The worst game from the franchise

At release it had a keyboard input issue and the optimization for the game was so outstandingly bad but I remember feeling like the absolute most baddest person playing this during my IGCSE, anyways,

I'll go off on the negatives:

-Only the first class trial is genuinely good, which was also partly in the demo (a demo which probably raised my expectations more than it should have), if you base it off of emotive quality I can give you the benefit of the doubt but every single mystery was so predictable, what a disappointment

-The ending is the worst thing ever made, it's genuinely bad, I know people are like it's polarizing and "divides the fanbase" but I don't get how this even has supporters, as if we did not play the same game

Let me explain to you something I didn't like about the overarching plot in SDR2, the leaps of pseudoscience where they are in a fucking VR and monokuma can source specific character data and like craft scenarios like a goddamn arcade machine with a mini game Twilight Syndrome Murder Mystery, like it's actually absurd how "it's possible they just develop the technology in the future" is used as the worst patch up job ever to justify some of these........

I usually only ever excuse it because it wasn't that offensive there and I take most of danganronpa as high camp or goofy on purpose (which it REALLY is)

But V3? Oh the engineers developed a completely realistic visual where earth is charred ......... oh we can just straight up give you an ultimate (that's like actually real like Miu is straight up a genius who ends up being the reason why they manage to escape after she edits the shit out of Kubo)........ here's a fleshlight that restores fragments of memory like BRUH THIS IS A NON-EXPLANATION at this point

That's not the part that upsets me the most, the part that upsets me is that the game has a genuine disease called "Cospox" which the Ultimate Cosplayer has where she can't cosplay as other people (much like the Ultimate Imposter could)........ are you fucking kidding me V3? And this is accepted AS EVIDENCE IN THE FIRST TRIAL? AND THIS REMAINS TRUE FOR THE ENTIRE GAME EVEN WHEN ITS REVISITED AT THE END? like this is the VILLAIN, who's literal
"twist" schtick was that she didn't follow the damn rules of the killing game and willfully fucked with the game and eliminated one of the participants

When I was reading it I was like yo this is embarrassing,

-Ouma and Kaito try to catch Monokuma up on a technicality with their switcheroo and they manage to do this after they incapacitate the monokuma surveillance.... again Miu literally the only candidate who breaks the entire fucking game is the reason why they manage this thanks to her fucking Electrobomb I just can't fucking go on Miu is such a nonsense character anyways this should have been entirely irrelevant because in this dumb sci-fi reality it should have been easy to tell who's in the fucking Exisal thanks to idk heatvision or something? Like this fucking game allows you to straight up give people Ultimates and has like an entire engineering team behind it what the fuck is even going on

-Retconning the Hopes Peak Academy arc by making it part of a fictional universe did irreparable damage to the franchise, DR3 had to be rushed out before DRV3 because V3 retcons everything before it as fiction, a lot of people complain about DR3's painful execution or lack thereof but I wholly blame the existence of V3, in service of the worst twist ever made they had to RUSH DR3 and conclude the Hopes Peak Academy arc in its entirety, IT'S ALL because of V3

-Garbage characters

-Class Trial #3 is always camp and pretty easy to guess, here it was just bad

-Ouma is overrated I did not like him as much as you guys did that's for sure

The good:

-OST as usual

-Executions are literally actually brutal this time around and I dig that

That about wraps it up, this is not peak fiction or like the goat, one of the worst games ever made it, "it was all a dream!!!" tier ending, straight up bad.

Super 13 Euphoria: Subarashiki Sky

If you want the short version I actually really liked the game despite my grievances with the last quarter and the tower defense gameplay merged with the weird gatekeeping system.

(+) Plot (not the ED)

The very idea of telling a story from 13 different perspectives is just absurd, its so easy to mess it up and have it all feel convoluted and even though the actual plot itself is very hard to follow for the sheer mish mashing of (spoilers) events over separate eras, the multi-perspective storytelling is done VERY competently. Some perspectives didn’t qualitatively add much for example Iori’s route is total garbage, but then other routes were REALLY good. The way I’ve described the quality of storytelling in this game is that its insanely difficult to design a story such that it doesn’t feel like you’re hearing the same facts again and again especially with 13 PERSPECTIVES.

