My Darumi theory is, there is a distinctive and intentional decision from the writers to make a Danganronpa character, but likable.
This is to say I really appreciate characters like Junko or Miu, but it's actually nice that someone has their energy don't also genuinely terrify me.
Sorry I kinda don't care about Hiruko. Her only strength was in extra info, which she made a theatrical show on withholding on; and as an ingame combater she's Z tier.
Which I'm sure is the real decoy in this game's 5D chess but still. The game play is basically screaming this is the one character made to be sacrificed early.
The real power fantasy is playing as someone who has an innate circadian rhythm. I'm sure Takimi isn't time blind either. Bastard.
I'm also super impressed how he's a teenager and maintained that neat bedroom for three weeks. Even accounting he owns nothing, I'd still struggle to do the same.
In a rare moment of (?unscripted) ludonarrative concordance, I made Takumi blow himself up during the exploration, and then he was abandoned in a building to die lol.
Whoops sorry.
Ok, not that sorry.
Something I just noticed, beneath each character in the report cards page, there seems to be a unique trait in Kanji. Of course I don't read Kanji, so there's another layer of vagueness and do not trust any of my translation. It's also flash and the words get blocked by the character art, so I'm guessing a lot of it, so also do not trust any of my transcription.
Takumi: 敗失 (Failure and loss)
Takemaru: 走爆 (Explosive)
Hiruko: 殺虐 (Killing by torture)
Darumi: 法魔 (Occultist)
Eito: 運幸 (Fortune)
Tsubasa: 車造改 (Vehicle modification)
Gaku: 事家 (Domestic/odd jobs)
Ima: 力能超 (Superpower)
Kako: 秘神 (Mystic deity)
Shouma: 盾 (Shield)
Nozomi: 護看 (Nurse and observator)
Kurara: 作工魔 (Construction demon)
Kyoshika: 道士武 (...Combat Taoist?)
Yugamu: 驗実体人 (Physical experiencer)
Moko: 魂闘 (Spirit fighter)
Eva: ☒☒☒（☒☒☒）
Mad props for not being subtle about unwinnable scripted losing fights.
I'm also loving the existence of Second To Last Defence Academy.
Thankfully that's over. Hope I'll never have to interact with Shouma ever again. I'm mostly bitter about losing 4 days where I couldn't do any scavenging or stats building because someone else is doing something else completely unrelated to what I can do with my time.
Darumi gets it.
This Confusion Commander fight is in-fucking-furiating.
Darumi is right, kill your confused team, they will revive the next wave, as if this isn't the shit you've been telling your team to blow themselves up for the past 44 days
Takumi is fired as team leader
Ok I kinda hate this specific battle, because the only reason it's hard is because the narrative forced your team to be complete idiots. So now I absolutely detest Takumi, as well as I hate the entire shitty Second Last Academy
I wouldn't mind the handicap so much if it wasn't written in such a way that essentially makes you lose respect for your entire team.
Lol and the only reason I lost the first time around was because I ~~~~couldn't get incapacitate my friends ~~~~ who was attacking the base, who's be revived within 5 min, then the only way to win next time around was to blow them all up.
Takumi sucks ass
Just got to the World Death reveal part. So far the alleged plot is Earth is sentient and it's sick of humans so the Earth commits suicide.
Knowing it's Too Kyo, this is absolutely not what's happening. Unless Darumi is like the literal humanoid spirit of the suicidal Earth.
Shouma is just so aggressive, in a cast of comically aggressive people. It's not the usual kind of, dude has low self esteem so he's out of the way, but more like Reddit Nice Guy kind of bringing every conversation back to how he's worthless everyone he's interrupting again because he's worthless wait you are doing something anything that isn't centred around Shouma's feelfeels how dare you he needs to stand on a table to yell about well actually as a Shouma
Which is irritating enough, but also I need literacy points and he's the only person who can provide that which is just. Give him gift block your ears and do a runner.
You know what. I don't even care what the actual plot is. My entire point of this game is to lose my shit at everything Darumi ever say ever.
PS, how good is the pixel splash screen
I'm at day 75, 25 days to go.
So far I unlocked 48 event images, with 520 yet to be unlocked. This is wild maths. Like, is it just gonna be 500 pictures of protagonist screaming
Videos: unlocked 53, pending to unlock 151.
At least about half of the music was unlocked.
what the FUCK
Edit: that interlude was hella cool-creepy
The plot so far be like:
> Humans destroyed Earth's ecolog
> Earth as a life form activated its own immune system to wipeout humanity
> Humans have the technology to leave Earth and thrive in space
> Instead of that, humans opted to kill everything that's alive on Earth instead, somehow believe that will make Earth inhabitable again
Yeah I don't know what metaphor it's trying to make but damn
Ah, pity. I like Eito.
And to be fair, humanity isn't exactly lovable in this series.
