Kodaka, Uchikoshi, and Nakazawa, coming together to make a game marketed on "DANGAN RONPA MEETS ZERO ESCAPE" and then making a game that is less derivative of their previous works than anything they'd made in the past decade is honestly kind of incredible.
The games characters and tone give it a really unique and fun feel from the other games by these authors. This often gets labelled as being "Danganronpa/Zero Escape but toned down for kids" but I think people are really mistaking the tone of the game for it's target audience. The game might lack the violence of Danganronpa and Zero Escape, but it certainly never feels like the games story has been "dumbed down" for a younger audience.
The whole "Oh no, we're stuck in an underwater amusement park and being forced to play a death game" premise sounds like such a parody version of Uchikoshi's works that it's no surprise that the game isn't really about that at all. The game quickly ditches the "trapped in a place" and "forced to play a death game" premise the three creators are known for to do practically the opposite: a group of characters working together to journey across Japan.
That's not to say it's not COMPLETELY free from Nakazawa and Uchikoshi's reuse of ideas. Aside from the obvious thing near the end that Nakazawa does literally every game (and Uchikoshi uses a toned-down version of in all of the Zero Escape games), there's still a few moments here and there (particularly a major plot twist that is reused from, weirdly enough, Root Double of all things), but it never feels nearly as detrimental to the story as it is in something like Virtue's Last Reward.
The major issue with the game is, of course, the gameplay. As you would expect from Uchikoshi and Nakazawa, the way the player interacts with the gameplay plays directly into the games story elements, so I certainly wouldn't say something as silly as "they should've just made it a straight visual novel", but the problem is that the gameplay is ONLY interesting in how it relates to the story. The actual gameplay itself rarely has anything interesting going on. It all just feels so simple and afraid to do anything mechanically intensive.
The reason the game is this way all clicked for me as soon as I found out this game was originally released for iOS. Trying to play a mechanically intensive platforming game with shitty smartphone touchscreen controls might be one of the most terrible ideas ever. It's just incredibly unfortunate that the entire game is brought down by the fact that it was developed for a shitty platform that barely anyone actually played the game on anyways. Overall, the gameplay certainly isn't unbearable though, and the primary focus is still on the visual novel segments.
The games characters and tone give it a really unique and fun feel from the other games by these authors. This often gets labelled as being "Danganronpa/Zero Escape but toned down for kids" but I think people are really mistaking the tone of the game for it's target audience. The game might lack the violence of Danganronpa and Zero Escape, but it certainly never feels like the games story has been "dumbed down" for a younger audience.
The whole "Oh no, we're stuck in an underwater amusement park and being forced to play a death game" premise sounds like such a parody version of Uchikoshi's works that it's no surprise that the game isn't really about that at all. The game quickly ditches the "trapped in a place" and "forced to play a death game" premise the three creators are known for to do practically the opposite: a group of characters working together to journey across Japan.
That's not to say it's not COMPLETELY free from Nakazawa and Uchikoshi's reuse of ideas. Aside from the obvious thing near the end that Nakazawa does literally every game (and Uchikoshi uses a toned-down version of in all of the Zero Escape games), there's still a few moments here and there (particularly a major plot twist that is reused from, weirdly enough, Root Double of all things), but it never feels nearly as detrimental to the story as it is in something like Virtue's Last Reward.
The major issue with the game is, of course, the gameplay. As you would expect from Uchikoshi and Nakazawa, the way the player interacts with the gameplay plays directly into the games story elements, so I certainly wouldn't say something as silly as "they should've just made it a straight visual novel", but the problem is that the gameplay is ONLY interesting in how it relates to the story. The actual gameplay itself rarely has anything interesting going on. It all just feels so simple and afraid to do anything mechanically intensive.
The reason the game is this way all clicked for me as soon as I found out this game was originally released for iOS. Trying to play a mechanically intensive platforming game with shitty smartphone touchscreen controls might be one of the most terrible ideas ever. It's just incredibly unfortunate that the entire game is brought down by the fact that it was developed for a shitty platform that barely anyone actually played the game on anyways. Overall, the gameplay certainly isn't unbearable though, and the primary focus is still on the visual novel segments.