Recent reviews by Sam-pie

The characters may be fictional, but the stories they tell can have a real impact...

I hate the new hangman's gambit.

This game has probably the best or second best character and murder mistery in the whole series. However the game is terrible.

Danganronpa 2 plays more or less the same as its predecessor, but with some frustrating changes. You now have 3 different ways of traversing the world. You have a glorified "area selection screen" where you move your character like a side scroller, then you have the normal first person view and the usual static investigation screen. You are incentivized to walk instead of fast traveling with a mostly useless pet raising minigame.

The misteries have become more complex, however, with this added complexity, the devs had a hard time keeping track of every piece on the board, so to speak. In some mysteries you have to overlook some obvious problems with the setup and play along with the theatre the developers intended. Despite its many issues, the last mystery of this game is, in my opinion, the best mystery of this entire series.

I felt that the debates were more nonsensical this time around. Multiple times I found myself lost trying to figure out what piece of proof the developers wanted me to match with which statement. The "Improved hangman's gambit" is ironically not an improvement at all, and a new stupid pointless subway surfer type minigame was added to debates that just doesn't fit with the courtroom feel at all.

The characters are good but this time around they fit their anime stereotype more and they have less "human" characteristics. That said, there are some characters that I believe are great and one that is masterfully written.

The game is pretty terrible, the only real reason to play this game is to have a more complete idea of the over arching story of the Danganronpa franchise.

The game plays in a manner similar to the first Devil May Cry, in a way. You will be going through the same locales multiple times, with small changes. Nothing is stopping you from backtracking to a previous area even if there's no point in doing so.

During the game you are presented with different tools you can use to dispatch your enemies, however the game discourages you from doing that. If you kill an enemy with a simple headshot, you get a gold coin; if you lure enemies to a cliff and then push them off, you get no coins. If you bunch enemies together and zap them all at once, you get bronze coins. Boss fights are also incredibly easy.

The game's mechanics are introduced through very invasive tutorial screens, even though the tutorial guy is self-aware and cracking jokes at this very issue, it's still annoying and unnecessary.

The story is uh...

The characters are pretty good, continuing the Danganronpa trend of just forgiving mass murderers because "they've changed". The kids are all traumatized in some way and the voice actors (at least the japanese ones) went above and beyond with them, you really feel sad for their backstories to the point it might be triggering to some.

Despite every character being the embodiment of an anime stereotype you've seen thousands of times already, they all get developed in new and unpredictable ways, making them feel original and unique.

Contrary to similar games or even later danganronpa entries, this game's mysteries are simple yet not immediatly obvious (minus one). The debates are mostly logical and you rarely end up frustrated about what to do, especially if you're a couple of steps ahead, as it sometimes happens in these games.

The music is awesome, there's not much to say about that. The DanganronpaTM artstyle is perfect for a more western audience that can't stand to look at Clannad-style wide eyed generic anime characters.

Buggy and mechanically outdated.

A couple of bugs I've encountered:
- If you order your character to shoot with a shotgun too fast, they will shoot before turning towards the enemy, this
usually results into multiple allied casualties.
- If anyone throws a healing dart towards their ally and misses, the whole game softlocks.
- If you tell a specific NPC to wait for you during a quest, they simply disappear, locking you out of an entire area forever.

The way the combat works is simply outdated compared to games like DOS 2.

If you trigger an encounter, the turn list is as follows: host's turn -> partner's turn -> enemy's turn -> allies' turn.
If the enemy triggers the encounter, it's the same but starting from the enemy's turn.

This means that talking to enemies is a gamble. Choose the wrong option and they'll turn hostile and get to make the first move, which, at the highest difficulty, usually means a team wipe. So, if you expect someone called "John the cannibal" to turn hostile, just shoot him and start combat on your turn. This makes you unnecessarily miss out on many lines of dialogue.

The world is mostly empty and uninteresting to explore. The game consists of moving to the next POI while managing hunger and thirst. Contrary to a game like Subnautica, which has complex and interesting locales to entertain you during your travels, Forever Skies only has fog and some highrise building, with the occasional pretty weather effect.

The enemies are sadly uninspired, being mostly giant bugs that you'd swear you've already seen in some '80s alien flick.

Lastly, the coop mode is very experimental, with two runs already having been ruined by game breaking bugs, I can't reccomend Forever Skies to anyone who is looking for a coop game, at least in its current state.

Meh. The story is kind of terrible, the factions are extremely similar/almost identical, performance isn't great, it's got some bugs and not great pathfinding. If Steam had a neutral vote that's what I'd give this game, but overall, for 10$ or so during a sale, it's ok.

Good thing Josuke showed up just in time to save everyone with his Crazy Diamond and say his iconic line "Don't worry Anya, you're a diamond and diamond is unbreakable", absolute cinema.

999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (The first of the two games in this bundle), is not just an amazing visual novel and puzzle game, but it's also one of the best games I've ever played. I cannot reccomend it enough.

The writing is solid.

The Somnia have become easier and more linear, they're less "puzzle rooms" and more storytelling devices.

Just like the Zero Escape series, Spike Chunsoft seems unable to make a direct sequel to a game without "retconning" the ending of the previous entry. Mind you, they never actually retcon anything outright, rather they use some cheap excuse to explain the differences. Basically, everything that happens in the last 20 - 30 minutes of the first game is swept under the rug or forgotten (no respect for poor Hitomi).