Hey, we’ve got some mystery game news to discuss this month, which fits nicely with our theme!
Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, which came out last year for the Switch, has now been announced for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC as Master Detective Archives: Rain Code+.
According to Gematsu, the additional features are 4K resolution, a gallery, and the short episodes that were originally released as DLC.
I never ended up getting the Rain Code DLC, and this isn’t enough to compel me to buy it again. I enjoyed Rain Code, but it has some definite lows despite my overall impression being positive (largely saved by the final two cases).
What I want is a Rain Code sequel that expands on its strengths and fixes its flaws. The premise has so much potential, and I want to see more done with it!
Now, in a perplexing move, Spike Chunsoft confirmed on Steam that the game will launch with only Japanese and Chinese support, while English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish will be patched in on October 1. Since it doesn’t appear that there’s new story content and the game already has an English translation, I don’t understand why it’s not launching with English.
Master Detective Archives: Rain Code+ will be out on July 18 in Japan. I don’t think I’ll be picking it up unless they announce substantial new content after all, but what about you?
The newest game from the creator of Danganronpa, Rain Code follows a detective named Yuma who travels to a mysterious isolated city where it always rains after making a pact with a death god.
This pact caused him to lose his memories but gain the powers of Shinigami, the death god, who can materialize the aspects of a mystery into a Mystery Labyrinth. By exploring a Mystery Labyrinth and overcoming obstacles with evidence, you can reach the truth of the case.
Some people refer to Rain Code as a visual novel, but I’d say that’s stretching the definition a fair bit. For one thing, Rain Code features full 3D exploration as you walk around the city and investigate the crime scenes.
In between cases, each chapter has a handful of side quests you can take on. These are fairly basic and only require you to talk to people, but their stories are interesting enough that I found them to be an enjoyable diversion from the main plot. (Although I expected some of them to have follow-up quests due to their endings, only for that to never happen.)
You can also find collectibles around the city that allow you to view conversations with the other major characters. These are basically bonding events like in Danganronpa, except instead of seeking a character out to talk to them, you instead find these collectibles to “remember” conversations that are supposed to have happened off-screen. I enjoyed this way of handling it, and the conversations were pretty entertaining.
As for the main story, each chapter features a major mystery for you to investigate. Once you’ve gathered all the clues, the story reaches a point where you enter the Mystery Labyrinth to find the answer.
The idea of a materialized mystery with elements of the case given a physical form to explore is pretty interesting and made me think of Persona 5’s Palaces or Psychonauts’s mental worlds. In practice, however, Mystery Labyrinths are just Danganronpa trials with more running. You’ll be confronted by Mystery Phantoms, representations of people trying to conceal the truth of the case, who will throw statements at you that you have to dodge before attacking a contradictory statement with the correct Solution Key. At other times, you’ll need to answer a question by choosing the correct path to take, or spell out the solution to the current problem. And sometimes you literally just run forward while discussing the mystery.
But despite how much I’ve complained about Danganronpa’s mini-games, they didn’t bother me here. While they have a lot of similarities, it never felt like the action part took precedence over the logic part.
Unfortunately, Mystery Labyrinths can be pretty boring. For me, this comes down to two things. First, you aren’t interacting with the actual people involved in the case. Mystery Phantoms only exist to argue until you present the correct evidence, so it’s a lot less debating a case with other characters like in Danganronpa or Ace Attorney, and more answering questions until you reach the solution.
Click for Rain Code spoilers
And since the most interesting cases in the game are Chapters 4 and 5, in which you do argue with real people instead of just representations, I think that points toward just how much of a difference it makes (even if both chapters have significant strengths beyond just that).
Second, this also means you only rarely learn new information in a Mystery Labyrinth. For the most part, you have all the facts of the case from the moment the Mystery Labyrinth begins, which makes it much easier to figure out the case ahead of time and then need to sit through half a dozen other questions before you can finally reach the part you guessed ages ago. Some of the cases are painfully boring as a result.
However, the final sections of the story make up for it with much stronger emotional highs, important plot revelations, and exciting confrontations. I went from tearing my hair out at how tedious Chapter 3 was to being completely hooked and unable to put the game down for the remaining chapters.
The overall story ends up being pretty interesting, and the game has a pretty likeable main cast. Even characters who felt annoying at the start grew on me over time, and I found myself especially attached to Shinigami (despite her irreverent attitude toward everything, being a death god and all).
I would love to see a sequel to this game, but I hope a hypothetical Rain Code sequel will address its flaws to make the mystery-solving more interesting and engaging. Four DLC episodes are planned, but since the first is reportedly quite short, I’m waiting on reactions to the others before I decide if I want to buy them or not.
So if you’ve had your eye on Master Detective Archive: Rain Code, just know that while it might have some tedious parts to trudge through, the later parts of the game make it worth seeing it through to the end.
As I predicted, we’re talking a break from our romance celebration today because the Nintendo Direct on Wednesday was too exciting not to cover!
I won’t go over every game that was shown, but you can watch the entire Nintendo Direct here.
I went into the Nintendo Direct hoping for at least one of three things: the rumored Ghost Trick remaster, the rumored Baten Kaitos remaster, or Ace Attorney news.
Well, there hasn’t been Ace Attorney news yet, but otherwise the Nintendo Direct delivered more than I ever expected.
The first thing to catch my attention was the announcement of a February 15 release date for the third piece of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 DLC, along with a teaser for the story expansion that I tried not to pay too much attention to since I haven’t finished the game yet.
