I've been toying with the idea of putting up my own review, but, aside from a few potent spits of venom I'd direct at Byakuya, you've mostly said everything I could or would. Good review.
Thanks. Looking at the other review here I wondered if maybe there was more dissatisfaction with it than I'd thought and I might be in the minority.
And I really would love to go more into the characters, but with just 400 words you have to trim a ton to fit as much as you can in. I knew from the start that I probably could only do an overview of them at best.
A mini-game section where you can replay the games would be nice, though I think the only one where it made sense would be the rhythm game of shooting down arguments.
I can't say that the time between the trials was too slow or long, except for the beginning. And that was mostly introduction/tutorial, so I kind of tried to ignore it. Though I did say, "Someone had better die soon, or else" when I played the first chapter.
Leave a Comment:
Wavers Back and Forth, But Ultimately Recommended
This is definitely a game that got a bit too much hype. Perhaps being a good game, one of the few good ones for the PSP and Vita and for so long only accessible by looking at translated Let's Plays, this was inevitable. But one should not expect pure genius from it.
The first focus is on the characters. Some I found to be very interesting and added a lot of color to their world, others I thought had potential that just didn't get realized and unfortunately there were one or two that I felt just didn't have much to them. Sadly, the main character falls into the latter as a pretty generic "hope and friendship" protagonist. Fortunately the boss does definitely go into the former, adding a lot of fun to the last part.
The art style is nice, with the pop-up art somehow helping the weird feel of the story. And the story does realize just how crazy this is, and with the idea of Ultimate students, the ironic and improbable punishments and the final reveal of the state of things it might not go as far as it could, but it makes a good effort for a bizarre story.
After that we have the meat of the game, the mysteries and trials. I would say that it felt like they were split between ones you really didn't see coming, or fairly obvious ones. Some parts of the mechanics like word bullets I felt were fun, others like Hangman's Gambit and the rhythm game were annoying. All in all I found the trials manageable, but they did need more explanation of mechanics and some kind of free time mini-game to let you get used to them without worrying about ruining your score. And you are going to run into places where you know what argument to make, just not what word bullet to use on what argument.
For the miscellaneous parts of the game, I have to say that it can feel slow in the time before the next trial, even with quick travel. In another sense, I don't know why they bothered with having Monocoins hidden in objects, because it takes so long to find them among all the objects you can click on that you'll quickly give up and rely on trials for Monocoins. To its credit, the game has a nice feature that allows you to revisit any previous chapter to replay it (but only from that save) and a School Mode where you can interact with the group more and learn more about the people who would have died.
All in all, recommended, though only if you already have a Vita.