i finished rain code! after shutting myself away from all social media until i was done, i did it!! i was itching to write my thoughts down about the game already in the midst of it, but now that i've gotten fanart out of my system and let everything settle, i can hopefully express everything just a bit more cohesively. this is also my first time ever trying to write an actual long-form piece regarding my opinions on anything, so it's probably going to be somewhat (more than somewhat) messy, but regardless i'm super excited! i'm going to include a mega short spoiler free section at first, then continue on a full text including spoilers and going through various points that stood out to me in one way or another. let's start with the spoiler free section:
sore wa chigau z- wait no
do i recommend master detective archives: rain code? YES, absolutely!! I LOVE THIS GAME!! if you like the danganronpa series, you're going to like this one. i've been a fan of dr for years and it's literally one of my favorite things ever, so this game was an easy sell. it keeps the creators' dna and themes throughout this new ip as well, but in a refreshing and surprising way. the art and music feels familiar, but translated in a way that feels like partaking in a meal you know you'll enjoy, while noticing new delicious notes when chewing on it. i can't really discuss much of it here other than give a hearty recommendation, since it REALLY is best experienced completely blind! if you have enough trust in a stranger's recommendation based on my overall taste in media and/or you enjoy a good wacky detective story with beautiful visual flare and supernatural elements, go and get the game! and if you do, please tell me what you thought about it!!
WARNING!
we're entering the spoiler section! i'll include a good buffer between this and the general recommendation, so your eyes don't accidentally waver to spoilery bits, there's a lot of screenshots below. scroll down at your own risk after completing the game (or if you know you're not going to play the game and just want to see what i have to say about it)!
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
V
welcome to the spoiler section! here i will get into the meat of things, but i won't be going through the game chronologically, since my priority is to get out my most burning thoughts where i think the game shined or where i think something didn't go as stellar as i think it could have. it's a personal collection of memos that linger in my mind! and with that, let's start!
the first thing i thought about the game was how visually GORGEOUS it looked. aesthetic is narrative, and this one delivers hard. it's pretty impossible to not compare it to the previous danganronpa games, since the creator influence is just as strong here. the art style in the 3d modelled characters looks familiar, but incorporates them in a complete 3d world only somewhat resembling ultra despair girls, only the murkiness of that game is completely gone with bold outlining and cel shading. also familiar from the other dr entries are the character sprites. while the whole game is in 3d motion, they still included the sprites to enhance the conversational parts. while it's not uncommon to do so, i still love how they kept it because seeing the 2d drawn expressions take over when the 3d models can't quite express something to the same degree just takes the presentation up a notch. i'm a huge fan of the media mixing visuals in general, it packs a lot of whimsy and lets the media express itself more freely.
the design sense of the characters has been taken to a level fitting the cyberpunk setting with cool coats, glowing glasses, flashy makeup and facial piercings. the shocking train ride of chapter 0 carries you to the main setting drenched in beautiful, vivid neon colors enhanced and reflected by the never-ending rain of kanai ward and its glowing multilingual signboards. i personally love rain, so the whole setting with everyone in rain coats (rein koodo, rein kooto, get it, get it?? hehe) or holding umbrellas was already really appealing to me. though its purpose is to give the game world's a depressing, cold feeling with the artificial and garish lighting without any warm sunlight, it started feeling like home the more you let yourself get accustomed to it and its people. the cold blues, pinks and greens cast on the outside shell of the dark city contrasts really nicely against yakou detective office completely submerged in the rain, and embraces the main cast in its hidden warm yellows and reds.
i didn't have any screenshots at hand of the streets, but since you can see a peek of them here it works. you're welcome for the halara
our tiny mc yuma is also a familiar amnesiac trope, his silly question mark ahoge going even further to point it out with the mystery solving theme of the game. he goes through the game as a slightly meek but persistent detective trainee whose sense of justice and care for everyone around him makes him easily very likable. going briefly back to chapter 0, that misdirect was honestly great. they basically introduced us to half-size cast of what was the norm, then pulling the carpet from under and declaring that this time the status quo is set from the start when the "real" cast gets introduced shortly after the amaterasu ride. the cast that we get to be familiar with throughout the game starting from yakou's office is a small group of master detectives with quirky personalities. while you get to spend quality murder mystery solving time with each of them individually, it still left a longing where i wanted to get to know them all better. while the idea of immersing in one-on-one characer interaction and their particular modus operandi with each case is wonderful, outside of their own cases there's sadly not a lot of moments spent getting to know them, including the gumshoe gabs.