13 sentinels is a culmination of so many of sci-fi tropes in JP media that I lost count, oh you want cloning? mind control? time travel? cyborgs? AI? Whatever you can name the story definitely puts its feet in it, and somehow all of these still felt fresh and (for the most part) fully realized.

The pacing is really bad at the prologue for everyone’s routes, not so much so that its slow infact quite the opposite, you are forced to consume so much information that doesn’t make any sense that its almost a complete turnoff.

I like the idea of sprinkling in story-bits out-of-context that make sense much later down the line but there’s so much happening in a single route sometimes that you can straight up forget where it picks back up when you revisit it after completing OTHER routes that have a lot happening in them. Even then the game still does a very good job of having such distinct events and outcomes occur in routes that you’re able to still have a mental log before you revisit it eventually.

I’m not going to split hairs about the actual plot, sure there are silly moments here and there and I feel like the story is too needlessly incessant on being convoluted especially with added jargon as JP media already does but I have nothing really negative to write about the plot, I just had a lot of fun after the first quarter up till the end. Well-paced and well delivered, as much as they could at least.

(+/-) Characters

All the characters in this game are exactly as 1 dimensional and follow character archetypes that have existed in countless JP media in the past, you ALREADY know these characters before they even properly get introduced in the game because both their design and their dialogue are reminiscent of the mold they were pulled out from.

I think most of the characters are likable but I don’t know what is wrong with the authors they could not write a single character that doesn’t get paired with another, it was such a massive turn-off I almost thought there was a plot-related reason why some characters would suddenly go into heat throughout the game, turning red as if they had a permanent rash on their face one itch away from peeling off their skins, this game has the WORST most POINTLESS romance it actively annoyed me holy shit.

(+) Presentation

Phenomenal, beautiful game

(-) (FORCED) Gameplay

There’s 2 types of gameplay, one is during the “Visual Novel” portion where you have to select actionable/thinkable items from your thought cloud (or on the rare occasion you’ll press a button to shoot) and then there’s a whole separate mode that is tower defense gameplay.

To be abundantly fair I haaaaaaaaaaaaated the tower defense but I had to only do 3-4 consecutive sessions on it up until the game gatekept me, so as inexcusably mind-numbing destruction is it doesn’t take up the massive percentage of annoyance the thought cloud takes up. I HATE THE THOUGHT CLOUD.

The game forcefully breaks up conversations so you keep hitting the interaction key with a character (or multiple) and sometimes it was so absurd that the game will go as far as to have “hello” and the main agenda of the convo require separate key presses to continue the conversation. The thought cloud is artificial interactivity added to the game, the game essentially probes you to select specific pieces of information from the cloud and highlights them out which makes it even STUPIDER… why even encourage the player like this to continue a stream of conversation when you could just continue the conversation directly? Oh right then it wouldn’t make sense why this is even a game rather than a VN.

The most absurd example of the thought cloud “gameplay” is when the game forces you to wander around school, listen to floating conversations and then go collect coins along the premises. BAD.

I don’t like the weird gatekeeping between destruction and remembrance but the gatekeeping within remembrance makes perfect sense. Remove destruction entirely.

(-) The Ending

As much as I will forever hate this type of ending, the game strongly hints it and it does make logical sense as the ultimate conclusion. I still do NOT like the ending but I wasn't melting with rage it felt very reasonable and its unfortunate that this type of ending is just... its tired.

(+/-) OST

It serves its purpose not much to say

Sekimeiya: Spun Glass

(Edit: After re-reading it with a friend, nosediving into the tips section and engaging with the extended mechanics I've revised the score because of the amount of complexity Adri tackles)

I’ve been waiting for a trapped in a facility game that would actually have a solid mystery for nearly a decade since I touched Ever17 as a kid, there’s been so many variations on the formula: E17,R11, Root Double, 999, VLR, death-game variants like the Danganronpa-universe, Raging Loop all the way to nukige variants like Room No. 9, DEA, Euphoria. Even though there have been a lot of different mixes with the trapped genre, Sekimeiya blows them all out of the water.