Then it happened: Ghost Trick.
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is back! Capcom later released a full trailer confirming that Ghost Trick will be remastered for Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC (Steam) this summer. While largely the same as the original, this remaster includes a few bonuses (like sliding block puzzles for some reason).
If you’re unfamiliar with Ghost Trick, it’s a puzzle game from Shu Takumi, the creator of Ace Attorney. You play a ghost able to manipulate objects in the environment as well as rewind time to shortly before a person’s death, which you do while in search of answers about your own death.
It’s an incredible game and one of my favorites. Now that it’s coming to modern platforms, you definitely should play it.
(I was hoping to order a physical copy, but after mistakenly saying it would be available physically, Capcom corrected themselves and said it will be digital-only. Although I’m disappointed about that, I’m still getting it, of course.)
That was it, the Nintendo Direct was already won for me. I was so excited over Ghost Trick, I nearly missed the game shown directly after it, DecaPolice.
DecaPolice is an upcoming detective game, and it appears to be a combination of an investigation game and an RPG. Once I calmed down enough from the Ghost Trick news to pay attention, I realized it actually looks pretty cool.
What really surprised me was seeing the develop of DecaPolice. I actually missed it in the trailer (Ghost Trick hype), but then I saw people talking about it being a Level-5 game.
I’d more or less given up on Level-5 after their new content over the past few years consisted of unlocalized Yo-Kai Watch games, an unlocalized Megaton Musashi game, a couple mobile games, and an ever-lengthening list of delays for Inazuma Eleven. Things didn’t look good, especially with the reports that their North American offices had shut down.
So to see a new Level-5 game in the Nintendo Direct? That was quite a welcome surprise!
A few other interesting-looking games followed, including a narrative adventure game called Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, which I didn’t realize was from Don’t Nod until I wrote this post (and when did they change their name from Dontnod?), Octopath Traveler II and Sea of Stars, both of which look appealing to me as a classic turn-based JRPG fan, and a full-scale remaster of the first Metroid Prime game, which has me trying to decide if it’s worth playing over the Wii U version I already have.
The Direct included another trailer for Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, as well, which I’ve had preordered for a while now.
And then the trailer was shown for the Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster. That’s right, it’s real and it’s a collection of both Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean and Baten Kaitos Origins! I had a great time with the first Baten Kaitos, although I haven’t played Origins yet. I’m so happy to see these often-overlooked JRPGs return!
Sadly, the Baten Kaitos remasters have been confirmed to have Japanese voice acting only. While this might be a good thing for the first game and its rather terrible English dub, I’ve been told the English voice acting in Origins was much better. Still, I’ll take no dub if it means a Baten Kaitos revival!
And then they immediately followed that with the headline “A New Fantasy Life Awaits,” and I spent half a second thinking, “No, they can’t possibly mean that Fantasy Life” before the trailer made it abundantly clear that yes, it’s that Fantasy Life!
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is a sequel to the 2012 (2014 worldwide) JRPG life sim from Level-5. While it technically received a sequel before, Fantasy Life 2 was a short-lived mobile game that was shut down after a couple of years. Now this new game looks to be a full sequel worthy of the name and incorporates time travel into the gameplay.
Fantasy Life was a lot of fun, so I’m happy to see it get a true sequel at last (and disappointed at the number of online reactions I’ve seen where people see the title and dismiss it as just another farming game; you don’t even farm in Fantasy Life!) and hope it lives up to the original.
And then they followed that up a short teaser trailer that made me freak out the second I saw a top hat wearing silhouette… Professor Layton is BACK!
Professor Layton and the New World of Steam is a new entry in the series, and you know, despite my mixed feelings about the last game in the series, my excitement at seeing a new Professor Layton game announced was on the same level as if it was Ace Attorney.
(Maybe even more, since I’m not among the doomsayers who believe Ace Attorney is dead, but I did believe the Professor Layton series was probably dead outside of my faint hopes for a Layton Brothers remaster/sequel because of the manga.)
So yes, I’m thrilled beyond belief that Professor Layton is back… but since the announcement, my excitement has been tempered with caution.
A lot of fans seem to think that because this game stars Professor Layton himself (and Luke, as revealed by the official website), it will be a return to form. But I’m not so sure. Layton Mystery Journey’s problem was not the protagonist. Katrielle would have been fine if she had a better game around her. The low-stakes writing, lack of story, and weak puzzle direction were the game’s actual problems and won’t necessarily be fixed just because Hershel is back in the protagonist’s role.
But you know what? I want to believe. I want to believe they saw the mixed reception and sat down to write a solid Professor Layton story again. I want to believe they brought in a good puzzle designer to make this game’s lineup of brainteasers. I love this series so much that I want to believe in it again, with as much excitement as I felt when Layton’s Mystery Journey itself was first teased.
The Nintendo Direct continued after that and closed with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but I don’t care about that nearly as much as the other games here.
Ghost Trick and Baten Kaitos remasters, Fantasy Life and Professor Layton sequels… I can hardly believe all of these things happened in the same Nintendo Direct. (Also, is it just me, or did this Nintendo Direct have an unusually large number of mystery/investigation games?) It was an incredible Direct, and 2023 is shaping up to be an amazing year of games.
What did you think of the games shown in the Nintendo Direct?
Hey, we’ve got some mystery game news to discuss this month, which fits nicely with our theme!
