Oh no.

I was going to start this off by saying that I've personally dealt with a lot of the subject matter that was tackled in the game and that's why I think it's abysmal but I don't even think you need that to recognize how awfully mishandled pretty much everything is. The whole game feels like it's PSA video on bullying/suicide/parental abuse/whatever else they tried to shove in here that was specifically made for middle schoolers. It's so distilled and surface-level that it would've been insulting had it not been for the almost satirical performances and downright cringey writing. It's also a mess on the gameplay front. The environments are pretty to look at but what's there to interact with isn't interesting and the chase sequences are not only devoid of scares, they're incredibly unfun because they're based on trial and error more than anything else.

Kind of obsessed with how bad this was.

There's really no other way to put it. This game (and possibly franchise) is morally and creatively bankrupt. Between the shallow depictions of mental health whether there's dramatic zooms of the protagonist self harming or even going as far to have chapters end with you jumping off a building and the following interludes flash a suicide hotline message until the level loads or the awkward anime dub tier voice acting berate you with insults or commentary on your surroundings because Konami needs to remind you this is in a fact a serious game and they're afraid of leaving things to interpretation, I fail to see how the 2 hours I spent with this tech demo can leave me anticipation of the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake or "missing the point".

This whole experience ends up feeling like a parody of the thing it's trying to comment and I don't think that's the takeaway someone with diagnosed BPD should be feeling.

Most Danganronpa reviews on here are memey so I thought I’d jot down some legit thoughts I have on the game here. I haven’t been so hooked on a game to this degree in forever. Within the span of 4 days, I had completed the whole storyline, I just could not put it down, I was so engaged as to what would happen in the story next. This’ll overall be a spoiler free review except the excerpt I will mark as such so watch out for that.
Presentation
This game visually slaps. The almost eerie visual style of 2D characters combined with 3D environments contributes to the heavy atmosphere. Sprite quality is overall great as well, and although they aren’t animated, each character can be seen with a distinct personality and look from how their sprites are drawn. The almost Tim Burton-esque look to the Execution FMVs look amazing as well, I love how uncannily they are animated. Other elements, such as the UI, are flashy and unique, and you can’t forget the ever famous “NO, THAT’S WRONG” cut-in animation (well I guess “Sore Wa Chigau Yo” since I was playing the PSP translation). Also, the music is banging. Love the techno sound to it, and the variety of tracks on display. "Beautiful Death" is one of the most boppin' and atmospheric tracks I've heard in a video game in recent memory.
Characters
Overall solid cast here. Some characters such as Fuwaka I absolutely could not stand (I’m assuming intentionally so??), but I ended up enjoying most of the characters. Makoto is a very vanilla protagonist but seeing him grow throughout the journey was satisfying for me. I also liked the mysterious Kirigiri, the swimmer donut girl Asahina, the strong and honorable Sakura, and my bro (but also borderline con artist) Hagakure. Byakuya is also a pretty decent rival character throughout. Seeing the number of the 15 characters slowly dwindle, along with the fact you can potentially make strong bonds with these folks makes their losses go harder if that ever happens. My friend TonySADX mentioned that the more of the school you unlock, the more desolate the population becomes, and I can't stress enough how smart that subtle dynamic goes the further you dive into this large mystery.
Gameplay
Danganronpa is compared to Ace Attorney alot, and structurally they are very similar. But I’ll be damned if the trials in these games are WAY more stressful then any of the Ace Attorney ones. Time limits, complex mechanics, a ranking system, it makes these trials quite a havoc (NOW LAUGH). I played on the easiest difficulty because I’m a slow thinker, but I’d imagine that they are more rewarding on normal and above. I liked most of the minigames, but SCREW the comic books, I hate doing those so much.
CHAPTER 6 SPOILERS BELOW
Sorta mixed on the final villain. I’m not the biggest fan of bonkers antagonists, but this one has such a great sprite set showing their insanity and I love that. A bit anticlimactic that we only get to see them face to face at the latter half of the final trial, but they were a joy to see and eventually take down. One of the most satisfying final villain takedowns I’ve seen in these detective style visual novels. Also I think they have a really solid character design so that’s a plus.
SPOILERS END HERE
Final Thoughts
In summary, I really enjoyed this game. Kept me engaged the entire way throughout, and I’ve been informed that it only gets better from here. However, it’s definitely a very flawed game in some aspects, and I can COMPLETELY understand both the fan and hater sides of the spectrum, both are justified in my opinion. I’m already thoroughly impressed by this first attempt in the series, and I hope that I enjoy 2 and V3 just as much.

