SHINRAI - Broken Beyond Despair

Some people have mentioned the beginning being a bit slow, but I honestly hardly felt it; what I've felt, however, was how deeply invested I was as soon as the story gets kicked into motion. I initially thought of playing one chapter per day, and ended up absolutely devouring it! The mystery was very satisfying too, and it left me happy I spent a weekend with Raiko and co. If you think fondly of late 2000s/early 2010s VNs you'll probably like the vibe of this one too; I know I did!

If you're searching for a good mystery game to test your deductive skills, SHINRAI is definitely the game for you! The game's quite short but also elaborated enough to let you immerse first of all in the setting of the game and then, most importantly, to let you really understand its cast: a group of teens that only want to enjoy a cool and fun Halloween party. SHINRAI not only has a very good mystery to uncover, but also lays its foundations on the cast's relationships with one another and the multitude of facets that a middle schooler could develop during those years of their life; how they often "don't know any better", and how some behaviors can affect the people around them in more ways than they hope or imagine. I'm writing this because I also think that the game's story and murder couldn't work as well as they do if the cast was composed by adults. Aside from this, the writing can appear as somewhat "cringe" in some parts, something that I found a bit too much only in regards to the adults of the cast (which are very few and peripheral). The game's art is good and the music did its work in setting up the mood of every scene, I also quite appreciated that there are a lot o…

An incredibly charming detective game, which has some surprising twists and turns along the way in addition to some rather impressive character work. I seriously was impressed with some of the red herrings and bad ending choices, as they are all set up and seem like realistic possibilities. I also loved some of the characters, while a few fall into common anime tropes, a majority of the cast defies expectations (Kamen best girl btw). I'm super excited to check out the additional recent release expanding on the story!

To be completely honest, I didn't really think this game would be that good at first. I just wanted to see it through to pass some time and say that I finished yet another game, since I made it this year's goal to play some games I never touched before. However, Shinrai made me eat my words. Once the story *truly* picks up, Shinrai becomes an amazing story that makes you second guess the things that even you thought you knew about the game. The characters react in a somewhat-realistic way to high-stress situations, given that all of them are teenagers, and seeing how they act towards one another, given their circumstance, is really fun to see. Again, even if the mystery itself is good, the characters are the true stars of the game. Even if they are somewhat "trope-ey", I can't say I truly disliked any of them. Their speech patterns get annoying at times, but all of them play an important role to the story at large, and you can feel that all of them know each other and have realistic relationships to one-another. I'm not the best at this recommendation thing, but all in all, Shinrai is a great game with a good story and characters that I would very much recommend playing…

decent mystery, even if my eyes were glazing over the text by the end.

The game is a decent murder mystery that'll scratch that whodunit itch. I've seen a lot of comparisons to Danganronpa, or Ace Attorney, but I don't think Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair is quite at that level. It feels more like a shoujo manga-esque "Murder, She Wrote" with Raiko Shinpuku taking the center stage as our sardonic protagonist. She reluctantly goes to Rie Miyamoto's Halloween party, in which a series of harmless pranks turns into the sudden death of one of their classmates. Bodies start piling up, and it's up to Raiko to figure out whodunnit before the wrong person goes to jail. The mystery itself is challenging, and requires a keen eye to skim the clues and the text in order to discern who the culprit is. There is one flaw to this game: Kotoba. It's bad enough he's more perverted than Minoru Mineta from My Hero Academia. It's bad enough that he mixes languages like an american twelve year old weeb who's trying to learn japanese from poorly subbed anime. It's both traits that make Kotoba into an intolerable cringelord. In spite of Kotoba, I am going to give this game a recommended because I did have a fun time with it.