Ask and you shall receive.
Platinum #420 - Paradise Killer
It's been a while since my Danganronpa 2 review, but would you believe this is yet another game set on a tropical island in which one or all of our friends may be murderers and it's up to us to solve the mystery by putting them on trial? I know I say I sometimes try to find a connection between the current game I'm reviewing and the last game I played, but this is a little too on the nose. Either way, let's breathe life back into this paradise. (That's something Lady Love Dies says.)
So, I don't know how to explain the plot of this game without you guys thinking I'm just making stuff up, so I'm going to need you to trust me here. Paradise Killer has you taking the role of Lady Love Dies, that lovely little lady in the platinum image (minus the whole Siamese twin thing -- I don't know why that exists). This whole story takes place on an island, which is the 24th iteration or sequence of that island. Basically, these islands exist until the gods or the people who live on them destroy them, and then they're forced to start over again. There's a lot going on here -- way too much to explain in this review or arguably the game -- but let's just say Lady Love Dies (we're going to call her LD for the rest of this review) made a grave mistake on the 13th island and was put into eternal exile. That eternity lasted about three million days. The only reason she's being called upon is because the 24th island is coming to an end and the entire council who is in charge of these islands was just murdered. LD is an investigator, so she's asked to find the guilty party, put them on trial, and execute them. Then I guess everybody else gets to move on to the next island -- "Perfect 25", as they call it, because they clearly haven't already fucked it up twenty-four other times.
If all of this sounds a little grandiose, I want you to triple that amount because it gets a lot more crazy once you meet the other characters on the island. Every NPC that you'll interact with has a name, an appearance, and a background story that screams for attention. For example, you have Crimson Acid, who is...I dunno, some kind of sex model with the head of a goat and sells secrets to the highest bidder? And Doctor Doom Jazz, who is definitely some kind of sex model, but also I think he's a real doctor? And then you have One Last Kiss, who is...wait, maybe that's a spoiler. Can you really spoil a story that doesn't make sense? Oh, and then you have Henry Division, who is the one everybody is accusing of killing the Council. He's the only one who is a citizen, I think. I'm pretty sure everybody else in the game is a demigod or something. I dunno because there's this one guy named Witness to the End, who is always talking about the gods and the coming rapture. It's hard to tell what's going on in the game because it sounds like the writers are just making it up as they go -- kinda like Square Enix.
But that, of course, is the charm of the game. It definitely...stands out. The developers' approach to this game was to make the characters and dialogue as flamboyant as possible. This will come across in one of two ways. If you're somebody who likes that kind of thing, you'll probably enjoy this world and its inhabitants. If you're not, I think this is going to rub you the wrong way. Just imagine Alice in Wonderland, but every character is the Mad Hatter. (Actually, I think just about everybody in that universe talks in riddles... Bad example.) I'm somebody who likes eccentric characters -- I mean, they're usually the best ones in any form of media -- but...I don't know about this one, guys. This story is a little too out there for my tastes. It doesn't help that voice acting is done in my least favorite way possible, which is where only bits and phrases are recorded and then occasionally played while a character is talking. This is done a lot with Japanese games. Usually, the VOs will only involve grunts or small snippets of dialogue -- just enough to give you a sense of tone in which the character is speaking. Here, you get almost complete sentences. This gets annoying when somebody like LD says, "It's time to breathe life back into paradise" for the eight millionth time. On the other hand, the music in this game is good enough that you won't want to put it on mute.
I'm not sure there's much more to say about the story. This game is essentially a visual novel, but you'll spend a good chunk of the time exploring the island and doing some light parkour, which you'll need to reach certain areas and obtain some collectibles. There are between forty and fifty billion collectibles in this game, and the way it's handled is simultaneously the greatest and worst thing I've ever seen. Once you get the appropriate upgrade, you can simply press a button on your controller to make all the collectibles appear on screen (not the mini-map, but the actual screen), and they show up as hearts that get bigger the closer they are. This makes finding them very easy. The PROBLEM is... well, there are three problems with this. First, they only stay visible for a few seconds. There's also an annoying delay between when you press the button and the icons actually appear. The second problem is the icons won't appear if you're too far away or if they're in a different zone, which is pretty rare, but it could happen when you get to the last few collectibles. Also, the third problem is the inventory system, which seems to track your collectibles in the order you pick them up. That's a really dumb way to do it. If you're looking for the all the vending machine cans you have, for example, you'll need to manually sort through every item in your inventory and try to identify the ones that look like a can. It's OK to make your game nonsensical, but don't do that with the UI.
Exploring the island is kinda fun. You eventually get a double jump and an air dash, which are not only necessary, but I'm pretty sure allowed me to sequence break parts of the game. You're going to kinda want to be Obi-Wan Kenobi and keep the high ground as much as possible here because it's obviously much easier to fall down than it is to climb up. You can use Blood Crystals, which are like the main collectible in the game, to fast travel, but I never did because they're limited and you also need them to buy certain items and secrets from Crimson Acid. I ended up with about 50 spare ones, so you're probably OK to fast travel a few times. It would definitely make the game go faster because some of the NPCs are rather far apart. (Especially that one chick who kept calling me a "nenorocito", which I'm pretty sure is an insult.)
That's honestly all there is to this game, outside of the end-game trial, which seems to be dependent on how much evidence you collected during your journey. You have as much time as you want, and there's actually a speedrun trophy for just skipping right to the trial with zero evidence on hand. Probably won't convince the Judge of anything, but I'm not entirely sure there is a "right" answer to this game. I got an ending of sorts, but I couldn't tell you whether any of my assumptions were right or not. I think the story is supposed to be what you make of it.
Um... yeah. This is a rare instance where I did zero research into the game and I've yet to read, watch, or listen to another review. This is probably the purest review I've ever written in that sense. I'm now going to read realm's review because we're usually on the same page and I'm curious how he ranked this game any higher than a 5 out of 10.
*commence me reading an entire book -- wow, this puts my Plague Tale 2 review to shame*
OK, I have no idea how he took notes during this game. The game's journal actually does a decent job at tracking things like the timeline, alibi breakers, and evidence you've gathered. This helps during the trial because it means you don't have to rely on your memory. He actually took the time to reason his way through each mystery (yeah, there's the one overarching mystery, but you're asked several questions during the trial that require you accusing someone each time). I simply picked whoever had the most evidence against them. That said, I bailed towards the end of the game because I was tired of running back and forth between NPCs. I still think I unlocked 90% of the dialogue because, unlike realm, I actually found One Last Kiss fairly early in my playthrough. The red skeleton was the one I struggled to find, and he's actually on the map. He's also the first one realm claimed to find, so we're clearly not playing games the same way.
Spoiler time. For realm and non-interested parties' eyes only:
I'm actually surprised realm rated this game as highly as I did, given he pointed out every negative thing I said AND several I did not (like how bad the platforming can be and how much of a letdown the ending was). I can't rate this game that highly because, I mean, I just got done playing back-to-back Danganronpa games. I have a Junko statue sitting on my desk. You won't see me shopping for Lady Love Dies merchandise. It wasn't a terrible game, but there's a reason I wasn't compelled to finish the story for a month. In short: good visuals, great music, solid character design, questionable writing, and mediocre gameplay. Can't recommend it.
Now, before you say, "Oh no, Cass, does that mean your streak of good games is at an end?", let me assure you it was never going to last. In fact, I've known for weeks it was over with my next platinum. I just thought it was going to be a different game than this one. Which game? You're about to find out.
May you never eat a bad burrito.
(This is when you say, "And may you reach the moon.")