This is singlehandedly THE most complex VN I have ever read, it’s the only VN where the game will spell out the solution and you have to spend a long time in the backlog to just understand how the solution even works. There is an art to misdirection and foreshadowing that shouldn’t feel very cheap and (for the most part) Sekimeiya manages to present sound solutions to the insane clusterfuck it paints with its first route. Before I ramble more about why I like the game, I have to start with some of the negatives:

Cons

(-) Production

Considering how much 3D work/ Hand-painting/ Photography that was done for the backgrounds, I’m surprised at the lack of actual character CGs in the game, most of them featuring Shiroya (which either works for promotional reasons or just because she’s the main pillar for the MC and poster child for the game.) There’s a reason why the CGs are limited which plays into a specific factor of the game but even then I think other moments definitely deserved more CGs.

(-) Character Writing

This is a popular complaint against the game, and I agree and disagree with it. Mainly, I have no problems if the VN puts center-focus on the mystery but sometimes the characters would behave in such a way that felt way so ridiculous in service of the mystery, there’s so many moments of confusion in the game which would have been perfect instances to add dramatic elements, and even though some exist they also feel robotic and too calculated in placement and design.

Often times characters would leave to the bathroom or go on one of the upper floors and would just not get chased because they insisted on not being followed, character “N” can just pull character “K” to a separate room with esper levels of convincing and keep the others upstairs, character “S” can just say “don’t follow me” and run to the attic, there was a funny moment where character “E” asks the time and the MC remarks that she was better off just saying she was guilty.

I have no qualms about the lack of character depth I seriously don’t care that hard about what plagues the minds of Erina etc outside the confines of the building, and if the game wants to use the characters as vessels to deliver an impactful story I can’t fault it really, it’s the way it executes the story that’s the fundamental issue.

(-) Schizoid Protagonist – Deduction Bot (The first 4-5 hours)

The issue of the game is in the first few hours, the MC is a deduction machine, the game doesn’t draw its first breath and he starts printing out theories after theories about stuff that aren’t all the interesting. The writing is dense, but it bleeds everywhere and it feels like its going to hard before the actual mechanics of the plot are introduced. Several reviewers voiced complaints about how everyone turns into theory-crafters, and I don’t align with this issue at all, I like the fact that the game likes showing you all the playing cards before it pulls its sleight-of-hand to fool you and it does this with heavy internal and external dialogue.

This problem however disappears very fast when there’s actually interesting stuff to monologue about.

Pros:

(+) The Mechanics

The trapped genre’s more forgotten priced jewel should always be the solution but I have never been satisfied with an overarching explanation in many of the games the genre is defined by. “I read this in phenomenon in a journal once and turned it as a plot-device for the game” was always Uchikoshi’s vibe and I’ve hated it for so long, another hallmark of his explanations is done by abusing bootstrap paradoxes and I cannot emphasis how much I HATE these explanations, especially in the ZE universe.

Sekimeiya has hands down, the most complex, well-thought out mechanics I have ever seen in a sci-fi mystery. I appreciate the fact that the origin of the mechanics is irrelevant which is another Uchikoshi weakness as he goes into page-length explanations about quantum-mechanics and the like. Sekimeiya only cares enough to have mechanics that works within the internal logic of the story, and its able to conceal the actual mechanics with so many cool misdirections. I was able to make some assumptions that were right on the mark but the way they are executed just completely obliterated me.

Unmatched, just WOW, I am honestly a bit disgusted how do you even write something this technical and then manage to even rationalize it completely with the events of the story?

(+) Sai

When I say character writing is scuffed, I leave Sai out of that equation. He’s one of my favorite versions of the “fucking up the game” characters in the trapped genre. Whenever he was on screen it was always so juicy to the extent that I was disappointed when he didn’t have a dedicated route (I would have loved for Sai to do the explanation part in Chapter 5).

LOVED. THIS. CHARACTER.

