Earlier on in this ranking, I called Process Of Elimination "Danganronpa At Home." Meanwhile, the ACTUAL people behind Danganronpa, Spike Chunsoft, had put out one of the best games I played this year. Ok, technically this was the first game I played after my last ranking series, since I got it on Christmas, but eh, details.
I already wrote an essay on how much I loved the original AI: The Somnium Files last year, and the sequel, Nirvana Initiative, is even better if I'm being honest. This game doesn't take long to get going either. You start the game at a quiz show, and after answering a couple questions, exactly 1/2 of a corpse (cut vertically!) drops down onto the quiz show floor and then a fire starts from it not long after. And then you're OFF.
Why did exactly half of a corpse (cut vertically) fall down from the rafters? Who is responsible for this? Well, your pair of detectives that you play as are out to find out exactly this. There are plenty of twists and turns, as you can expect from any game designed by that wonderful bastard Uchikoshi. I obviously can't talk about too much of the plot beyond the first 5/10 minutes because like, it's a murder mystery. Made by the same people behind Danganronpa AND the Zero Escape games. There's gonna be a shitload of surprises and I refuse to spoil them.
That said, there's a wide variety of gameplay elements on display here within the various Somniums. There's a little something for everyone. There's one that's literally a set of escape rooms. There's one that's a quiz show. There's a horror themed one where you can get jumpscared and get an instant game over if you don't react fast enough to the real-time clock. There's one that's just Pokemon. And if you beat the game, you get a bonus Somnium that is literally, L I T E R A L L Y, the opening stage to the first game in the Zero Escape trilogy, 999.
The last Somnium of this game, while I refuse to spoil what exactly happens, is something that's been living rent free in my brain for almost a full year now, I've watched it back on Youtube countless times. It's that one Wario meme. Yeah, you did the thing and figured out the mystery, but... at what cost? The first game in the duology had an extremely fun and satisfying ending, where you got to feel like a badass for taking the Big Bad down and everything is resolved by the end. This game is one that you might not feel the best about having completed, with one character in particular having my vote for the most tragic storyline in a game as someone who is still alive at the end. It's intensely bittersweet, even if it's a masterclass in storytelling.
As I've said a thousand times in this ranking already, this is another one I'm gonna have to highly recommend, though I'd suggest playing the original first.
