Last summer on the Switch, we had the pleasure of experiencing an all new franchise from Kazutaka Kodaka, the lead designer of Danganronpa along with composer Masafumi Takada. Master Detetive Archives: Rain Code is a bit of an evolution in the Danganronpa formula with an all new cast of characters and concept. Developed by Too Kyo Games and published by Spike Chunsoft, the game explores a series of murders in rain-soaked Kanai Ward covered in neon and handled by rogue detectives from the World Detective Organization (WDO). Kanai Ward is cut off from the rest of the world by the evil Amateratsu Corporation and the WDO wants to take them down and find out what’s going on in this closed-off city.
Master Detective Archives: Rain Code + is the original game modified. It’s now in 4K with noticeably reduced load times. The side DLCs have been added to the game and are selectable from the main menu with no additional purchase and there is a new gallery mode in the main menu which allows you to rewatch any cinemas you’d like and listen to any background music you’ve unlocked in the game. Aside from these changes, the game is basically the same though, so if you’ve played through the original and bought the DLC, there’s not going to be a lot of surprises here. For those of you that haven’t however, let’s take a look at Master Detective Archives: Rain Code +.
You play Yuma Kokohead, a young man who wakes up in a train station with amnesia. All you have is a weird uniform and a letter identifying you as a member of the WDO. You’re a detective and you’re supposed to be on the train that’s about to leave. Rushing onto the train, things get weird pretty fast and you’ll immediately be involved in a mystery that feels somewhat derived from Murder on the Orient Express. Many of the detectives at the WDO have what’s called a “Forte”, a special supernatural power of some sort that allows them to investigate mysteries that others would be unable to. We don’t know what Yuma’s forte is or if he’s actually the detective the letter tells him he is. What we do know is that he’s made a pact with a weirdly horny (yes, you read that right) death god named Shinigami and she’s constantly guiding him through the game, interacting with him and trying to manipulate him.
The game is broken up into case files with a prologue and six chapters, each representing a different case. As you progress through the cases the main story becomes clear and you slowly get to know each of the detectives in Kanai Ward. Shinigami is your constant companion though, pushing you and bugging you through every moment that would make you want to identify with Yuma. She also drags you into Mystery Labyrinths. When an unsolved mystery takes place in this world, it creates a supernatural mystery labyrinth and if you have the ability to, you can travel to the labyrinth into a surreal ‘60s drug-induced version of reality where you can solve the mystery through a series of trials. In Master Detective Archives: Rain Code +, your time is split between explorations in various areas (initially the train, then into the districts of Kanai Ward), Investigations, and Mystery Labyrinths.
Let’s start with the exploration. Unlike Daganronpa, you travel from area to area and explore it in full 3D. Unfortunately, this isn’t an open world and the areas around Kanai Ward aren’t that big. The people are not all NPCs that you can talk to either, so there’s a lot less to interact with than you might think. Your mini-map clearly marks interaction points and guides you through the glowing neon streets of Kanai Ward and you trudge noticeably slowly through streets and alleys to get where you’re going. Occasionally the game also shakes things up and throws in some Quick Time Events (QTEs) that force you to unexpectedly react and hit the right button as well so pay attention! The walk speed is honestly incredibly frustrating during exploration though and there’s no real way to speed it up. Just resign yourself to walking around the environment, ignoring everything you can and looking for white dotted circles, an indicator that there’s something to examine.
Examining objects and items with that white circle will get you Detective Points. Mostly gathered in increments of 5 and 10 at a time, Detective Points allow you to level up Yuma’s abilities and in the menu system you can purchase skills with points earned through level-ups. Think of Detective Points as XP and each level allows you gain more effective detective skills. Doing this will allow you to succeed in the Mystery Labyrinths more easily as you equip more and more skills. Fulfilling side quests (designated with green markers) within the districts in Kanai Ward will give much larger boosts to your Detective Points, 100 points at a go, and you’re going to want those points, even though the side quests are by and large unfulfilling. You’ll also come across little statues all over the city if you keep exploring. It’s time consuming but finding enough of each color unlocks the Gumshoe Gab, additional dialogue with the detectives of Kanai Ward that fleshes out characters.
