Master Detective Archives: Rain Code

[DANGERMAN]

The new game from the Danganronpa people, and it is a little bit of a shift for them. Not hugely, there's still a cast of stylised characters, still surprisingly gruesome murders, and still a bunch of story. This time though its a little more gamey, you're not stuck in one location like a school, people have powers, and you're tied to a shikigami who only you can see and can take you to alternative dimensions. It's not reinventing the wheel, but it's less Danganronpa than it initially looked. 

 

I've only done the first chapter, episode, which is chapter 0, and it took me a while. You wake up with amnesia, and rush on to a train you're supposed to be on. It transpires that you're a master Detective, and there's only 5 other people on the train, they are all also master detectives (not just that they're detectives, that's the organisation they work for). They all have powers, such as being able to imprint memories on  screens, or a radar that means they can tell how many people are around them. While you're locked on the train there's a murder, meaning one of the detectives is a killer. 

 

Gameplay wise, when you start to solve it, it feels a little like they're making it up as they go along. There's fights where you dodge incoming words while attacking others with the correct counter statement. There's a barrel game where you have to guess the word that leans a bit in to the fan service. It's not the games strength 

 

So far it seems good, but I have almost fallen asleep twice playing it. That first chapter, which is basically the prologue, took me hours. We'll see though, I'm in the city from the trailers now so I'm at least seeing and meeting new places and characters