maybe because halara was our first helper, i kind of imprinted on the character. halara is just so cool, capable and surprisingly cute behind the scenes. the way halara kicks into scenes and takes lead in them no matter what is just so addicting. it's a bit embarrassing but i kept screaming HALARAAAA every time the situation was saved by a punch or a kick or just seeing the cute gambler unexpectedly. it really felt like a callback to the assisting character trope who helps with the investigation, since the rest of them either fool around or aren't quite as up to par. while fubuki was adorable and grew to be more reliable, she and desuhiko were clearly the weakest ones overall. even though i couldn't bring myself to hate desuhiko's pervert shtick because he always came through when it mattered the most and could even be a good friend to yuma and deeply cared for the others, he could have been replaced with a more fleshed out counterpart. yakou was a reliable and goofy constant, until, well... he wasn't. and kurumi's inclusion was also a great addition, since you really get to grow on the cheery girl the more she appears on screen. her vocal performance by megumi toda was also very refreshing, i kept replaying her giggle in one line, it sounded so genuine and bright (please don't judge i replayed like every line of the game at least twice LOL).
HALARAAAA YOU'RE SO COOOOOL AAAAAAAAAAA
shinigami-chan was obviously the other star of the show, at first i was neutral towards her, but oh my god do you get attached to the self-congratulating death god. every time she opened a mystery labyrinth portal and did the hand-on-hip pose with the song beat dying on a pulse WAS SO COOL!! i don't usually care for supernatural stories, but the game included the supernaturality in fun, easily digestable chunks that didn't disrupt the flow of solving mysteries, and played into the setting fittingly. each of the investigations felt exciting because of the varying accompanying detective forte, and seeing how it would play out in the story. the mystery labyrinths were always a blast with the changing insides and including new solving approaches each time. while the gameplay wasn't much besides quick time events which i don't hate, or slashing arguments, i really prefer this kind of laid-back gaming where most of what you do is conversational, explorational and doing thinking by yourself (even if your theories crumble pretty fast, ahem...). the different wards had just the right amount of exploration, with maps that didn't overwhelm you, but also packed with storytelling elements. i especially appreciated how often the dialogue of objects and npcs updated after checking again, sometimes even up to three times with voiced lines.
the visual presentation of the labyrinths never disappointed. especially in chapter 4 with yakou's case with vivia in hand (literally), i got so excited to see a short sequence mimicking paper puppets on sticks, that was incredibly cute and stood out so much i had to screenshot it. it all ramped up in the final labyrinth, where each case got their own cameo, and the nail man killings with the dolls, warped paintings and spilled paint buckets LOOKED INSANELY PRETTY... just the overall abstraction and wackiness, the paper collage-like cut-outs fluttering in the labyrinth's sky gave it such a fun atmosphere, they really went all out in the psycho pop department.
now this might sound weird, but the time danganronpa picked up in the west due to the forum posted translation, it was also the peak time of homestuck. rain code's mystery phantoms, or more particularly the first one of zilch, feels like such crystallization of what that era felt and looked like. the sparkledog aesthetic, screaming green and rainbows with red huge wings, gray skin, yellow eyes and dog ears... it's most probably just a coincidence and i'm going nuts, but it just feels right in the weirdest, most incomprehensible way. you be the judge. another actual reference that i got a giggle out of was rpg queen fubuki's insisting on yuma being a warrior of light.
is it really?
the rest of the side characters all played into the one big character revelation in the end, which was kanai ward itself, or rather the compiled mystery of its isolated existence and power struggle within and without. i appreciate how you could start to piece together the mysteries each time even before all of the clues were properly gathered. plot threads and themes were already planted in earlier chapters, like vivia's catchphrase or everyone's persisting obsession with meat buns, or yakou being the prelude to a smaller world breaking before a bigger world crumbles over a solved mystery.
the final revelation was a rollercoaster to go through. i probably had the same face as yuma when he had the last stand-off with makoto and his eventual revelation to be his homunculus (i actually checked everyone's height and weight during chp 4 to try to figure out who the murderer was, but apparently it escaped me in the last chapter... the data matched goddammit). at first i felt like this could have been the breaking point just because immortality is just too big of a concept even for a supernatural setting, since the detective work grounded it quite a bit. but like i already countlessly referenced back to danganronpa, the creators were also extremely aware of the comparison, and even honored the continued legacy by actually incorporating the player's own understanding of the predecessor's massive presence. AND IT WORKED SO WELL!! this was probably my favorite twist of the whole game just because it plays with your understanding so sneakily and manages to get away with it. in the first case you go through you actually see a peek of what blood IS supposed to look like, but don't pay it much attention because the corpses are burned. then when enough time has passed and your head is spinning with the buzzing still unknown kanai ward, the game shows you a nostalgic scene of poppy pink blood, and it easily becomes the old, new norm. it's not just playing with genre tropes, but playing with the trope you yourself created, and then turning that upside down, what a power move. (does this mean the whole danganronpa cast are homonculi...?)