Moving on to each case (designated with yellow markers) will shut down access to any remaining side quests and progress in the main story. You can absolutely complete the entire game this way if you want to, but some of the events will be a bit more challenging. This is the main thrust of the game where you slowly find out what’s going on, solving murders in Kanai Ward while trying to figure out who Yuma is and why he has amnesia, because Shinigami is far too suspicious to be telling the whole truth. This is where things shift to more of the Danganronpa style here, where you have to examine the scenes of each murder and talk to people in the area in designated spaces. Once things get moving, the game limits your freedom of travel and forces you down the narrative pathways, making the occasional decision and mostly just going along for the ride. Each decision branch can reward you with additional detective points if you’re paying attention and wrong choices will show as lower stats at the end of each case. Otherwise, you’re not really penalized for getting things wrong but the options typically aren’t that tough.
This is mostly a visual novel with a fairly high degree of environmental interaction, at least for a VN, so expect a ton of longer monologues and discussions as the story unfolds. If you don’t like reading, you may perish. Once you learn about each detective that will join you on the cases, you’ll then move on to explore the area the crime was committed in and investigate. Each case has multiple scene investigations where you look for clues and examine everything. Miss something and the game will not progress so don’t panic about overlooking something. Finding clues in Investigation mode will create Solution Keys, facts about the case that are used in the Mystery Labyrinth later to solve it. Once enough investigations are complete, the Mystery Labyrinth will form, sucking you and your partner into it courtesy of Shinigami and then things get really weird.
The Mystery Labyrinths are psychedelic pocket dimensions formed by an unsolved mystery. They’re extremely linear and while there are some branching pathways, they’re mostly dead ends and you’ll be forced to skip merrily down the yellow brick road that’s been laid out for you. You’ll have to answer questions about the case (all stuff you’d catch if you were paying attention) which are linked to QTEs forcing you to respond rapidly. In Mystery Dungeons you have a life bar and every wrong answer takes a tiny increment of that bar so eventually, just spamming the buttons will catch up with you, but often the choices are clearly apparent. There are several other main components to Mystery Dungeons besides investigations though, so let’s quickly take a look at them.
The four main sections of Mystery Dungeons are Reasoning Death Matches, the Shinigami Puzzle, God Shinigami Segments, and the Deduction Denouement. The dungeons are filled with Mystery Phantoms hiding Solution Keys and information. You’ll have to physically dodge their statements (the words attack you) and counter their arguments with the correct Solution Keys. You’re guaranteed to have them since the game is so linear but it’s still hard to pick the right combinations sometimes even though you usually already know the answers. Defeating a Phantom will grant you more Solution Keys allowing you to progress. In the Shinigami Puzzle, Shinigami takes you to the beach and gets into a barrel covered in letters. You’ll throw swords at it until you hit the right letters that reveal the hidden word which is a clue in the case, at which point she bursts out of the barrel in a bikini to flaunt herself for you. It’s an absolutely bonkers mini-game that feels entirely disconnected from the rest of the gameplay experience.
Once you’ve defeated enough phantoms and seen Shinigami’s bikini a time or two, it’s time for the God Shinigami portion of the Mystery Dungeon. She grows to the size of a giant and you literally ride her as she launches an attack on a fortress of lies from the culprit, jumping over spikes, kicking down walls, and booting away giant cannonballs in your joint assault on the lies of the culprit. Success means that the final culprit is revealed, though there’s still one more step, the Deduction Denouement. Here you’ll have to look at the entire case in manga format (read from right to left) and insert each solution key as a comic panel in the correct spot in order to finalize events and solve the case. Phew.
As you can see, there’s a lot going on in each case in Master Detective Archives: Rain Code +. While there are plenty of things to do and a variety of gameplay concepts, veteran Danganronpa players will notice clear parallels between the games. Detective points are kind of like Monocoins, Nonstop Debates and Reasoning Death Matches are extremely similar, and the closing arguments from Danganronpa are basically the Deduction Denouement. That’s not to say that they’re the same game though; it’s more that the concepts were further refined and then used to build Master Detective Archives: Rain Code +. That’s both a good and a bad thing because on the surface there are a lot of derivative ideas here but they’re also effectively utilized, giving Rain Code its own personality.
