Master Detective Archives: Rain Code is the latest game from the creative team behind Danganronpa, and is an excellent iteration on that franchise. You might be a bit wary, Danganronpa 1 had some great ideas and heart, but 2 and especially 3 went a bit zany with plot devices and almost insulting fourth wall breaking meta bullshit. However, let me assure you, Rain Code does none of that. A new franchise allows the team to go back to the basics, and the result is quite the solid VN. Danganronpa mixed trials with a killing game setup, but Rain Code is entirely a detective story, complete with meticulous adherence to detective story conventions rarely seen in the west these days, and as a result the product feels both like a love letter to detective stories of both East and West and also quite a good example of one itself. That said, it is still the DR writer, so you will be trolled just a little. You cannot escape THAT. But at least the... less savory parts of the DR fanbase appear to have skipped this one.
In Rain Code, you play as Yuma Kokohead, a shota whose unfortunate name is the least of his problems. He begins the game with no memories and finds himself tagging along with a secret operation launched by the World Detective Organization to solve a great mystery that goes to the heart of a rain-soaked, isolated city called Kanai Ward, currently under the thumb of a mysterious corporation's militant wing, a group of particularly evil looking Peacekeepers. This premise is utterly stupid, and at no point in the course of the story does Rain Code ever for a second let up on the stupidity, not for a second. Like all good detectives, Yuma has a trusty assistant: Shinigami-chan, a very cute, literal shinigami with a big smile, and a pair of even bigger... pigtails. And also boobies. Yes, a Japanese death god is helping him. See, when Yuma encounters a murder mystery, after collecting as much evidence as he can find, he enters something called a Mystery Labyrinth. Hardly a labyrinth, as all the exploration of it is totally linear, it is more of a fanciful way of portraying the slickly produced action arguments you had in Danganronpa. However, it is not a simple reskin. The labyrinth is a total plot device, symbolizing the mystery Yuma is trying to solve. Yuma has found all the evidence he will ever find before entering the labyrinth, and the entire labyrinth segment represents his deductions and arranging the evidence to build up to his inevitable summation of the crime. To slow this, shadows of the people involved with the case sometimes show up to yell at him, but because it is a MYSTERY labyrinth, it plays perfectly fair. The corrupt cop covering up the crime shows up to only argue purely from evidence and logic rather than lying, "What, you think Professor Plum did it? Idiot detective. It had to be Colonel Mustard! Mustard had no alibi! Mustard knew how to open the secret passage! Mustard could have reached the murder weapon!" so your angry Danganronpa debates where you shoot text down to fire evidence are instead swordfights against shadow versions of people involved with the crime, but your weapon is simply the precise evidence to refute one of those statements. Everything just goes back to Yuma meticulously calculating where the evidence leads. In that sense, it is perfectly fair murder mystery story, which is a rarity these days. Most games of this sort hide evidence until the climax or have no real mystery at all, simply are stories about detectives going on adventures. Even more impressive, the game manages to be "perfectly fair" in giving the viewer all the evidence beforehand, but still manages to be seldom obvious about where it is going, with the exception of one case that probably a bit too trivial. Shinigami-chan plays Yuma's girl Friday for these excursions, using her outlandish personality and sense of style to present the various minigames, often by abusing Yuma in some manner. But despite despite the awful circumstances he finds himself in, Yuma grows to very quickly handle Shinigami-chan's excesses with his own style, which gives the relationship between the two the proper grounding of detective and assistant, and the way the two grow together over the course of the game is one of the many good subplots on offer.
The central goal of the story involves solving a mystery that goes to the very heart of Kanai Ward. As a result, the whole city has to be a character in the story, and Rain Code absolutely blew the budget on this. Between cases, there is an immensely detailed city to explore that absolutely looks like a cross between Blade Runner and Tim Burton's Batman. Neon cyberpunk streets soaked in rain while imposing brick structures with gothic gargoyles and countless metal pipes tower above you. I cannot put into words how beautiful this city is. Every zone I crossed I wanted to take a screenshot of something. It is rather a shame the side quests are so unimpressive because any excuse to just run through this city is worth it. If you play this on Yuzu, I highly recommend seeking a resolution patch just to enjoy the scenery a bit more. The sheer amount of money and talent that went into crafting this mostly superfluous city amazes me, and the budget never seems to run out. Danganronpa must have sold enough for the author to get a blank check, and he really delivers on that.
But what does a mystery that goes to a heart of a whole city ACTUALLY look like? I cannot spoil that for you, but I can only say: The game really does deliver at that. As the finale approaches, the utterly stupid premise will double down, triple down, and just keep blowing past that, ramping up to some incredibly dumb shit all with the goofiest, most charming grin on its face, and the payoff is exquisite. The entire product is easily better than ANYTHING the Danganronpa franchise gave us and is one of my favorite finales in recent memory to the point where I would ALMOST compare it to the exquisite Ghost Trick. It is not QUITE at that level, but man is it close. The author's love of detective stories shines through here. The careful dance between detective and mastermind, the detective's loyalty to the truth, all themes perfectly woven into the story blossoming naturally from setups from the very start of the game. Rain Code is one of my favorite VNs in recent memory and I recommend it to anyone who enjoyed, or perhaps was even slightly disappointed by Danganronpa. Rain Code exceeds it in every measure.
As an aside, the DLC is mostly short skits for each character. I only recommend engaging with it after you beat the game. Also, one of your teammates you meet fairly early on, the writer thought this character would be cooler and more mysterious if this character's sex was ALSO a mystery, but even the translation goes to heroic efforts to avoid using singular 'they' so I do not think anything untoward was meant by this.