Thread by @Drooling_Demon

weird phoenix wright vs dangan ronpa puedo critique in the thread bellow. sorry i do these so often. i should just make youtube videos but man oh man do i not like editing. no spoilers for either series so dont worry about that if you just wanna hear a nerd ramble.

phoenix wright is an incredible game series but an awful mystery series. you are never given all the clues and asked to deduce what the solution is yourself. instead clues are breadcrumbed through cases, often with important pieces of evidence being revealed at the 11th hour.

the clues you do find for yourself often dont point to the truth but instead eliminate small red herrings or stall out the prosecution which forces someone else to hand you the ACTUAL evidence mid trial. eventually the pieces fall into place with little deduction from the player.

this isnt to say that the games dont challenge the players deductive skills. picking apart testimonys and finding contradictions often requires a heavy and satisfying amount of thinking. but while solving these small mysteries is fun the big one is never really yours to solve.

and thats fine. phoenix wright was never really a game too concerned with the whodunit end of detective work. many cases tell you outright at the beginning who the killer is and even those that dont make it fairly obvious early on. its about holding out till you can prove it.

its also generally held up by a fun endearing cast, great music and presentation, and while you dont really get to put all the pieces of the murder together yourself, the murders are often incredibly fun and interesting in their own right.

in terms of fulfilling a real detective fantasy i find dangan ronpa succeeds far more despite its several similarities to phoenix wright. its pretty simple actually. you are given all the clues before entering the trial. ALL of them (outside of a few very small exceptions).

the tools to both exonerate the innocent and pin down the guilty are all found by you and so if you so wanted you can completely solve the murder before the trial even starts. i did this for every trial personally and loved my time with the game because of this.

its incredibly satisfying to solve the puzzle on your own and its something you just cant get out of phoenix wright. this isnt to say its flawless. once the trials do start they breadcrumb you pretty hard and if you like to solve the murders on your own they becomes pretty dull.

the trials are also all around less fun. while finding out that randy manguy was lying about being at the taco truck because he doesnt want to admit he has a crush on owner isnt as exciting as solving a murder its fun and more involving than dangan ronpas trial system.

dangan ronpa is just as held up by its cast and presentation as phoenix wright is if not more so. both games are incredible and test your brain against some really fun logic puzzles but i wish more games let you solve them the way dangan ronpa does.

theres a real lack of good whodunit games and its a real shame that out of the two big murder mystery series only one really lets you feel like a detective. though i still need to play dangan ronpa 3 and return of the obra dinn so i dont really have an excuse.

(other small points i wanted to bring up but couldnt find a good spot for)
-dangan ronpas build up to the murder can sometimes feel a bit sluggish while phoenix wright is oops all murder and can feel sluggish during the second trial day onward.

-phoenix wright sometimes has the problem of giving you clues that contradict as testimony but its not the clue THEY want you to use so it really ruins some real "ah-ha" moments.

-dangan ronpa lets you solve the murders on your own but sometimes theyre too crazy for their own good and end up making you feel like "how could i have possibly figured that out". looking you you dangan ronpa 2 trial 4.

-also in the few instances where clues are presented mid case in dangan ronpa its really jarring and if you play the games the way i do though they arent usually crucial for figuring the murder out but rather proving them completely.

uuuuuhhhhh yeah thats about it. dont know why i thought to go on this rant. guess the phoenix wright rerelease? love both series. lets just get some more murder mysteries huh game designers?