How funny it is that despite all my efforts to beat it sooner, I would complete Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on Friday the 13th, as my 4th completion for 2023. With the date being considered unlucky here in the West, and the number 4 being considered unlucky in the East.. It’s almost poetic that even the finale wasn’t safe from my misfortune.

To those who may not know, the majority of this game was played at my mother’s house, where I lived for about half of December due to a fault at my own home that left me without central heating. Simultaneously making for a pretty bad situation, that resulted in me being almost forced to play a game that I’d been really wanting to, but struggling to put on when at home. On the contrary, as I played out the finale late last night, beating the final boss and bringing this epic journey to an end, I received an urgent call from my brother… For those of you that know why they consider the number 4 to be unlucky in Japan, well.. It was a long time coming, we’re all okay, but it made for a pretty significant weight to be added as I paused the closing cinematic 5 minutes before the end, only finishing it hours later.

As you can imagine, these things alone have solidified that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 will forever live in my memory as a game of great conflict, but through it all I honestly find this to be appropriate. The highs are immense, in some parts even towering over those of its predecessor, but the lows are so, so low, that at times I genuinely considered skipping to the third entry, and even gave the game a placeholder score of 3/5

For the first 40 or so hours, I noted down some of my thoughts in order to remember them for this review, but by the time I’d gotten properly into the game, I sort of did away with this and just enjoyed it instead. Therefore, the following will be a series of my notes as I wrote them, and where necessary they’ll be responded to with my current thoughts to see what’s changed. All I’ll say upfront is that I love this game, but I also really fucking hate it lol. (for fun, I’ll put my bullet points in [ ] indicators so you can see what exactly I wrote down lol)

Please enjoy the rambles of a madman fighting with his heart as he falls victim to yet another flawed JRPG 🙂

The first thing I’d like to talk about is the world, more specifically the map. The world designs are pretty great, they’re all grand and diverse like in the first game, maybe even more so to be honest, but my god do they not want you to traverse it. The [map is dogshit]. The player icon on the minimap uses the pointy end to indicate the way you're facing, but the main map always has the pointy end at the bottom, so everytime I check to see which way I need to go I think I'm facing south. It's also really bad at indicating paths to higher/lower levels, honestly just awful to navigate in general. You’re given nothing but a waypoint and a compass but if the way there requires going through a building to the West or an underground cave or even up over a tree, good luck finding that without looking it up online :) This is significantly worse in 2 or 3 areas with most of them being bad but not completely awful, but when I cross a bridge and the compass says “go straight” and there are stairs directly in front of me, I don’t expect to have to go around the stairs to an unmarked path.

The second thing is interesting because I’ve done such a 180 on it. In my notes I wrote down [combat is a step down from the first game] - At the time I didn't understand it very well and was just pushing the prompts when they lit up, even saying that it “feels like I'm player 2 or something, I can't strategize at all bc I don't even know why I'm winning”-- This is partly on me, but I can’t forgive the game for doing such an abysmal job with the tutorials. It’ll teach you how to do something once, and then you may not even be able to set up the execution again for hours, and there’s no way to check how exactly the combat works. The closest thing to a reminder is a control scheme which doesn’t explain how to use the combat effectively. However, after looking up a tutorial online on how to use blade combos and chain attacks, the combat in XC2, for me, now surpasses that of the first. There’s a lot to it, but once you get your head around it you really can win just about any fight by tweaking your team a little, making grinding much less necessary than previously. It’s great fun, it’s flashy, I love it.

