Very conflicted on certain aspects on this game, I overall enjoy the game, just I think it has some of Kodaka's best and worst aspects on display.

This will be light on spoilers as possible but still, warning In case you care for plot points and characters being named.

To start with positives:
I really like the overarching mystery of the game, the "Secret of Kanai Ward" is another grand twist he loves doing with any game he makes, and I think aside from V3, this is the most it's ever landed well for me.
The major antagonist of this game is my favourite he's written, Kodaka has perfected a certain genre of character, and this was another great execution.
The supporting cast is generally quite fun, a lot of the main detective group grew on me throughout the game and I am looking forward to most of their DLC episodes to spend more time with them. Viva and Hallara are particularly my standouts.
Cases 2 and 4 are particularly strongly written murder mystery cases, how their crimes was thought out and executed was really impressive thought out.
Yuma and Shinigami are a fun duo to follow, I like their chemistry and how they interact through most the game.
The art direction and world design is really inspired, the neo-noir aesthetics are wonderfully executed. Rui Komatsuzaki did really great with their signature style of art and how its adapted to 3D is generally quite good.
The great soundtrack by Masafumi Takada. The music in this game goes for a different vibe from Danganronpa and it's full of bangers.
This game has a lot of neat references to other murder mysteries and feels like a love letter to shin honkaku murder mystery, some are more subtle than others but I can tell this was a product of love for the genre.
The English voice acting is consistently excellent, I don't have any performance that never feels like they're not trying.

For my negatives:
The mystery labyrinth feels fundamentally flawed from a narrative and gameplay standpoint. A lot of ideas and mechanics get added to be dropped or never mentioned again, the most annoying being found in the prologue, but that'd be delving into spoilers for that case. The rules to the labyrinth aren't very consistent and feels "Random for the sake of it".
A lot of gameplay segments aren't as fun as most of the mini games from Danganronpa. The most fun is the Argument Death battle and those are just Nonstop Debates with a lot less going on mechanically and logically. This game felt generally easier than every Danganronpa game in terms of mystery solving and playing. Failing never feels like it's a actual tangible possibility. Also for the love of god Kodaka please let go of "Hang Man Gambit" brother that just isn't ever going to be fun.
The side stories are mostly bad, when I saw they had a different writer for them, it made a lot of sense. They are really shallow at the best of times and actively irritating at worst. Ideas will just be introduced to never be brought up again and it feels like "We have Yakuza Substories at home". There are 3 I do enjoy but that’s 1/4 of them being good.
Case 3 is a low point in terms of the game because it feels like half assed filler, nothing introduced in the case ever really becomes important and the mystery itself falls apart as soon as one detail is introduced. It's the only case I'd consider "bad".
I hate Desuko, Desuko is the worst genre of guy Kodaka keeps insisting on writing. The creepy, pervy, wants to shag all women type who is just gross. It doesn't help he is not just implied to be, but is just a pedo. Please stop writing this kind of character Kodaka.
This game has technical errors constantly, thankfully nothing game breaking, but for a game designed for only one console it doesn't feel optimised for it. Pop in is a constant issue with the environment, audio has weird leaps in being louder than was probably intended, anytime the camera would switch perspective it would cut everything to black for a brief moment. It's nothing that is detrimental but can feel really cheap.

This is a good game, I enjoy it for what It is, but it's not close to the best Kodaka can do as a writer. DR2 and V3 are still much better experiences in my opinion, but I hope he sticks with this world and characters. He has something special and I pray he does more with it.

This review is purely based on the game itself, the incident this game is widely known for is not relevant to any discussion of my opinions on this game.

I should also preface I am not somebody who, to my own knowledge, experiences depression. If this game is accurate to the lived experience of others is not my place to comment. I can only speak for my feelings and experiences. With two prefaces out the way, I feel comfortable saying this game really polarises me.

There are moments where I stared at the screen in silence realising other people in my life or I myself have done some of the behaviour shown in this game, and that mirror reflecting back at me chilled me a lot. Knowing that it is a experience that isn't just isolated to just me and the people I know felt almost revealing in a way. Knowing that other people are out there to share in experiences as sad as these is a reason for art to exist, to share in emotion and experiences that are uniquely human.

That being said, for every moment I felt like my own life experience was seen, a lot of others felt very ham-fisted, there was a lot of moments I thought could have been handled better, and the major issue I have is the game part of this game.

This having multiple endings, there being a "True" ending, feels wrong. No matter what, I feel the experience is cheapened knowing there is a "right way" to be playing it. You can ignore this fact and only play it once, the experience you got, and I think if I did that I would of been more positive towards the game However, knowing that there is other, better endings, it becomes a active effort to ignore that information when privy to it. It was my fault I went through the effort of getting these endings to see how they're handled.

I am not a fan at all with how the "correct" options to get to some of these endings feel really wrong. Lying to please people being one that stuck out as really strange to me. It feels like what you yourself might view as healthier or more productive choices aren't the ones the game thinks are correct, and that just doesn't sit right with me. But this is heavily subjective, you might think all the choices made to reaching this "True" ending are sound and entirely logical. I will still have issue with the fact it exists at all.

While this game will stick with me really personally in regards to moments that struck at my core and made me consider myself and others more, I can't say it was a flawless execution.

