During the peak of DMMD's western fame, I was, fortunately, a child. This means I completely missed out on the craze, the fandom, the everything, though I was surrounded by friends who were utterly obsessed. As time went on, they found new interests, and DMMD just became a lingering thought in the back of everyone's minds, the "Man remember 2013 Tumblr?" staple.
So imagine the surprise when JAST announced an official localization in 2018, which was later released in April 2021. Now an adult who has nothing better to do than disappoint my parents, I spent real life money I could never get back on purchasing DMMD on Steam (and also purchasing the R18 patch, truly the peak of microtransactions) in December 2021 and played the entire game within the span of a couple days.
I’d like to give a spoiler free deepdive into this game and its sequel, how it was disappointing to me and yet how I kind of love this series at the same time. Let’s start with DMMD itself first.
DMMD: The Good - Setting & Design
The aesthetics of DMMD cannot be understated. The UI, music, color palettes, worldbuilding, art, everything is absolutely fantastic and totally sucks you into this futuristic setting that honestly might be one of my most liked worlds in a visual novel in a long while. There are probably nitpicks that can be made about the society of DMMD, like "Do the people in the high society even go to school? There are teens here but they’re always partying where are their parents?". I honestly don’t really care about finding the answers to these nitpicks though.
This game is also very visually engaging for a visual novel. There are often tons of moving parts on screen, the UI changes frequently with setting, tons of VFX, CGs are pretty frequent and always great, so on. This game really plays with normal expectations of what someone might have for a visual novel when it comes to presentation. If you have a hard time focusing on simpler games where there isn't much changing as you play (sound novels for example), you'd definitely have an easier time with DMMD. This is why I can come to understand why everyone and their mom was obsessed with DMMD in 2013, even though they probably never played a visual novel before and never played one after.
DMMD: The Good - Translation
I really enjoyed the translation for this game. People like to get up in arms about JP > ENG translations when they take liberties with their lines, but this one felt very good and natural in English. I'm of the opinion that sticking to the base text as much as possible or going for a literal translation is very bad and not fun to read actually. I've read enough "It can't be helped" over the course of my lifetime to never want to read it ever again.
I guess my only nitpick is there are maybe five times in the whole game where only half the voiceline is translated (nonspoiler example: A voiceline saying, "What the hell?! She transformed!" gets translated in ENG text as, "What the hell?!"), which I don't particularly understand. Perhaps these were removed for the sake of low redundancy.
DMMD: The Good - Extras
No glitched out achievements, which is sometimes a problem for Steam vns. Woohoo!
...
And now… You may be wondering, “Lone, how could you not like this game?” Let’s get into that.
DMMD: The Bad - Writing & Pacing
Once you reach the point where you're on a character route, the writing quality takes an insane drop. The first couple hours of DMMD are really good, engaging, and I would even say they're well paced. Before branching off to individual character routes, I really thought this game might even be an ultra late competitor into my Top 10 Games Of 2021 list, it was that good.
But when everything branches, it all falls apart. Upon entering a character route, the pacing and writing quality take such a horrendous nose dive it's enough to give someone whiplash. Characters go through the motions solely because the plot requires them to be there, with no real regard for time or filling in the gaps that we might not see on camera. For example, in one route, Aoba wakes up, heads outside, goes to a nightclub, gets sick at the nightclub, then gets taken back home and goes to sleep immediately as if an entire 9 hours has passed and not 10 minutes. This happens multiple times in every single route, but just different activities (Aoba goes outside for 30 lines, immediately returns home like the whole day passed).
Because of these pacing issues, Aoba doesn't really get too much romantic development with the characters at all, as the game wants to rush toward the climax as fast as it possibly can. I struggle to see how Aoba can fall in love with some of the characters so fast since this pacing is so breakneck. Of course, lack of romantic chemistry necessarily isn't a problem exclusive to DMMD, but it definitely is a problem.
And let's talk about that climax… In a roundabout way, so no spoilers.
Each character route is painfully short and reuses text from other character routes. A majority of them follow the exact same formula— the exact same setup, the exact same climax, instead of having unique stories for each character or having some story beats shared. And there are five character routes. You reread similar stories five times!
As a result, every route feels predictable. It's almost like if you read one, you kind of read them all, with maybe the exception of the final route which was more unique than the rest of them. Regardless, I came away from the first four routes wishing they were longer and better developed.
This also reflects poorly on the characters, but strangely, I don't actually think any of them suffered from poor writing, in part to the fact that prior to the routes branching you got a good feel for what they're about. They all get their own character arcs which are good enough. There could have been far more meat on their arcs for sure, but expecting that much from DMMD might be too much.
DMMD: The Bad - The R18
Did you expect this to be in the negative section of this writeup? Yeah, neither did I, man.
Normal people don't say this
On paper, paying $3.99 (not including tax) for an R18 patch might be understandable. I put emphasis on MIGHT, because for an outsider to visual novels, this is reasonable, but for someone who plays too many, it's unclear why JAST splits up their content like this. It certainly can't be due to Steam's guidelines, because games like NO, THANK YOU!!! and Hadaka Shitsuji exist on Steam in their fully uncensored glory, published by Mangagamer.
I don't know why I said it's unclear actually, they're definitely just doing it to get extra money. And they got mine, so I should shut up.
So you pay $3.99 for the R18 patch. Install it, put it in your game files, good to go. I'll give them points for fully uncensoring the adult content for the international release, that's nice. And the CGs look pretty great too. And then I will take away those points I gave! Because the R18 scenes ARE NOT WORTH $3.99.
