Master Detective Archives Raincode is a video game developed by Too-Kyo Games withadditional development from Spike Chunsoft and is the spiritual successor to Danganronpa. The game is a murder mystery with a twist of gothic dark fantasy and neo noir.It is set within the Kansai Ward where it is the Danganronpa like version of Gotham City where high rates of corruption and crime go on and it has to take a special type of person to solve the mysteries and stop the crimes.
The first thing we notice is the unique gothic artstyle inspired by the works of Tim Burton and some of theartstyle from Danganronpa which gives the game a unique visual appeal. The story focuses on a group of private detectives from the world detective organzation specifically the nocturnal detective agency the only one in the kansai ward cause crime is so bad there, solving mysteries and uncovering the dark truth in the strange world they find themselves. Each detective has their own special ability to help them out and you’ll be partnering up with them depending on the mystery.
In contrast to the shooter style of Danganronpa, this goes for a more hack and slash style gameplay when it comes to solving mysteries. You have to find the right evidence to go against the bad guy, to get closer to solving the mystery.
You can explore the Kansai ward solving mysteries either to progress through the main story or to do side quests. The side quests themselves weren’t particularly that engaging since some of them can be pretty standard fetch quests.
The more you interact with the world, the more detective points you gain to unlock perks to solve mysteries similar to the original mechanics in Danganronpa.
The Labyrinth takes the place of the court system that was used in Danganronpa.
You just follow the straight and narrow path and see how things unfold. When you reach a certain point, and you have to answer question through a quick time event mini game. Each labyrinth location for the most part had a unique feel to it.
It brings back the manga like conclusion parts where you have to piece things together to unravel the crime.
The character designs are very good with Halara being my personal favorite.
The characters feel way too similar to the original cast of Danganronpa. Yuma, the main protagonist, was a pushover, not too bright and not very helpful in solving cases. Halara would have been my choice. Other characters did not get much chance to showcase their talents, but the coming DLC may provide them with some opportunities to shine.
The game provides some surprising twist and turns at key moments. The graphics are decent enough for a low budget title while the music was ok. The controls were easy to learn. The dialogue can be cringey at times and not helping either was the unnecessary comedy every few seconds. The game is easy for beginners of the mystery visual novel genre so if you’re new to it, you’ll be fine with this game.
There were some technical hiccups like the slow loading time but this is understandable as this is not exactly a high budget video game. Still with today’s technology, there is no real excuse for this. The use of gen-Z memespeak in some lines was annoying. This kind of dialogue I mentioned on previous reviews ages really badly and unless the original Japanese sub has it, then I don’t really have much use for it.
There are some loose ends that were not exactly tied up as properly as should like the fates of certain characters that are most likely, going to be used for DLC sadly.
For something from a small indie team I think this a huge step and really shows how far they’ve come along.
It gets 4 out of 5 stars.From having a bit of some rough footing with World’s End club to really hitting the home run with Akudama Drive and now Master Detective, Too-Kyo games really shows that you can have a small video game development team and still create something really special. Hopefully, we get to
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