Let's start with the good. The art style and general polish has improved dramatically since the previous two installments. The writing has also taken a turn for the better. My main complaint about Head AS Code and Birth ME Code was the author's inability to distinguish how to use certain grammatical tenses. Miracle Moon has a strange inclination to use future and perfect tenses completely incorrectly (for example "I've left the Empty S over 7 years ago"). That has mostly been rectified here - whereas before, perhaps a good 10-20% of the lines had grammatical inconsistencies, that percentage has dropped to maybe 2%. It's still aggravating to see, but at least it's mostly fixed.
Here's where Decide 4 God drops the ball: the escape rooms. In the previous two games, the escape rooms were visual novel style, where you click around on various hot spots, but ultimately there wasn't much puzzle solving. I think Miracle Moon took complaints too seriously and this time decided to go all out - but then implemented the cardinal sin of video game escape rooms - a time limit. Each action you take in an escape room takes one or more minutes to complete, other than walking around between scenes and some limited free actions. Think about it like an investigation scene in Danganronpa or Ace Attorney, or even just the rooms in the Zero Escape series - except with a time limit!
It might be fine if the rooms were simple or more obvious. But this is one of those games where you have to explore a lot to figure out where to even start. What complicates things even further are the NPCs that you can (and sometimes have to) recruit as companions. When they are in your party, their thoughts and actions override your own - and based on their motivations and knowledge, they will obfuscate clues and take agency away from the player.
Here's an example of how this works. Say there's a house you have to get in. The NPC, Bob, says you have to find the key to the front door and bring him over to the electrical box to turn off security (I'm making things simple - in the real game you get no instructions. You have to figure out what you need to do by yourself). There are three screens - the street where Bob is, the front lawn, and the backyard. Between the three screens, there are 40 hot spots. You have 30 minutes to figure everything out and each action takes 1 minute.
Example Winning Sequence:
1. Player searches the most obvious spots where a key could be hidden. In the front yard:
a. You flip the doormat. It's not there. (1 min)
b. You look in the mailbox. It's not there (2 min)
c. You pick up the garden statue and look underneath. it's not there (3 min)
d. You look inside the front light fixture. It's not there (4 min)
e. You look inside the flowerpot soil. You find it! The key is too dirty, you need to find some way to clean it off. (5 min)
2. Player needs to clean the key
a. You try using the key with the bird bath. Oops, the dev didn't intend on you using any object with the bird bath, so it just gives you a description. Maybe you misclicked. You click it again and get a random pun. Maybe this is one of those hot spots where you have to click it until the very end? You click again and get a quip, The hot spot turns red. Nope, wrong place. (8 min) Minor spoilers [spoiler]This is literally something that happens in the first room where you need to clean a lens. Apparently using dried out, crusty old hand sanitizer is better than using fresh fountain water for cleaning. [/spoiler]
b. You go to the backyard (free)
c. You use the key on the outside faucet - you get a message "You have to turn it on first!" (9 min)
d. You turn on the outside faucet (10 min)
e. You use the key with the outside faucet (11 min)
f. You turn off the outside faucet (12 min)
3. Player needs to bring Bob over to the electrical box, which is in the back yard
a. You go to the street (free)
b. You click on Bob and ask him to join you (13 min)
c. You go to the backyard (free)
d. You click on the electrical box (14 min)
e. Bob says he needs 5 minutes to shut off security. You ♥♥♥♥ around for 5 minutes (19 min)
4. Player needs to get into the house
a. You go to the front lawn (free)
b. You use the key on the door and walk in (20 min)
In the end, it takes 20 minutes out of 30, and you could even cut out 5 minutes if you bring Bob to the electrical box first, then search for the key. That's plenty of time to spare, right?
Here's how I played this scenario:
1. I click on Bob and ask him to join me because I have to bring him to the electrical box later on anyways (1 min)
2. I click on the doormat, Bob makes a quip, then looks underneath and finds nothing (2 min)
3. I click on the mailbox, Bob makes a quip, then looks inside and finds nothing (3 min)
4. I click on the garden statue, Bob makes a quip, then lifts it up and finds nothing (4 min)
5. I click on the front light fixture, Bob makes a quip, then looks inside and finds nothing. (5 min)
6. I click on the flowerpot, Bob says "My parents used to hide their spare key under their flowerpot!" He lifts up the flowerpot and finds nothing. Remember the key is IN the flowerpot, not underneath it. (6 min)
7. I click around randomly, assuming that everything above was searched thoroughly, until time expires. INVESTIGATION FAILED
In real time the intended sequence takes 30 minutes to an hour to finish, thanks to all the reading and bloat. If you fail, you have to do it all over again! Danganronpa and Ace Attorney all had instances of logical leaps or places where the next step was unclear. But there wasn't any time limit so you could click around all over the place until you figured things out. Yeah, there was some repetition, but not more than a minute or two at a time.
This game, on the other hand, does not respect the player's time. If I were back in school on summer break, then I might be more lenient. However, now as a working adult, I simply don't have time for trial and error nonsense that makes me redo the entire investigation from scratch if I fail. Miracle Moon has stated that it's intended for the player to fail these escape rooms the first time. I thought it was due to perhaps an overzealous ineptitude, but the official explanation is even worse, because that means the dev knows that they are wasting the player's time!
This game honestly reminds me of those 90s point-and-click adventure games where a decision an hour into the story could soft lock a game, but you'd only find 20 hours later. Just like the previous Abime games, there's probably some point in the story where you get the ability to jump around segments. Maybe you get a time dilation device too? I don't know, but this is one of the most frustrating starts to a visual novel that I've ever run into. I'm probably going to continue playing because I'm invested in the story. It's just unfortunate that the gameplay really hinders my enjoyment.
