Code-styled game, since everything here works pretty well, but I'd hope they can come up with something better than the Labyrinths to replace the trials. Rain Code 2 with more exciting confrontation sequences could be a great game.