Finished UDG for the first time, here are my thoughts

Hello there! First time making a post like this, so I hope it's alright.

TDLR if you don't wanna read through all my paragraphs, my overall rating for this game is 6/10. The characters and story for this game are good, but the gameplay was too finicky and buggy to really enjoy, and there are certain parts of the story that are just... Bad.

Gameplay: 4/10

This is by far the weakest part of this game. I will say that I don't typically enjoy action shooter games like this, so this could also be personal preference, but I just didn't really like it. It was okay, but it honestly felt like a slog trying to utilize all the bullet types you get. The mechanics of this game are interesting at first, but they just get more annoying as you keep progressing through the game. I almost exclusively used the Break bullets because all the other types were only really useful during very specific scenarios. The puzzle mechanics were more fun than the actual combat in this game and I think that says a lot. I did find the robot battles to be fun, though.

Characters: 8/10

The characters here were really solid and well written for the most part! I genuinely used to hate Toko when I played THH, but Toko in this game who has matured and been more fleshed out actually got me enjoying her character far more than I expected. She's still just a bit annoying, especially all those 'Toko's Fantasy' scenes, but overall it was a nice change of pace to see Toko growing her relationship with someone and overtime develop a true friendship with someone. Her relationship with Komaru was adorable, and it was genuinely really nice to see her care about someone that isn't Byakuya.

Komaru was a character I didn't like at first, but grew to like over the course of the story. At first I thought she was kind of annoying, stupid, and loud, but as she grows through the story, I started to really like her. Her optimism and her journey through trying to overcome Monaca and her despair. She is truly the pinnacle of the "heart of gold, brain of rocks" trope and I love that for her. The characters in the game were right that she's kind of just a normal girl, though. Even though I really like her, I can't say much else about her since that's kind of her whole character. Dumb, kind, and caring.

The Warriors of Hope were written very well, I thought. Even Kotoko, whose entire arc was reduced down to tasteless sexual assault jokes that bordered on CP. They really feel like actual children who were abused and taken advantage of. When you read about what their parents did to them or how they treated them, you can't help but feel sympathy for them, even though they mercilessly killed for revenge. I felt like the scenes with the kids breaking down right before they bring out their robots was always really well done, how it highlighted their specific traumas and how it affected them and their personalities.

Monaca was an incredibly well written villain. She was so vile, so cruel that honestly I hated her even more than Junko herself. The scenes where Monaca is manipulating the Warriors of Hope, how she preyed on their weaknesses and intentionally exploited them was so viscerally upsetting that it might actually be some of the best writing in the Danganronpa series period. She was going to have them commit suicide as a 'prank'! That's truly evil, and she makes a perfect villain. It's so easy to hate her that you kind of end up wanting to see how fucked up she got like some kind of morbid curiosity.

Haiji I didn't really care for, tbh. Not just because he's a pedophile, but because his role in the story was honestly kind of useless. The only thing he did was bring out the Big Bang Monokuma, and... Yea. That's everything. His relationship with Monaca wasn't explored enough, and his revenge craze just sort of fell flat because of that. Nagito, Shirokuma, and Kurokuma also kind of fall under this underutilization problem too. The twist at the end that Shiro/Kuro are actually both Junko was definitely interesting, but it happened so quickly that the punch it would've had didn't really have the effect it would have if they lingered on it a little more. Nagito supposedly has a lot of influence in the story, but you don't see him nearly enough to really care about whether he's helping the kids or not. He's just kind of There.

Story: 7/10

There are parts of this story that are really good, and parts of this story that are... really bad. Getting this out of the way, of course I hated all the weird sexual jokes and innuendoes they made about the kids, especially Kotoko. I am forever pissed that they could've genuinely written a kid that went through sexual abuse, as that is something that happens IRL and definitely would fit with the theme of kids getting abused by adults, especially since the Warriors of Hope were abused to an extreme. They could've handled it with grace and had an incredibly compelling character but, no... They made me watch Komaru get strapped to a tickle machine and forced me to cut off the clothes of a child. Even the scene between Monaca and Nagisa felt really weird. Like, I don't think I would have such a problem with it if they didn't draw it like that... It felt like someone's weird fantasy. I know it's kind of supposed to make you feel uncomfortable, and I do like the concept in theory, but it just felt... ew.

Aside from that, the actual story is pretty compelling, and it keeps you interested enough to keep playing. I kind of predicted that Nagito was working with the kids and that Haiji was Monaca's brother, but there were also quite a few twists I didn't see coming, like The Shiro/Kuro reveal or that Monaca was trying to make Komaru Junko's successor, not herself. The ending was definitely peak, and I like how they kind of tied up all the loose ends. I especially liked seeing how Nagito saved Monaca from the building in order to make her into the next Junko, and seeing how Izuru managed to find Junko's code in order to spur the events of DR2. It was a very satisfying ending and I really enjoyed it. There were times when the story dragged on a little too long and there was a lot of tonal whiplash, but that's kind of a Danganronpa thing rather than UDG exclusively.

The fanservice in this game was BAAAAD. Way worse than DR1 or DR2 ever did. The fact that I have to watch Byakuya getting erotically slapped everytime I finish a chapter was just super embarrassing, as were the Toko's Fantasy section. If I wanted to hear people having sex I would've just picked up an Otome game. I mean, at least Byakuya is a god damn adult, unlike the Warriors of Hope who were given a similar treatment. Komaru and Toko had their fair share of fanservice, but it honestly wasn't anything more egregious than the previous games.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Feel free to disagree or agree, I love talking about this stuff with others.