To be clear i didnt actually PLAY this game, i watched ashleigh play the whole thing and sat with her during the class trials and we talked about.

now i dont KIN nagito or anything like that, but when we got into the meat of this game i was definitely pleasantly surprised. you hear so much shit about dandan's romper fans that i thought this was going to suck, be total anime bullshit throughout, and be lame. i was mostly wrong! like a lot of Hard Anime works, dandan's romper has its own world and set of rules that make sense within the context of that world. once you give yourself over to that you can enjoy the game on its merits for what it is: a solid murder mystery story with a conspiracy going on in the background. Each murder, bar maybe one of them, was genuinely really well thought out and written, with a good understanding of logistics behind it. the characters were all interesting anf strange, and even the ones you dislike get depth, and even the cheesey anime silly ones grow on you as time goes on. i didnt like Mafia Boy at all by the start but by the end he was a good man. Dandan's romper is also super self aware, it breaks the fourth wall, acknowledges how its plot is convenient for the sake of the plot, and more. it balances humour and horror in a really satisfying way, its incredibly stylised, and the music fucks. it made me think of persona in that it has very gay and trans coded characters at points, and while it doesnt confirm anything it doesnt do the persona thing of going "whoops they were straight all along heehee!"
Knocked off half a star bc the minigames during the trials are absolutrly atrocious. hangman's gambit is a terrible, terrible way to spend your time. wasteful

souda is the best boy