Review thevioletcow 3/5 · Jul 24, 2022
Great, just don't play the second half
Upon initial glance, this game has all the ingredients of a suitable Nonary Games/Danganronpa style mystery game. It even has a weird mechanic with the SCHMUP elements! Having said that, Yurukill absolutely tanks in the second half. The writing, the gameplay, the SCHMUP parts, all much worse in the second half. In fact, the SCHMUP parts are pretty half baked …
Upon initial glance, this game has all the ingredients of a suitable Nonary Games/Danganronpa style mystery game. It even has a weird mechanic with the SCHMUP elements! Having said that, Yurukill absolutely tanks in the second half. The writing, the gameplay, the SCHMUP parts, all much worse in the second half. In fact, the SCHMUP parts are pretty half baked and don't fit the story at all. I wanted those stages to be fun, but even gameplay wise only a couple of them are alright. On top of that, the game is poorly optimized on PS4, so I had to repeat a stage because the game froze in the loading screen after I beat it. Not great =/
But the first half is pretty good! The characters are initially fun and interesting, they have freaky weird relationships with each other, the character art is generally quite good, and the music is a bit above average. There are several times where the tension between Prisoner and Executioner peaks during a really cool dialogue system.
So what to do if you still have the room escape/death game itch? Several of these are visual novels, but I'd personally put the order something like this:
999 -> Virtue's Last Reward -> Raging Loop -> Danganronpa series (consider looking up content warnings for these games) -> Ever17 -> Remember11 -> The first half of Yurukill. (Maybe throw in AI: The Somnium Files 1/2, but 1's leery protagonist grossed me out)
Anyways! Yurukill. Play the first half of the game, complete the initial scenarios, then peace out. I sincerely hope the developers make another mystery style game, but please leave out the SCHMUP elements (and maybe explain the puzzles less). If you want to play a SCHMUP, just go play one...