Visually though, things are very much like a 3D rendered version of Danganronpa too. The art direction, the neon pink blood, the color-saturated environments, all of them indicate clear links to the previous franchise that aren’t present anywhere in the story. Visually, this is the next Danganronpa and that’s unfortunate because it feels like Master Detective Archives: Rain Code should be its own independent world. It’s a beautiful game most of the time too, though cinemas have a weird grainy quality to the character texture mapping that makes them feel subtly off compared the rest of the game which is incredibly crisp with the new visual updates in this version of the game. Character designs are interesting and well-executed throughout, though the Mystery Dungeons are so over the top that they’d make Salvador Dali salivate. The upgraded graphics eliminate a lot of the complaints that came from the Switch version of the game and if you haven’t played that, you’ll just think it looks nice but the plus in the title here really carries its weight.
Audio is excellent as well, with fantastic voice acting for almost all of the characters. Shinigami can be incredibly irritating at times but she sort of starts to grow on you after a while. Maybe it’s just the sheer perviness of her and a couple of other characters though. Regardless the full voice acting for basically all dialogue is amazing and the sound quality throughout the game is outstanding, with a wide variety of music and 69 tracks. The subtle patter of rain and the thumping beats of various events are a dichotomy that creates an interesting world and without top-tier sound work and a great soundtrack, Master Detective Archives: Rain Code + would fall flat on its face.
As you can see, there’s a lot going on throughout the game, with each portion varying wildly and a huge number of factors which coalesce to make this story work. However, that doesn’t make things perfect either and the biggest issue isn’t from design or the weirdness of the Mystery Dungeons, but instead from the characters themselves. To put it simply, it’s hard to make a connection with most of the characters in Master Detective Archives: Rain Code. They’re just not that compelling and as you play, you’re clearly supposed to develop an affinity with them and with Yuma but it just doesn’t happen. You’re very much along for the ride rather than part of the story here and that feeling of distance really takes away from the rather excellent reveals later in the game. That’s a shame because there’s a lot of potential here and maybe you will get a better connection out of it than we did, but no one is quite as likeable or easy to identify with as they should be.
In fact, it was so easy to disassociate with the characters in Master Detective Archives: Rain Code + that we tried an experiment with this review. You can hold down R2 to skip all dialogue, even unread dialogue if you really want to blow through the game. You can also click on the center button of the PS5 to pop up a dialogue history, so we skipped all the dialogue for an entire case, only going back to the dialogue history to look at key references to know what to do. It turns out you can complete an entire case this way knowing nothing whatsoever about it and bumbling your way through Reasoning Death Matches and Investigations, and even the Deduction Denouements. Most of the conclusions you have to make are such common sense that you can solve them regardless of the amount of information you have. Once you know that the game is that formulaic, it’s a bit frustrating though and the sheer amount of dialogue seems somewhat excessive. It’s not a bad game by any means and the overall story is definitely solid, it’s just that you could strip away some of the excess and make it a more focused experience that hits a little harder.
Master Detective Archives: Rain Code + is an excellent interactive visual novel. It has a great main story and the new updates to the visuals are fantastic. The DLC inclusion is fun too, even though it mostly adds some depth to the other detectives. It’s also nice to be able to revisit cinemas and listen to the music tracks since the soundtrack is excellent. But the flaws from the original release are still there with some pacing issues and a lack of connection to the characters that limits the impact of the plot and player engagement. Fixing that is a bit tougher and if you’re not feeling the characters or you aren’t a visual novel player, Rain Code is going to be a tough sell for you. All in all, Master Detective Archives: Rain Code + is the best version of the game you can buy and it’s enjoyable to boot. At $60 you’re easily going to get your money’s worth with this 30+ hour game but it’s an experience that’s a bit inconsistent and may not be for every player.
This review is based on a digital copy of Master Detective Archives: Rain Code + provided by the publisher. It was played on a PS5 using a 55” 1080p TV and on the Playstation Portal where it played equally well. Master Detective Archives: Rain Code + is also available on Xbox Series X and PC on Steam.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.