this review includes spoilers for both lgts and pocket mirror.

i'm gonna try and keep this one short but it'll be lengthier because this is a game i've been anticipating for 6+ years.

tldr - it was good but i expected more due to being an astralshift fan since before pocket mirror was even released. i have been here since pm's demo release. and that is a While to build up expectations (lgts has been in development for 6-7 years, and i have been here the whole way through), so i may be a little harsh.

i'll skip over the visuals and the soundtrack, those were gorgeous. i found myself often stopping at areas and looking around. the quality of this game is absolutely phenomenal and delivered in every possible aspect.

i'm known for judging games based on their stories. and having played pm before, i knew what i was going into. lgts sets a very good basis for its story and is relatively simple to follow, able to hook newer players & those who know lore (aka me) in. the way lgts constructed its plot was predictable considering i knew the lore, but interesting, and i still found myself very engaged.

i also liked the cast. rozenmarine was my favourite since her reveal, but her role in the story only solidified it. lebkuchen and freya were lovely too - though i do have a small gripe with them, and that is that they feel not so relevant to the story despite being the other two romance options, especially freya (i'm excluding dates here). i liked most of the NPCs as well, and it really felt like everyone kinda got their time to at least shine for a little bit, i enjoyed seeing all the chaos kieferberg was enduring.

the aspects which lowered this rating are two major things:

1. astralshift repeated the exact same mistake in game mechanic they did in pocket mirror, it being that you do not get enough "bang for your buck".

basically, in pocket mirror, in order to get every single ending, you had to grind a LOT. this meant replaying the game multiple times, and astralshift even said on their page that multiple playthroughs for pm are advised. but even after gathering every ending, you don't exactly feel satisfied. why would i dedicate multiple playthroughs to a game just to obtain a bunch of endings that are incredibly short, vague, and similar in nature? lgts has this exact same problem (minus the vagueness, but ESPECIALLY similarity).

i made the incredibly stupid accident of softlocking myself into ending 10 because i did not meet the requirements to make the tender flesh on wednesday (?). i made SEVENTEEN game files (i'm a frantically paranoid saver), but none of them would have helped me and i would've had to replay more than half the game if i wanted to get any other ending. except the endings are basically:

- sacrifice the girl you like to ozzy
- don't sacrifice the girl you like to ozzy, live a happy life with her
- get fucked over by the girl you like because you didn't put her doll in the good company offering
- endings 4 & 10 (which are very confusing to me, honestly)

i don't think a game which structured its endings in a way like this justifies multiple playthroughs, especially since the gameplay in order to get all these endings is very repetitive, and in some ways, tedious (i will not talk about how unforgiving some of the witching hour segments are in this game). i did not do multiple playthroughs and instead saved my time by importing a save file from a generous steam user who made a guide on how to reach every ending in a singular run - but i'm absolutely sure that if i hadn't done this, i would've been very disappointed upon finding out that my multiple playthroughs would've just led to me seeing a different variation of a future with the girl elise loved.

this is my main beef with the game; i wish the endings included more lore. as a pocket mirror player, i played this game with the expectation that it would deliver more on the story aspect - and, well, it did, but i found myself wanting to know more about ozzy, the contract, rozenmarine's upbringing (why does she know everything ?!?!!?), the old hag & hans (i only half understand the whole deal with holle / the old hag aka the witch / hans). this is the exact same feeling i was left with after playing pocket mirror - that i didn't get enough of a story. seriously, it left so many people confused that astralshift basically had to entirely explain the plot on their tumblr. i didn't pick up on the fact that goldia had DID at all. here, the problem is less about the story being convoluted and more that it didn't have anything to offer. yes, we got more insight into how elise made the contract, how she got hold of the pocket mirror, rozenmarine's role in her life... but i guess i just overhyped this game to the point where i thought we were going to get so much more (that, and figuring out the 'plot twists' due to my existing lore knowledge). my mistake, partially, i suppose?

2. some of the game design/mechanic aspects

i said i wouldn't talk about how frustrating some of the witching hour segments were, and i promise that, but i'll mention what i didn't like without much elaboration:

- the moth & carcass puzzle (wasn't really frustrating but i had to end up consulting a guide for it)
- the bird pecking labyrinth with the trees, ESPECIALLY when you're trying to save apfel (apparently you were supposed to use party talk to help yourself? i just ended up tanking the whole thing because elise's hitbox is massive even in the safe spots)
- the 'no light allowed' maze (it didn't take me long to do because i got lucky, but..... seriously? who allowed this?)

i've played a lot of (horror) rpgs in my time so i've done my fair share of puzzles and wasn't as stuck as others, but some of these segments could honestly be brutal to someone who isn't familiar with the genre. i DID find the challenging aspect of them entertaining most of the time, but i can see people getting easily annoyed here. i feel like they should've been a bit easier.

