It was better than I thought it would be. I thought it would be mid-bad, but it turned out to be surprisingly alright. I liked the much smaller cast of characters because it gave Komaru and Toko a lot of screentime, as compared to DR1 and 2 where one of my major complaints is that there is just not enough time to give an entire class adequate development. Even with the 5 kids counted as main characters, what’s still under half of a DR class. I played the game in roughly 45 minute chunks because that was about as long as I could go before I started to get bored of the gameplay. It was serviceable, but I would have rather been playing Dead Space. The presentation was really good, I especially liked all the menu illustrations.
Chapters 1 and 2 I found not very interesting in terms of plot, so I guess its time to talk about chapter 3. I had no idea what I was in for. I’m almost willing to go bat for this chapter. Almost. Its the retarded shots of Kotoko’s underwear that makes me not want to bother defending CH3. I already know there are going to be a lot of moralfags on youtube or reddit or whatever talking about how the minigame and Kotoko’s story is le heckin bad and problematic mm’kay, but I think there is merit to it. Chapter 5 was the best part of the game, particularly the section between last 2 bosses. I like that the game makes you choose whether to break the remote or not and doesn’t give you any help through a side character or something. My gamer/storytelling sense told me not to destroy, but I didn’t have a real reason at first. I did sort of figure out the whole war thing before it was mentioned though. Before they brought up the bombs in the helmets, I realized that the kids would die without the monokumas to defend them, which was why I kept choosing not to break it. That whole scene with the controller was really good and almost justifies the entire game. I also liked it because it was just a straightforward visual novel section at that point. I see why some people wouldn’t like this game. I’m not in a rush to replay it or anything, but I think it was overall a worthwhile entry. I did predict though after playing the first DR that we would eventually have confirmation that the tragedy was real, which was proven true with DR2 and definitely here. I’m not sure to what degree all of this undercuts the ending of the first game. Also, they quadruple down on the mind control stuff, which I didn’t like in the first game and really don’t like here. I just think the kids vs adults war could come about in a more intelligent way. Shirokuma and Kurokuma’s plan was pretty interesting otherwise, and I wish the writers had come up with ways to get to that war other than forcing it with scifi magic. Also the yellow paint was eye rolling, forgot to put that anywhere.