I'm happy this game exists for those it helped, and if it helped you, that is a testament to the power of games and art.

This is one of the most accidentally funniest games I've ever played, I got in a call with a group of friends, played through it and had the time of our lives. This is garbage, but I cannot forget how much fun it was watching how insane this was. God has graced you with the ability to pepper spray people at complete random, you better use it.

The only reason I know it exists is because of a artical reviewing ace attorney compared it to this, which is one of the strangest comparisons potentally ever made.

It's cute if a little basic. The puzzles are fine, nothing amazingly interesting but it's serviceable. A lot of its charm comes from it's character writing, for as little time we get to spend with these characters they are quite endearing. I can see these characters being used in a D&D setting and being fun to interact with. The art for the characters are really well done and have a lot of personality. Also, consistently quite funny, the more subtle than usual reference to Ace Attorney didn't pass by me.

It was cute, I enjoyed it and would hope the developer the best in future endevours.

This game has so much potential and it was so engaging for most of its run. It's setup is really interesting, it forces you to keep your own notes and make your own deductions and the presentation, while minimal, is effective. I have to commend how much work this is for a game made in such a short span of time, this was clearly a passion project and I will be checking out their other games in future.

Now, with that said, the ending and the solution to the crime is bad. This is not a game that you can logically intuit most of what you need to come to a complete deduction. You have to make WILD assumptions and leaps in logic to get to the solution, with so many details just not being properly hinted at in some ways. Some of the evidence is poorly explained, through the (admittedly pretty good) prose of the author, some details about what the evidence is gets lost and left feeling incomplete as a result.

I managed to get far with my deduction, I played on the puritan difficulty because I had faith in the game to be solvable with everything present. Half of my deduction was correct with the other half being pure guesswork. I had to abuse the intuition mechanic near the end of the game to even get the ending, because I had solved all but 1 persons fate, and that final person was so asinine in the way the game wants you to describe their death, it was awful.

The deduction screen lets the game down awfully, because motives can be so broad or vague in what they mean that you might think you know what its going for but need a different motive that fits it slightly better. It's not intuative and just fumbles greatly.

The ending deduction is one of the worst I've seen due to how much information you just aren't able to know from the evidence given to you, this is not a deduction that can be made with such certainty yet it feels like its telling you "Yeah this is obviously how all the evidence lines up", The relationships between characters are practically impossible to guess beyond a point but the final deduction expects you to know their personal histories to a absurd degree to just guess. The final speech felt unearned, the idea is there, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
This game really let me down in the end, and this is a open apology to my girlfriend who I had play through the game with me, I am so sorry we spent so much time on this game for a solution that bad.
This debt is one I must carry now. Damn you The Crimson Debt.

It's just okay. The puzzles in concept are really fun but in execution, they can be tedious and really repetitive. This might easily be a me issue, but lag often caused deaths to be unfair as characters fraked out and started doing actions we didn't want to happen, but mileage may vary on that front.

A lot of gimmicks are cool but quickly ware out their welcome, the dog platforms being one of the worst for me. Things can feel too slow and for a puzzle game where you need to figure things out and experiment, that slowness can drag.

The story is also just nothing really, the choices the game have you make are interesting from the perspective that each party only sees one half of the events and you have to try and find which one you'd prefer to pick, but the actual overall narrative is just nothing special. The ending just kind of happened, multiple twists happen all at once that have no real gravity to them because they're not really well executed and it feels like it's trying harder to be deep than actually bothering to have depth. I didn't care enough to get the secret ending I just looked it up and god if I played through this 2 more times to get THAT, this review would be lower.

For as harsh as I'm being it's not awful, some of its puzzles are fun, its art style is really wonderful between the two perspectives and for the multiplayer focus it has it does a good job creating interesting collaboration scenarios even if they don't all land well.

What happened during that boring winter without snow? I might just forget it.

This is good, isn’t it?

This is a complicated game with complicated feelings, this is a game that has consistently some of the most needlessly convoluted and outright bad writing in the series. This is some of the lowest lows the series ever has.

But the amount of tears shed, the amount I think about this game and how much I adore the ending. Your enjoyment of this really rides on how much you let its emotions wash over you and I am nothing if not sentimental.

This is not flawless, this is flawed as all hell. I would prefer this game to remain like this forever, in its unfiltered, unchanged state, for the future to witness.

The scariest part of the game is the files refused to get deleted from my download folder so I had to reset my PC.

It's whatever, art is exceptionally good for the endings and titlescreen but as a game it's nothing much. It's kinda the most "RPG Maker/Covid Allegory" thing ever.

The line "748934234347 million people have the died due to the virus" was far funnier than it had any right to be.

The case name goes far harder than the actual game itself.

For a game that's only 20 minuets or less it was just kinda a waste of time, it's not particuraly well made even for a itch game, there's no real mystery solving, the characters are boring at best and reads like somebody trying really hard to be funny.

The art is pretty good though. It's not offensively terrible, I feel bad being harsh to a free game on Itch, which is why I hope the creator of the game the best in future projects, and their other game, Coerced Cage, looks like a far more serious attempt than something made probably quickly for a game jam. Might check it out in future.