i had little issues with managing my resources, but it still frustrated me how expensive it was to bring rozenmarine along for chores, especially since she barely helped. and muffy's entire existence should have just been erased. the suspicion mechanic barely matters unless you max it out which then gives you a game over/bad ending, and she just felt like a cop-out way for you to max it out if you didn't care about feeding her. likewise, her somehow out of nowhere knowing you went to the woods & finding out important information and blackmailing you despite not at all being a relevant plot character was so useless - it's never explained how she found any of this out. she just knows, somehow, so i'm supposed to feed her to stay safe, i guess!

another thing i want to complain about is the making of the tender flesh. i realize being locked out of a lot of endings due to not making it was partially my mistake because the game DOES tell you that you need to make it, but it doesn't point where or how. when you have to make the sweetest nectar, you are FORCED to do this and the game explicitly tells you what you must do without letting you proceed otherwise. they should've done something like that with the latter, too, because it's easily missable - that, or at least not have made the crafting of the tender flesh only available on wednesday. this would've prevented me and others from getting softlocked later. i didn't want my hand to be held and for the game to be screaming "GO MAKE THE FUCKING BREAD!!!!!!!!!!!" at me, of course, but to make one of the core items for a majority of the endings something that's missable early on? not a good look in my book. i wouldn't have cared as much if this item would have made me miss one ending, but EIGHT? hell no. besides, if we applied this game to a real life situation, i doubt elise would have gone to present her gifts to ozzy while knowing she didn't actually craft one of them properly - which is why i think making the tender flesh shouldn't have been a mechanic that was only available on a singular day.

also, for the love of god, please make all texts/cutscenes skippable, not just a select few. i cannot tell you how tedious it was having to mash buttons when i was grinding for all the endings.

despite lgts not living up to my expectations, i wouldn't say it's ALL bad, of course. i genuinely did have a fun time playing the game, but i'm not diehard about astralshift's writing enough to care about maxing all achievements or playing multiple times (truly, thank you to that steam user for the save file which saved me from my stupidity). even though it didn't deliver on what i had hoped, i think it's a generally okay game - along with its gorgeous visuals & soundtrack, a solid story and SAPPHICS (!!!!!!!!!!!), it'll definitely be something that'll stick with me for a while.

now if you'll excuse me, i have to go mourn rozenmarine because moira is the canonical ending of this game and she was my favourite character/romanceable option. fuck this stupid baka life i hate tragic yuri (/j).

my reviews are usually silly and short, with only some having serious critique. this is my first actual in-depth review of a game which i am only doing because i'm a fan of kodaka's previous works. i am also doing this on mobile so pray formatting

in short, rain: code left me incredibly disappointed.

the game DOES have its strengths. despite everyone complaining about the game running like ass, i don't mind it that much. it being a switch-only release is very weird, but i feel like the visuals for those limitations are pretty good. i liked the environments and cutscenes. not so much the character designs, but you get used to them after a while.

likewise, the music is great as always. kodaka's games never fail to deliver in that department, and while some may say the ost isn't very memorable or is too "danganronpa-esque", i just care as long as the soundtrack is good. and it IS damn good.

i also liked MOST of the main characters' personalities. everyone's unique in their own way and brings something new to the table, and the cast being smaller was pleasant. i wish the detectives who died in ch0 weren't hyped up during the trailers (rip zilch u could've been the goat) because i genuinely expected them to play a big role, but i was happy with the ones who survived.

unfortunately, the negatives GREATLY overshadow the positives in this game, which made it such a bad experience for me. let's move onto those.

as i previously said, i enjoyed most of the characters. however, the great flaw of this game is how they were handled. rain code absolutely did not devote enough time to its main cast and everyone (aside from yuma + SOMEWHAT halara and vivia) in my opinion got little to no character development nor did their dynamic with yuma grow despite them spending an entire chapter with him. this also honestly applies to shinigami because she practically makes fun of him the whole game and stays her typical comedic relief self until the final chapter where kodaka remembered "oh shit wait these two need to show their bond has grown throughout the game. QUICK WRITE THAT IN!!!". the game's "each case is separate" motif hindered the characters greatly because you'd have a master detective help you out for one chapter and then lose the impact of their presence for the remaining ones where they aren't in the spotlight.

however, the biggest blow from this mistake was suffered by the peacekeepers. i was so excited to see how they'd be an obstacle to the WDO from the trailers, imagining them as this group that always bands together, has each other's backs, and is ready to oppose you... only to quickly realize they've basically got nothing to do with each other. they're fit into the episodic format in the same manner the master detectives are – one of them shows up at the beginning of a case to be like Hey You Can't Do This Shit, you encounter them in the mystery labyrinth as a phantom a few times, and then at the end of the chapter you outsmart them and they're gone for the rest of the game (except yomi and. martina i guess. can you really count her though?). this basically made them just not feel like real obstacles because they didn't feel like People. none of the characters in this game felt like people to me, from the case-related npcs to the peacekeepers to the master detectives. they are barely developed past their core characteristics and feel like nothing but basic anime tropes. none of these characters (with some exceptions) had REAL depth to me. sorry to use udg as an example but in there, despite the warriors of hope being your enemies, you actually get to learn all of their backstories and find out their motivations behind what they're doing, which in the end made sense. in danganronpa games, you get to learn honest facts about most of the characters and get to see what makes them unique. here? these characters lack motivation, they lack backstories, and they lack essence. they're hollow husks.

