Media in Review: Master Detective Archives - Rain Code
From the team that brought you Danganronpa, it's...well, more Danganronpa.
I mean, I guess I could stop there and it would tell you everything you need to know, but we should probably talk about the game, right? I actually quite like the open world city bits; it gives you some downtime away from the capital-a-Anime nonsense that is the main plot, and it is absolutely gorgeous. With the constant rain, neon everywhere, and fascist corporate police force, Kanai Ward looks fantastic, even if the Switch is clearly struggling to run the game. Which is super weird! It's an exclusive, you had one job! The mystery labyrinths are a little samey but also look great - it's clear they got some staff from the Somnium Files games because it uses a lot of the same dreamscape logic and transformations.
Once you get into the meat of the game and start actually solving mysteries it's...yeah, it's Danganronpa with the serial numbers filed off. The mysteries themselves are pretty easy to solve, and you have so much health you'll never be in much danger even if you do need to stumble your way through it. Honestly, I think I took more damage from passive stuff like the scenes where it demands you "PICK A PHRASE TO COUNTER" and then hurts you anyway if you don't pick one in time. I'm also a big fan of this game's version of Hangman's Gambit, where you can't pause and if the timer runs out, you just instantly game over regardless of how much health you had. Thanks, I guess???
The actual plot is...fine, I suppose? It starts off pretty strong, but Chapter 3 takes a really weird swerve into "What if Antifa was the real terrorists?" that I don't think they completely intended, and then Chapter 5 just goes completely off the rails and doesn't even feel like it belongs in the same game as the rest of the story. Your mileage may very, I suppose.
I don't generally like to put down hard numbers because it's usually pretty obvious if I liked or disliked something but MDA is one of those pretty firm 6-7/10 games, maybe a point higher if you liked their previous stuff.