(+) Story

(+) Chapter 1:

Starts off too polarizing but then it turns into my favorite “question” arc of any VN I’ve ever played, manages to pile on the most confusing chain of mysteries for a brilliant cluster-fuck in this lengthy chapter.

(+/-) Chapter 2:

I liked the twist, the chapter is quite short and isn’t THAT interesting to me personally and sort of demystifies the story a little bit since it makes one of the mechanics very obvious.

(+) Edit: After going through the tips variant of the events there's so many layers to the protagonist's character, the different endings have so many interesting components to them and reading this chapter after seeing some events in chapter 5 also greatly re-contextualizes the events of this chapter. This is Adri's most risky chapter because of the omissions he does from the narration.

(+/-) Chapter 3:

I saw a reviewer like this chapter and all I’ll say is the first half was so boring I dreaded having to read through it, but then I enjoyed when it picked up on where the story had previously halted. I really liked a lot of the reveals of what actually happened and a huge “wtf” ending reveal.

(+) Edit: The tips variant of this chapter hides an entirely new perspective of the protagonist connected to the final events of Chapter 5, the protagonist also reminisces about how they got a lot of the details wrong and it really paints a picture of how far Adri and the team went to hide the twist

(+/-) Chapter 4:

Just an overview of what went down at the start, barely a chapter.

(+) Chapter 5:

As much as I HATE END-OF-GAME INFODUMPS, the mystery of the game was genuinely so complex and intriguing that I didn’t mind the wizardry by which the MC whisked together all the complex plot-threads. Additionally, this chapter kind of proves the point that the whole game is more centered on the you – the player, figuring out how everything fell into place, with a “MCQ”-esque segment where just before the reveal it will give you the chance to prove that you understood the greater complexities of the game.

Chapter 5 at one point just goes outside the MC POV and straight up you are being directly talked to in order to figure out the greater plot points. This is insanely polarizing but I have to really dock points for just having a 5-6 hour long explanation-to-explanation narration where I didn’t even have a moment to breathe and digest anything.

The explanations are just, fantastic, if someone said it took them a decade to write this game I’d believe them with the effortless-ness of how its able to explain every insane thing. But its done in such an inorganic way that it almost felt like I was being lectured with a powerpoint presentation by the devs themselves.

I like to imagine since this is an indie project they really were strained on developmental resources that might have impacted how they approached to tell the story of this VN, which ultimately I can’t fault them too hard for.

TL;DR: The best explanation for a clusterfuck I have ever read in a VN, very polarizing execution.

(-) Ending

There is none, when the game wraps up all the knots the game doesn’t really care to tell you what awaits the fates of people outside the building, and since the center-focus of the game WAS the mystery, at the very most it manages to clean-house on that front. It does feel disappointing that there is no ENDING-ENDING.

(+) UI

The fact that an indie team managed to make such an interactive and helpful UI where VNs in the genre can’t even bother to add this level of accessibility just proves how much love was put into the game. Hats off to the team for going above and beyond, I love the added chart that’s probably gonna be super helpful when I might dive into the game again in the future.

(+) Soundtrack

I was iffy on the soundtrack at first, to the extent that I almost thought it was a bit funny and its very evident that these are not tracks that belong to the same album, but once my ears got used to all the tracks playing I actually ended up REALLY really enjoying them. A lot of ear worms that I’m not gonna manage to shake out any time soon despite these being licensed pieces.

(+) Conclusion

If I haven’t exhausted my compliments for the mystery of this game, absolutely jaw-dropping game with the most insane “question” and “answer” arcs. Starts off too wordy but once the mechanics come into play the game transforms into an unforgettable experience. I wish Trinitite keep working on newer titles so they can just polish up the character writing since they’ve already edged out every other VN in the trapped genre.

Shockingly impressively and an extremely memorable game, but with a botched execution in the writing department and a lack of an ending.

Scooby doo ass game but at least it isnt doo doo ass garbage like Persona 3.

People carry a lot of fond memories of this game from their formative years so they are blinded to just how meaningless the "gameplay" side of this game is but if you're looking for le funny banter this game is decent, infact the "friendship" theme is the only thing going for it.