And clever move to make the character screen "commanders absorption" number rather than "souls absorption" because, hey if technically speaking the absorbed are not commanders...
Huh so the ending suggestion is:
Because Takumi gets levelled up special power by absorbing Eito with levelled up special power, who in turn got levelled up special power by absorbing ???; AND Takumi can retain all his stats and just jump to a different time line.
So just... Kill every one the moment he meets them, absorb all their powers, then just restart with full god tier powers? Like killing your team don't even matter if they can be re-done from beginning, while keeping your stats
If it's anything like Zero Escape, I'm estimating I'm at 45% of game completion. Tbh at this moment it feels less satisfying than either the first run of Zero Time Dilemma as well as Danganronpa V3, specifically because I hate pseudo choices and Zero Time Dilemma fully embraced throwing a hard WTF at the player right in the first playthrough without pseudo choice that later turned out to be core to the main plot.
I sure hope there's a good inbuilt ending map though, no way I'd be able to remember what ending was caused by what and how what what the f
You know that thing in Zero Time Dilemma where you start the game, flip a coin of life and death at 15 minutes, immediately get a good ending with credit rolling and be like what the actual fuck just happened.
The Hundred Line isn't quite that over the top, but I'm getting sus that the real game is about to start from the point and onwards, as there hasn't been any decision trees other than the infuriating pseudo decision. Ultimately what I liked about Zero Time Dilemma is it's a linear game with many branches that acts as parallel chapters, and it's well communicated accordingly.
What I would really want now, is a clear route path laid out in flowchart. Zero Time Dilemma, Raging Loop, Quantum Suicide, and Ai the Somnium did this well. Gnosia barely gets away without it only because of achieving each ending is fairly straightforward with a guide.
I'm just too old and too tired to keep track on 100 routes otherwise, even super good games like Buried Stars just left me with, nah, I can't force myself through that many repeats and hope something's gonna change.
HOLY SHIT THE TITLE SCREEN'S BACK GROUND VERTICAL RED LINE TURNED INTO A RED 2.
So, upon game completion, it's The Hundred Line 1 -> The Hundred Line 2.
Zero Escape team, please fuck me up. I expect a lot now.
Edit: yes "The Hundred Line 2" is completely expected to be the second half of the branched out game. Look at on the saving file, it stated number of clears is 0 even though we've seen the credit once already.
Roflmao not only continued at where the first playthrough ended, if you go to backlog it has the backlog of the last conversation you had at the end of the last ending. It's basically Day 101 rather than NG+.
Also your entire party kept their stats, and the various rocks, rags and sticks you collected from last game are still here. I don't even want to know what their storage looks like.
I fully admit I have the temptation of wiping my entire team to absorb their powers, then reset to a new game.
Thankfully the actual game play don't reward this. Thinking about how Raging Loop got to the point that the characters were murdering each other for fun because they were so sick of the loops.
Lol finally there are actual options in a game that's all about 100 endings.
Interestingly so far Eito comes across as a lot more in the right than everyone else, considering what's allegedly done by humankind is so demonic that getting rid of humans is doing this world a service.
But also it's one of those games less about playing as me, and more about fuck around and find out. So behaving outrageously is the entire point.
Not a spoiler, things people probably want to know getting into The Hundred Line, QoL wise.
1. There is a good, clear laid out flowchart of choices. I was most worried about not having this and losing track.
2. While it started off screaming Danganronpa, indeed the Zero Escape shines through later on. Seems like you can't fuck up lost forevers in terms of the branching stories, though I can't confirm it at this point.
3. While the battle system isn't quite Nippon Ichi, as far as Too Kyo goes it's competent enough. I was worried it's another replaying skateboard minigame hell, but thankfully I'm wrong.
4. One good decision made that I don't expect to love, is the mandatory flow of time. Given the scope, the game don't want you to be dwindling on one day for 25 hours. Which is wise.
Sometimes I get to a point and think, hmm I should get an achievement/trophy pop up now, except because it's Switch such a thing don't exist, and I feel such relief for the lacking of another silly KPI that I should know better to care about. So I might not 100% the game. I'll play until I had enough then I will stop.
I opted to keep Eito alive mostly to see what shit and giggles he's gonna come up with.
My theory is Hiruko is someone who time travelled a lot more than Takumi, a common trope that's more common than the trope where protagonist is the only time traveller, also her specialty is "torture and murder". I also suspect there will be more core characters because of the weird empty gaps in explore layouts.
Fuck Nozomi. Simultaneously she's someone who makes song and dance about the mission is the most important thing regardless of sacrifices, demanding an entire team to be incinerated for it, and claims moral superiority when others who never agreed to be sacrificial sandbags didn't like being lied to because ~save humanity~; then when her team prioritised their mission she claims moral superiority now because ~you can't sacrifice my friends~. Just endless demand of being The Only Person with a Moral Compass, except the moral compass entirely flips based on how she can benefit as the only good person.
