Any game trying to position itself as ‘The Next Danganronpa’, like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Process of Elimination, is going to have an uphill battle. Between its iconic cast, inventive murders to solve, and an incredible debate mechanic to tie it all together, few games have come close to doing what Danganronpa managed. Since mara༺thoning the entire series during lockdown, I’ve felt a Monokuma-shaped void in my soul, desperate for another grizzly murder to solve.
With that in mind, and with no Danganronpa 4 on the horizon, Process of Elimination is probably the closest we&rsquoꦚ;re ever going to get. While it often fails to commit to its premise, and has a few anime-inspired frustrations that get in the way, this is still a meaty, worthwhile sleuth-‘em-up.
The premis🦂e is very similar to Danganronpa. As regular Joe Schmo Wato Hojo, you are whisked off 🍌to the island of Morgue to help solve the Quartering Duke serial killings with a team of the world’s most talented and eccentric detectives.
Each has their own special skill – Downtown Detective does all her sleuthing through ‘social deduction’, Bookworm Detective has an eidetic memory, Armor Detective has a big suit of armour, and s𝓡o on. Of course, not every detective can be trusted. Some may be working for The Quartering Duke, and as the bodies pile up it’s up to Wato to take control of the group, solve each death as they happen, and correctly work out who among them is a traitor.
The biggest difference between Danganronpa and Process of Elimination is that, while Danganronpa places most of its gameplay emphasis on the big confrontations and class trials, Process of Elimination instead focuses on evidence collection. Each case plays out in a top-down map, where you command each de💜tective and play to their individual strengths to explore the area, inspect evidence, and work together to get as much information as you can within a set number of turns.
Sometimes you might be doing a simple investigation, while other times you may have to juggle finding clues with beating off the dangerous robots that roam the island. With these strategy sections, Process of Elimination never feels content to settle into a formula – it’s always shaking up each of these sections with new twists tokeep you on your toes. You’ll also come to appreciate t🌊he skills of each of your detectives before they either betray you or wind up dead.
For such an engaging evidence system, Process of Elimination falls🦩 majorly flat when it comes to actually presenting your case. Suddenly, the game slips back inꦯto its minimally interactive visual novel formula. Instead of having you really think and consider each fact as you come across it, all you have to do is keep repicking answers until you’ve found the one that moves the story along. You get a grade at the end of each case, but with no branching story and no rewards for doing well in a case, there’s no impetus to really put more than a few seconds of thought into who you point the finger at.
The story itse𒅌lf is perfectly serviceable with unexpected twists that kept me guessing who the mastermind was right up to the final reveal, but the cast is what really brings Process of Elimination to life. Every character here is memorable, whether it’s Doleful Detective’s interesting balance of bravery and vulnerability, Downtown’s use of Gen Z slang (complete with a “no cap”), or Armor Detective effectively being a golden retriever covered in metal plating. Even the more ‘serious’ characters, like Ideal Detective and Workaholic Detective get their moments to shin♚e, offering characters that are multidimensional and endearing.
Unfortunately, that cast is sometimes marred by overly tropey capital-A ‘Anime’ writing. Did we need the 15 minutes of explaining how a pulley system works, with each character belabouring t🍌he point even further? Probably not. Did we need Gourmet Detective’s massive boobs spilling out of a motorbike jacket, contrary to the otherwise decent character design? No. Did we need the randomly crowbarred-in shower scene featuring the prepubescent Bookworm Detective? Absolutely not, come on. These inclusions don’t feel natural to the game, they feel like things that have been rammed in to meet some visual novel checklist somewhere.
Perhaps Process Of Elimination’s biggest misstep (aside from the shower scene, obviously) is that it never commits to the story it’s telling. Where Danganronpa was forthcoming with its death and gore &ndas🥀h; pink blood and all – Process of Elimination instead wimps out at the last second and often has its bodies just slightly off-screen, removing the shock value of a character’s death. Combined with the limited sprite variety for each character, and a general lack of specially-illustrated event scenes to punctuate the events, Process of Elimination comes off as feeling non-committal in telling the murder mystery it wants to.
Process of Elimination never hits the highs of ౠDanganronpa’s zany cast, intense trials, or attention-grabbing set pieces, but it does come close. With a brilliant cast to carry tཧhe story, clever sleuthing, and enough twists to keep you going, this is a game any wannabe detective should consider.
3/5, reviewed on Switch. A review code was provided by the 𝄹publisher.
You take on the role of the Detective Alliance in Process of Elimination, a group of sleuths tasked with solving a very long string of brutal murders by one only known as the 'Quartering Duke'.