Each scene is pathetically short. There are also only 1 or 2 scenes per character. Spread across five characters, DMMD has less R18 scenes in total than NO, THANK YOU!!! has for a single character in a route. On top of the scenes being few and short, for some reason the camera has a tendency to just… cut away from the CGs you spent an extra $3.99 on! Some of them only show the goods for maybe a handful of lines before cutting away! Artistic choices be damned, show me the dick I paid for.
It's like ordering a large fry from McDonald's and they only hand you 10 individual fries at the drive thru window, and then take away 3 of those fries before you pull away. At that point, if I paid for a large fry, why am I not getting it? Now remember this metaphor is about naked anime men and proceed to either get more upset or think I'm insane.
I truly think people only recommend buying the R18 patch because it adds a couple minutes of content to each painfully short route.
DMMD: The Bad - Extras
I just don't like Mink, man.
...
Okay, okay. So it's pretty clear I have my issues with this game. In fact, you might even think, "Maybe Lone doesn't like this game". And you're correct god I don't like this game ugh
But then what does it mean to drop the ball and pick it back up, as discussed in the title? We need to move onto DRAMAtical Murder re:connect!
re:connect is DMMD's fandisc that was released a little while after the game itself. A fandisc is sort of what it sounds like, but not really— rather than being made BY fans, it’s made FOR fans. Fandiscs tend to be made up of extra stories that weren’t in the base visual novel and extra content, and r:c (no one has ever abbreviated it like this but me) is just that.
To most, this would just be standard fanfare, a 6/10 experience, something fine but not remarkable. But oddly enough, I actually consider r:c to be better than its base game, to the point where r:c in my eyes is the “payoff” to DMMD. The missing half that makes DMMD good.
Why is this? Well, its extra stories basically fix everything I disliked about DMMD.
r:c: The Good - Writing & Pacing
In r:c, you’re given two options per romanceable character— to do continuations of their good end or bad end. On top of this, three more characters get their own extra stories, and Aoba himself gets his own little story as well. And all of these story continuations are actually really great.
I think part of what made DMMD popular on 2013 Tumblr other than being Baby’s First Visual Novel/BL Game is the bad ends were very wacky. Very edgy. Very messed up, you might say. In fact my general impressions of this game before playing it was that Aoba got mad dick all the time (not even close) and that this game was secretly super dark (and this is only applicable to the bad ends). So getting continuations of the bad ends is great for entertainment value, but also to just expand more on what happens in them, as most of the bad endings in DMMD start… and then just end.
The bad end expansions in r:c are edgy and wacky, but they also offer cool perspectives into the characters themselves. You learn more about the romanceable characters’ mindsets during these endings, or how Aoba himself feels. I’m trying to make this as vague as possible to not be spoilers, but esentially, the writing which was so bare in DMMD gets beefed up well. It feels like these should have been in the game in the first place, honestly, and I read on the DMMD wiki which is probably not run by anyone older than 14 that this is apparently the case— that there wasn’t enough memory space in the original game, so these bad ending expansions had to be cut. And I can believe it.
Now, as for good ending expansions, these are also really satisfying. Each expansion is a personal, UNIQUE moment between Aoba and his character of choice. That’s right, there’s no DMMD plot outline they have to follow, every expansion is completely unique to each character. It’s such a blessing. And these moments are pretty great, actually fleshing out the characters more in ways that are so good it’s actually really fucking suspicious. Like there’s no way you guys thought of these character details after the fact right? Why were they not in the base game? Did you have 1 GB of memory to make DMMD? I’m about to start crying.
So we have at minimum ten unique stories among the five characters, plus extra stories focused on other characters, that are all, again, totally unique. It almost feels insane that there’s this much unique content in the fandisc that enhances the base game so much because not only is it unique, but it’s also genuinely well written because it doesn’t have to adhere to the plot outline of DMMD.
r:c: The Good - R18
Yeah maybe you saw this coming the second time around.
The only reason why I say this is improved is because these scenes have CHOICES in them this time! This is game changing. Revolutionary, even, for DMMD. Now you get to choose how Aoba gets his back blown out. It’s basically a masterpiece.
r:c: The Good - Extras
Mink isn’t better in this game but his bad end expansion is mercifully short which is cool.
Now that I’ve finished r:c, I can say that I actually like DRAMAtical Murder— the series, not necessarily just the first game. By adding in good writing it so desperately deserved, I don’t have any issues with anything. I love the world, the characters are nice, the art is super fantastic, and there’s now a sense of satisfaction that comes with looking back at this series that I was able to finish it.
Understanding that both of these games were fantranslated back in the day and often paired together, I can sort of understand why 2013 Tumblr really lost their shit with this one. r:c has yet to see an English official translation, and since JAST’s BL game translating division, JAST BLUE, isn’t doing too well I don’t think there’s a possibility of this getting that in the future. It’s nice to hope, though, and I could see DMMD being an easier sell with r:c added to the mix.
Now, this isn’t peak fiction. DRAMAtical murder will never be the Remember11 of BL games, I’m almost more inclined to give that to NO, THANK YOU!!!. But it’s fun fiction. It’s nice fiction. In the last hours of playing, before I closed r:c never to return again, I thought, “I’m glad I played that”.
Maybe the fandisc is only good because the base game is so poor, and maybe you’re right, but I don’t care. If these stories were intended to be in the base game, then that means overall, the game’s pretty good. Call me simple minded. They just needed to Twilight Breaking Dawn it and split it into two parts.
And the latter part happens to be the better part.
Final Scores:
DRAMAtical Murder: 5/10
DRAMAtical Murder re:connect: 8/10
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