BUMP
The game came out on April 27 and my copy showed up today. I'll update the thread with some impressions once I've played enough of it to say if Exile Election stands on its own or if it's really just an uninspired Danganronpa clone.
If anyone else is reading Exile Election, please chime in with some impressions of your own!
Famitsu gave the game a
31/10
-Target Audience: Fans of VNs featuring death games, people who enjoy serious stories
-Average Playtime: Around 15h to clear one round
1st Reviewer[8/10]: Liked the original setup of avenging your little sister's death by exiling people during votes. He also thought the game had some unique systems. You get pulled into the story by the different characters and their interpersonal connections. It's fun to change the story progression by picking the order in which people are exiled, but the underlying system felt a bit monotonous and he had problems empathizing with the main protagonist.
2nd Reviewer[8/10]: He says the game feels modeled after the Danganronpa series with the central Death Game and the mechanic of exiling opponents by beating them in debates. While the game doesn't feel like a fresh experience, it pulls you in from the start with its mysterious world and the reviewer felt that the main protagonist's ability to detect lies by color differentiated it enough to raise his interest in the story. The pale color palette of the art-style matches the atmosphere of the story and he found the character art appealing.
3rd Reviewer[8/10]: She thought it was a novel idea for a mystery VN to have everyone be the object of the main protagonist's revenge instead of the typical hunt for one culprit. Reading peoples' lies by color was great since it added a lot to your deductions. Elections take the form of debates and the lines are displayed in a form similar to messaging apps, but she would have liked more of a visual representation of peoples emotions during debates. The outcome of an election and how people are dealt with was worth seeing every time.
4th Reviewer[7/10]: He liked the unique world&setting of the game and thought the story was interesting; it felt great how the mystery behind the story unraveled little by little. The game revolves around a Death Game where you make choices, try to uncover contradictions in your opponents' statements and debate them. But he felt that it often was difficult to judge the outcome of the available choices. It also was frequently hard to comprehend why certain choices ended in a Game Over, which didn't feel fair. Overall, the game has a lot of exposition and tends to have slow pacing.
EDIT
First Impressions (played around 4h):
The bunny from Zero Escape traps you in the amusement park from Sweet Fuse to play low-budget Danganronpa featuring monsters, amnesia and the color red from Umineko.
I was gonna post more detailed impressions, but the game has been really mediocre so far and also suffers from slow pacing. The only things that stand out are the choice of music and art-style. Maybe it gets better, but I think I'm done with the game for now.
There's a full Japanese Let's Play on Youtube if you want to check out the game for yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwKSfIo9BGH1E5ZG-jbmDX7Dcq80_2xkR