the second flaw of this game is the episodic case format i previously mentioned. this COULD have worked, honestly. the problem doesn't rely in the separate cases themselves. it lies in the fact that none of these cases (aside from ch4's) have meaning to yuma – this may be slightly nitpicky due to my preference in games, but i feel like it's relevant to mention. he's dragged onto the scene each time and solves the murder because it's the Right Thing a detective would do. and this makes sense! except (almost) every time the culprit is one of four people and it's extremely easy to guess who it is, and even then you just kind of... don't really give a fuck because of the issue i mentioned before – you know nothing about these characters aside from basic facts, so you're not inclined to care when they die. i didn't care when they died. the only time i cared when the culprit died was in ch4 because that was the ONLY chapter that tried to connect itself to yuma. it was the ONLY case that had any sort of relevance to yuma as a character and to the main plot twist. and i wish the other cases did this! if they had done that, i feel like i would've been way more invested in the game. like this, the other cases felt like completing random errands out of obligation because yuma wanted to seek truth and justice blah blah blah. also, in almost every single one of these cases the culprit pulls off a stunt that would practically be impossible in real life, which sort of bugged me, but y'know it's a Kodaka Game so whatever i'll close my eyes.

this made the cases very unfun for me to solve. by the time i arrived to ch4 i just wanted to be done with rain code, and while ch4 eased that feeling a bit, i still don't think a game should make you feel that. i'll be brief on the mystery labyrinths themselves, but they just felt like a drag to go through. they luckily didn't take me very long to beat, but i didn't have fun doing them because the cases were too predictable and i didn't care about the people involved. the mechanics used were mostly recycled from danganronpa and ripped from aitsf, but were set up in a way that simply wasn't fun for me. i think someone here said it before me so i'll somewhat quote them, but it basically felt less personal compared to the class trials used in danganronpa games because it's just you, shinigami, and a master detective involved. not even the suspects are involved besides blocking your way as mystery phantoms. you never actually interact with them while accusing them and nobody gets how you solved the case! and in a way, i get it – kodaka doesn't want this game to be grouped in with danganronpa. but he also doesn't do a very good job at separating it FROM danganronpa. he has the same people do the character designs, sprites and music (idc abt this personally though), reuses a majority of its mechanics and markets it primarily to danganronpa fans. i don't think rain code is super similar to danganronpa, but you can't really Not see it through that kinda lens if you're a longtime dr fan.

though there's much more i'm unsatisfied with, i'll lastly talk about the big twist, and i'll keep it brief. that shit was nonsensical. i was losing it, sleep-derprived in the middle of the night, because i had completely disconnected myself from this game. i did not get what the fuck was going on. partially, the big twist makes sense with the facts laid out, but i don't get WHY it happened. why the fuck was a massive immortal military needed?? why was everyone in kanai ward replaced with their homunculus and nobody noticed??? are you telling me there were absolutely NO human remains left to recognize any of the former citizens??? how did NOBODY from kanai ward ever go sneak into the restricted area and notice the meat bun corpse thing (also nice aitsf steal for the reason as to why it's restricted, kodaka -_-)??? there are so many technical questions here that don't make any fucking sense and make this twist just so absurd. like, it makes sense but it also doesn't. i feel like it was just so unnecessary and it's so disconnected from everything that i was done at that point. i'll give them points for makoto's motivations actually being fleshed out though. BUT ALSO WHY DID NUMBER ONE JUST AGREE TO HAVE A HOMUNCULUS MADE OF HIM. also yuma being number one was predictable but fine although what bothers me is shinigami/the book of death's existence is never explained. like that shit is straight up magic where did it come from. why does it just exist

edit: i also feel like nobody in the game found out about the ultimate secret because it was practically Given to them (e.g. yuma getting that disk from yakou) which makes the resolution unsatisfying. this game's main cast consists of detectives and yet all of them except yuma (and kurumi for some reason) get locked up in the tower while makoto basically spoon feeds yuma information on purpose which is weird because realistically he has no reason to let yuma find it out. he could've just killed the detectives while they were asleep and his initial plan would've worked

i feel like this game just . needed to sort its time out better to focus on the characters and establish a better, more interesting story. the cases should have been more personal or completely scrapped as a concept (personally i favor the latter more because the whole reason the detectives came to kanai ward was to uncover the ultimate secret so having them take part in some random ass cases and occassionally get hints about the twist was stupid and made the game feel like it had no plot. the danganronpa-esque mechanic just doesn't work for what they wanted to convey), everyone should've been more fleshed out as a person, and the mechanics should've been modified. i am probably going in circles at this point because i cannot organize my thoughts well so if you've read this far here's a gold star. despite all this i'll probably be tuning in to this game's inevitable sequel (though i won't buy it myself) in hopes that it fixes the problems present here. thank you for reading and i'm out