The argument that this timeline Nozomi isn't the same person Nozomi would be valid, if she's not treating dishonesty from others like a cardinal sin, while she can't be trusted with anything in regard to her own endless lies.
So based on the information so far, I'm wondering if Darumi is intentionally being made with the archetype of someone with borderline personality disorder, but possibly the first time I've seen in fiction where it's not explicit, not her entire existence is based on her mental illness, her mental illness is part of her that affects her daily life, but also she's so so so so so lovable despite of the underlying volatility that you just kinda expect that she's doing the best considering all that.
Miharu of Fatal Twelve was more a textbook case, but I hated how her characterisation did so well until the last 5% of the game where it completely fell apart. Also I personally felt Miharu was stereotyped in the way The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time did to people with autism. There's archetype and then there's having the entire character revolving around diagnostic criterias.
Admittedly Miharu was a lot more severe in her case as well. Darumi is just, she's getting on with her life gloriously as a hot mess. 💖
Hooo boy. So we learnt
1. There are other people in the ruins
2. The Commanders use Anglo names
Can confirm, The Hundred Line 2 is significantly an improvement to The Hundred Line. If you are underwhelmed by the first credit, just continue it.
I am annoyed a bit how The Hundred Line 1 timeline isn't in the flowchart. I'd love to go back and recomfirm a few things at this point.
Anyway my latest theory is every route concentrate on one character. Glad I just ran into Darumi route first.
Start of the route: Let me get close to that dodgy lying bastard Eito just so I can see what shit he will pull next.
On Day 11 route 11: Let me get close to that dodgy lying bastard Nozomi just so I can see what shit she will pull next.
I like Eito. A sincere committed villain with a clear goal oriented approach to things. Nozomi just seems like a combination of dodgy in the grand scale of things, manipulative but not very good at it, while Takumi still won't stop making excuses for her.
HOLY FUCK TAKUMI
THIS GAME IS MADNESS
LIKE THIS SHIT IS DARUMI LEVEL OF MAD when Takumi got Hiruko to slice him in half, lower half used as revival genetic material, upper half as a decorator bomb.
Naming of ??? is cute and funny as. Phoenix isn't bad. Niceperm did Kurara do this. In the end it's Fireboy which sadly became FB.
I'd so go for Blaze. But also tbh I can't think of many masc fire names? Femme have Vesta and Hestia. Hmmmmmmm.
I'm going to really struggle to keep my threads well lol.
I see this route has a capital letter in the chapter name, which is new. This is the dead Takemaru route btw.
I'm glad someone is optimistic?
Takumi: Yugamu is mad, he wants me to take his weird stimulant pills.
Also Takumi: immediately shoved 6(!!!!!!) pills in without knowing what they will do.
This route where everyone including Eito having hard boner for Takumi because of the drug from Yugamu is the most terrifying one so far.
Eito is probably faking it. But doesn't explain why FB was unaffected if the effect is Hemoamina relevant.
Fucking hell, Takumi needs to never take drugs ever. I'm not even anti drugs, I'm just anti Takumi taking drugs.
First time trialling this unknown substance: took 6 at a time. Immediately passing out because it's too strong, and effect was so overwhelming that he got scared.
Then he decided to quit and Yugamu sneaked a little into his drink.
Then he decided to take it again, and what is his dosage this time? 6 pills again.
This moron cannot be trusted with paracetamol.
I feel like this is a harem genre satire, because Takumi's reaction is just like mine, and you can't blame any of the characters because they are affected by the drug made by Yagamu who didn't know how effective it would be.
Ok maybe I blame Takumi a little, for the second large dose knowing it will do this.
Kako had a vision in this timeline that Gaku must live to prevent a disaster so Takumi must protect Gaku.
You'd think it's protect him from the war but no. This little shit is such a sex pest that Takumi is fighting the urge to strangle him now.
This battle is actually infuckingfuriating
1. I can easily kill V'ehxness within two rounds, but no it's a scripted loss that is poorly communicated so, so you waste time for the futility for agea
2. I can easily rescue both Kurara and Gaku in one round, but no scripted one or the other.
Script the fucking fight better then.
Ok I don't know who else can pull this off, the post Kurara death scene rapidly whiplash between absurd hilarity to sadness to absurd hilarity to sadness as the music rapidly alternate between the two, as Sirei encourage substance misuse among the cast.
And it works.
Humanity is terrible, and Sirei is a bastard and all.
Something about this route being solidly the most joyful one, explicitly because Sirei used brainwashing techniques to turn the whole school into Brave New World where all they cared about were milk cartons and poker games
This route is one day old and already more interesting than the entire Box of Blessing route.
We got to see the outfit of Takumi. I think it says "a little too petrified".
Manic Emo Dream Ghoul