Another complete 180 I pulled: [Characters are great, not quite XC1 level] – I can only assume that at this point in the game I was spending 90% of my time lost, and 10% of my time watching the party talk about something I’d forgotten we were doing. By the end of the game I can safely say that I fucking love the cast of XC2. I loved XC1’s group as well, but 2’s party all feel a bit more genuine and memorable to me. I have fond memories of almost every member for their own reasons and they all shine and grow in different ways. Comparatively, when I think of XC1, I remember Shulk, Reyn and Sharla fondly, but everyone else is a blur. I think this is largely due to the Heart-to-Heart scenes not being locked behind ridiculous requirements. A much needed change that makes 2 feel a lot more like a journey with friends than a journey with a couple friends and then people that tag along. (That’s a bit harsh/extreme but you get my point lol)

One thing that I have surprisingly little to say about, is the story. The characters and the world
‘Got’ me so much that even though I followed and enjoyed the story a lot I can’t really find anything to say about it. It’s a story of people and existence, tackles some really big questions about why different species exist, what purpose they serve, and most importantly it’s about perspective. What happens when an open question can have wildly conflicting answers? How could you ever know who is doing the right thing? If you are doing the right thing… This game has such a strong optimism through Rex that all people have the potential to be good, and even those who are doing wrong are simply misguided, and idk it’s not exactly a new concept but it’s executed so well that the entire game is brimming with hope, and that’s pretty amazing.
(For consistency, my note said [story good so far] lol)

I’ll try to wrap it up because I’ve hit the major beats by now, the rest of my notes were petty nitpicks or things that annoyed me to great length at that one time lol. To quickfire a few positives I’d like to say that the Blade system is really cool and I love how many rare blades have their own designs and even characters/side quests – it’s just a shame how unlucky I got with pulling them, at least 10 legendary cores gave me common blades and about 20 rare ones did the same :(
Furthermore, Nia’s voice is my favourite, maybe ever. (In contrast, Rex’s outfit is literally the ugliest thing I’ve ever laid eyes upon). The side quests are still not really worth doing imo, and the only one I made a point of doing was for a Poppi upgrade which I really wanted.. Man this quest nearly broke me. I had to go to 3 areas that I’d never been to before and bc the map is so ass I needed to follow videos for them all, and run past level 86 enemies that killed me instantly. All so I could run up to a glowing spot, press A to pick up a stick, fast travel back and do it again… What a boring fucking quest to do something so important. Sending mercs on a 30 minute mission and going to pick up dirt while I wait for them to get back. That quest took me like 2 hours and I fought 1 enemy during it, I was so pissed lol.
One final gripe, the characters and blades all talk soooo much during combat, and normally this doesn’t bother me at all (especially when Nia😌) but at some points a boss will speak to you about plot stuff during combat and you can’t fkn hear them over your party going “We can get them if we fight as one!” and shit lmao

Alright, I’m done. If you can’t tell by now, my relationship with this game has been hot and cold, but I can confidently say that I am truly grateful I stuck with it and in spite of it all will retain the good a lot stronger than the bad. Sure some of it is a huge slog, and it doesn’t explain anything very well, you will probably need youtube guides just to find where you’re going. But once you get there? Man. This game is fantastic.
It has a reputation of being horny and silly, and it definitely is at times, but there is so much more to it than that it’s almost a shame that it’s reputation almost encourages people to skip it. If you liked XC1, or even if you’ve played XC3 already, please give XC2 a chance.

This has run on far, far too long at this point but, well you knew what you were getting into lol.
Thanks for sticking it out this far guys, I hope you’re all having a great January. You’ll be glad to know my next JRPG completion won’t be for a good while, so only shorter reviews until then :p

Until next time :)