LogFAQs > #951864968

And that is sort of my issue with the case. It is a series of clues that are obnoxiously obvious and dont even give a believable red herring it could be. Hiro is ruled out almost as soon as you see him in the suit, and the game doesnt even pretend to offer up anyone else for consideration. I had a general sense of what happened as soon as we found Takas body and knew exactly what happened once we had the glasses cleaning cloth. The trial felt largely perfunctory because I was immediately ready for the next case while everyone else is so dumb they cant figure out what is wrong with Hiros robot costume. And because of that, things drag. Imagine youre in a situation where you know the solution to something and youre waiting for everyone else to catch up, because that is essentially what is going on in this case. Like you finish some complex multi-step math problem and you look up and the teacher is trying to explain to the rest of the class how two plus two equals four. Thats sort of what a case like this is like when you know the ending and all the twists because of how obvious they are, but youre forced to walk through the case step by step with a cast of characters intentionally written to seem dumb.

I mentioned Kyoko getting in the way of the game a lot because of how the authors need to write her character, and I think this case is the clearest example of what happens when you insert someone who is supposed to be smarter than everyone else into a cast like this. Kyoko is literally just spelling things out this case while everyone else is drinking paint in the corner of the room. The only possible interesting twist in this entire case that I could theoretically see people not having figured out immediately was that Hifumi was not dead until he reached the second room. I think the glasses cleaning case makes this obvious, and I at least knew as soon as I saw that evidence what happened, but Im willing to give people some leeway here if they hadnt pieced it together by that point. But in the trial, this is solved not by you presenting evidence or catching someone in a mistake, but by Kyoko literally saying hey what if Hifumi WASNT dead at the start and cue dramatic music. She leads almost the entire trial, along with some help from Byakuya, and the trial winds up being this really bad combination of wading through stuff you figured out two hours ago and not even having the satisfaction of presenting the evidence yourself because Kyoko is jumping up and down to spoil everything as quickly as possible.

Oh, and I mentioned this as a clue like three weeks ago now so Im sure no one remembers, but this is absolutely the execution that hit me with the least impact in either game, primarily because of how confused I was by what was going on. She was going to be burned at the stake, which is a punishment I have always associated with witches and I never really got a witch vibe from her. Maybe the whole gothic thing was meant to associate with witches, but she had just talked about vampires like a minute ago so I wasnt making the connection. But thena bus just drives into her? Leon is killed with a pitching machine, Mondo in one of those daredevil motorcycle cages, and each one fits their ultimate ability. Then we get to the ultimate gambler and she getsplowed by a bus? It doesnt seem to fit at all, and when I was playing I had no clue what the hell was going on. I just sort of stared at the final screen blinking like what the hell did I just watch? I looked it up after playing the game (or maybe someone in topic explained it to me?) and the reasoning was Celeste was all about being unique and glamorous, and being killed by a traffic accident would suck for her because it was a very boring, routine way to die. So she wouldve preferred the burning at the stake but then Monokuma switched it up to a more common execution to cause despair. Which..fine? I guess. It makes more sense that way, but it definitely wasnt something I was thinking of and, looking across both games, I think this is the only punishment that seems completely independent of the ultimate ability of the punish-ee. Even with the context, Im still pretty unimpressed by it and it is definitely my least favorite execution in either game, and there is really only one other that is even in the same ballpark of bad.

Even with all my complaints though, I still slot this one just above that bottom tier of cases because I didnt completely hate it. I dont mind the underlying scheme here, and two people winding up dead was definitely unexpected. I think this is one of those cases where maybe they had the idea (someone kills someone else, then gets killed themself) first, and tried to work backwards from there. Like, that is an interesting idea for a case but they botched the execution of it by making things way too obvious from the start. And there were certainly some moments I liked. The photograph reveal was hilarious and I did chuckle a good amount at Hiro trying to figure out what the hell was going on while he was very incompetently defending himself. This is also the last free time where youre really working with a nice big cast, too, so the prelude to the murder isnt the absolute worst (even if I did hate the weird computer-virgin-SS Taka fusion love triangle thing). It still had that very good tension of oh a lot of these people are still going to die which I did appreciate.

And, finally, I did enjoy Celestes turn at the end. A lot of the voice acting in this game is definitely a tier down compared to the second game, but Celestes voice actor really did a great job with the reveal and subsequent tone change. I do appreciate the whole ok she has been kind of hiding this side of herself the entire game thing she had going on, especially because that is what someone like Byakuya shouldve been doing if there plan was to escape. She makes a good sort of secondary villain in the game. Someone who isnt killing out of desperation or reaction but just because she wants to leave and everyone else is disposable. She really saves the end of the case for me, just a bit, and it was nice to see her go down at the very end. It just took way to long to get there. For me, almost the entire trial from the start until Celestes breakdown is completely skippable with absolutely nothing of interest happening, and most of the investigation stuff is also just kind of whatever. Like I said at the start of this write up, this is a boring chapter and just like 1-5, this one kind of just feels like filler. It is a shame that this is the way Celeste winds up going out, because she deserved better than this. We all deserved better than this, really, and the shortcomings of 1-3 sort of signaled the downfall of the first game for me from excellent to just good.

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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."