This review contains spoilers
Rain Code is an interesting game. It feels like it wants to break away from the typical Danganronpa formula but still falls into many of it's trappings, though in the end it manages to stick the landing.
My main problems with the game would mostly just be that for most of it it doesn't really give you alot of reasons to care much for it's characters the same way DR would with it's ensemble casts so the cases, while neat mostly ended up falling flat for me due to each of them having different characters for the most part, which also took out alot of the immediate tension and stakes that DR had.
The Mystery Labyrinths are a point of contention for me too as they feel far less personal compared to Class Trials as unlike those instead of fighting against real people's arguments you're pretty much arguing over hypotheticals instead, and yet at the end of them you still end up killing the culprits (or reaping their souls to be more specific) which unlike in DR never really gets any proper justification outside of Shinigami saying "they're fucking murderers they deserve to die!!!" which feels like Kodaka being pro capital punishment lol.
This isn't to say that the game doesn't have good characters or cases though, as it does.
Cases 5 and 6 largely end up rectifying the two main issues I mentioned just up above by largely tying back into the overall plot that the previous cases have been building up and giving some great development for Vivia and Yakou for case 5 (who I'd say are the only characters from the detective agency even worth giving a damn about), and the protag Yuma and the antag Makoto for the last one. In a way, I'd say the last case is closer to DR2 with how alot of the focus ends up going back to the protag and how he ties back to the overall plot, with most of the sidecast being largely forgotten (this is a good thing).
In the end, I enjoyed Rain Code and I hope that it's inevitable sequel ends up ironing out the flaws I mentioned much in the same way DR's sequels did, cause I feel like a game without them would be something truly special.
(Also, another slight complaint I had is that despite how much she sticks around with you, Shinigami never ends up having any real relevance towards the plot outside of Yuma making a contract with her before the start of the game which also means that her presence in certain emotional scenes made them slightly lose their impact for me but she's so hot that I don't really care.)
My main problems with the game would mostly just be that for most of it it doesn't really give you alot of reasons to care much for it's characters the same way DR would with it's ensemble casts so the cases, while neat mostly ended up falling flat for me due to each of them having different characters for the most part, which also took out alot of the immediate tension and stakes that DR had.
The Mystery Labyrinths are a point of contention for me too as they feel far less personal compared to Class Trials as unlike those instead of fighting against real people's arguments you're pretty much arguing over hypotheticals instead, and yet at the end of them you still end up killing the culprits (or reaping their souls to be more specific) which unlike in DR never really gets any proper justification outside of Shinigami saying "they're fucking murderers they deserve to die!!!" which feels like Kodaka being pro capital punishment lol.
This isn't to say that the game doesn't have good characters or cases though, as it does.
Cases 5 and 6 largely end up rectifying the two main issues I mentioned just up above by largely tying back into the overall plot that the previous cases have been building up and giving some great development for Vivia and Yakou for case 5 (who I'd say are the only characters from the detective agency even worth giving a damn about), and the protag Yuma and the antag Makoto for the last one. In a way, I'd say the last case is closer to DR2 with how alot of the focus ends up going back to the protag and how he ties back to the overall plot, with most of the sidecast being largely forgotten (this is a good thing).
In the end, I enjoyed Rain Code and I hope that it's inevitable sequel ends up ironing out the flaws I mentioned much in the same way DR's sequels did, cause I feel like a game without them would be something truly special.
(Also, another slight complaint I had is that despite how much she sticks around with you, Shinigami never ends up having any real relevance towards the plot outside of Yuma making a contract with her before the start of the game which also means that her presence in certain emotional scenes made them slightly lose their impact for me but she's so hot that I don't really care.)