Very good mystery/detective game, filled with tons of anime tropes and over the top crazy stuff. If you played Danganronpa before, a lot of this game will feel very familiar for you. The art style is similar, some of the minigames are reskins of the ones in Danganronpa. But even so, this game feels distinct from Danganronpa series.

You're a young boy, who barely makes it on a train full of master detectives. Add to it the fact there are more people than expected on the train. The first chapter is called "The train massacre", so you know you're in for a good time.

The game goes between story segments, then investigation segments once a murder takes place, and finally reasoning segments, where you solve the mystery. By the time reasoning segment starts you always already have all pieces needed to solve all the puzzles. The difficulty of mysteries is rather low, I usually had it all figured out by the time I started the reasoning segment. But it's made in a way, where if you know what's the answer the reasoning segment will be your confirmation phase, and if you don't, the reasoning minigames will guide you towards the answers.

Usually whodunnit is much too easy, with just not enough suspects to even throw you off. Howdunnit is most complex in the first two cases and then somehow gets easier and easier. Whydunnit also tends to be pretty obvious in the later cases, which are more personal.

There's not much fluff in this game. 16 sidequests, which are all pretty short, and memory shards to collect, which are easy to find, and there's not many of them.

The game is quite pretty. The main city is very moody and nice looking, with neons and strange technology everywhere. The character designs are pretty pleasing, and it all feels high quality and quite high budget for a mystery game. There city is pretty big, divided into subsections trough which you can fast travel. The main hub area has multple floors and is full of graffitti, people walking around, and many minor details. Good work.

The reasoning is done trough a thing called Mystery Labyrinth, that also has very nice visuals. But my minor gripe is that every labyrinth looks the same from the outside. You also go trough some of the same animations each time you enter the labyrinth, which are fun to watch, but the main hero should get used to it after some time, so him being shocked each time was a bit strange.

Doing detective work, like investigation things, talking with people, or solving mysteries gives you experience, and that levels you up. With levels you can learn skills that help you during minigames in the reasoning sections. It's nice to have it like that instead of locking skills behind missable friendships like in Danganronpa.

At the end of the labyrinth you're scored for your performance, and basically any mistake drops you from SS to S rank. This is pretty irritating if you want to max the game, since it means you will have to replay every labyrinth, and they take around 1 hour to beat even if you skip/fastforward anything that is possible. And second run is so boring and brain dead it's really not worth doing. It would be nice if you could just replay the minigames where you didn't get SS rank, instead of full labyrinth. Most of the time in the labyrinth you just keep holding up to walk... Also recap minigame at the end has 10 minute long cutscene that can't be skipped. Only fast-forwarded just a little bit (maybe 20% speed up?).

I really liked all characters that are kept for more than 1 case. It's nice that you canonically already got closer with your friends, and now you just find memories of those interactions... so the characters can die, and you still can see memories with them. So you don't know who will die or not, and friendship with them is not missable.

If you played the basic version on switch, this one adds side stories for each of master detectives in the detective agency. So it's about 4-5 hours of content. It's not worth paying full price just for those, as they not very interactive. Maybe at 80% off. But if never played this game, like me, then this is also a nice bonus to go trough post-game.

All in all I liked this game more than any Danganronpa entry, and I really hope for a sequel. I wouldn't mind the next game to be a bit harder. I feel like Danganronpa ones were more convoluted, and there I sometimes didn't have a full idea of solution while going into the classroom trials.

On steam deck I put it on 45fps, all settings high, 100% scaling, 720p. The only setting I lowered was "effects", which I put to minimum. That setting eats 20+ FPS of performance, and I couldn't see a difference with it on or off, and I even made screenshots to compare. For most part the game held stable FPS, with minor drops inside the biggest district.

Masterpiece. Absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ masterpiece.

Play this game if you haven't yet. Dew it.

The game is more Danganronpa in way if you played the series. That also means trying some thing new in a different setting being lore or gameplay things. Its not a perfect game but i think those are a rarity. I thoroughly enjoyed the game for what it was. And I liked returning to it. The VA's deserve a lot of recognition and the music really is just another classic besides the Danganronpa soundtrack. I give it a solid 8 or 9 out of 10. If you like detective games i think you can have a good time with this one.