so cute! i love this!! too bad i missed the timing of yuma and vivia facing the camera
now that i've got most of my gushing out, i have to put out some criticism towards what i felt confusing and lacking. it's not much, but it has mostly to do with the translation. overall the translation was very accurate and matched the tone of the original script, but more than once or twice it muddied the flow of conversation, and sometimes just completely stated something that actually wasn't spoken and made the logical argument parts contradict itself. the ones i can mention from the top of my head is a scene with mystery phantom yomi, where he declares "there was no intruder", and yuma "counteracts" with "we already proved there was no intruder". like huh, he just agrees? what he actually said if i recall correctly was "we already proved that was not the case". also what's with suwaro's name being changed to martina?? another two that bothered me a lot were the heartfelt first and last moments with shinigami-chan.
in the first screenshot, instead of saying "so you're fine with every part of the pact?", she actually says "are we going to make that part of the pact too?", which flows into yuma agreeing and her saying "you better keep your end of the bargain", and then referencing back to the conversation we saw earlier in the second screenshot. in the second screenshot, in the line "i hope you make your wish come true" she states "show it to me" which is completely missing. she wants yuma to SHOW her the world that is free of mysteries and everyone is happy, which is why the pact scene is so imporant. and with that line missing it makes no sense yuma later says he wants to show her the world, because this dialogue makes it seem like she'll never be able to be present to witness it herself. it loses its hopefulness, and the flow of the conversation becomes incomprehensible overall. funnily enough the gags translated weirdly well into english lingo, with a few exceptions.
one head scratcher that wasn't due to translation mistakes was in chapter 1's nail man killings. i still don't understand how the nun was crossed out of being a suspect, her broken arm was used as evidence of her not throwing the key through the vent in the mansion, but her arm was broken in the PRESENT, and the crime was done MONTHS back. surely it couldn't have been broken for months...?? oh well. rest of the cases didn't seem to have any problems like this. last mention is the change in artist (did they run out of resources?) for the side character sprite art in chapter 2. it wasn't too jarring, but it stood out a lot compared to the main style.
cute but dangerous? vivia... emo makeup and piercings are the charm point!
this is not going to end this on a negative note because if it already wasn't apparent, I LOVE THIS GAMEEEEE! so i'm going to include a few more scattered mentions of things i really liked. all the monokuma references were funny and nicely hidden, i hope that mom in epilogue never bought the danganronpa books for the kid's sanity's sake. THE SIDE QUEST WITH THAT MAN SMITTEN WITH VIVIA WAS SO REAL AND CUTE... i felt incredibly called out. how i wish i could have seen how that scene played out. vivia was so goddamn cute and his voice. lord. i fell for the fan bait. i already said this, but i really would have hoped to have seen more of him and even the others, i feel like we finally scratched the surface when the ending hit. yomi was so stupidly fun and villainous, he and the rest of the colorful goons were good part-time bad guys before we got into the heart of the actual problem.
all of them women (i meant the* but all of them women is funnier) WERE RIDICULOUSLY TALL, i love that detail so much. i also like how the ending also reinforced the individuality of everyone embracing their own belief in carrying out the truth, and tying the knot on the theme of mystery solving with it. chapters 2 and 4 hit some emotional cords for apparent reasons, those three girls were so full of love even in the midst of the cruelty caused, and oh, sweet yakou. the panel room electrocution was haunting. the ost was a lot more temperate than danganronpa's tracks which fit the gloomy mood, nothing stood out as all-out bangers but the overall quality was up there as expected. while i liked every single track, my favorite has to be kamasaki district's tune. you heard it the most, it became the sound of the game and the neighbourhood you roamed the most. the bell really encapsulated the sound of rain well, and the whole track just sounds like what kamasaki looks like with the industrial beats, melancholic piano, the chime of rain drops, coming across more comforting the more you listen to it. the send-off with playing as kurumi was lovely, seeing the change in kanai ward through the eyes of its citizen, and hearing kamasaki district lose its melancholic piano to letting the rain heal instead of subdue this time.
and that's my thoughts as well as i could get them out! i'm sure i missed out on points, but let's go with this. i can always come back to think about this game and its world. i still haven't collected all of fubuki's and desuhiko's gumshoe gabs, and i have yet to read the yakou light novel, so maybe i'll post about rain code again after i go through them! thank you so much for reading if you went through this whole thing!! AND PLEASE TALK TO ME ABOUT RAIN CODE YAHOOOO!!
the hand-holding truly is powerful, it gets me every time... have a good rain and see you again ;;