I finished V3’s story last night. Haven’t started the postgame yet though.
I managed to stumble across a major spoiler early on. Namely, the identity of the mastermind. Which makes sense why she tends to be so useless during trials and investigations and why she deliberately avoids sticking out too much.
I didn’t have the ending spoiled though.
I gotta admit, in the moment, I hated the ending. The big twist just seemed stupid to me. And to top it off, you could tell they knew people wouldn’t like it because of some of the in-game audience’s criticisms during the last Argument Armament.
Not to mention that it’s easy to misinterpret bits of the ending as a big middle finger to anyone who enjoyed the game. I understand that that’s not what they were going for, but it came across as a bit more mean-spirited to the player than I think they intended.
But the more I think about the ending, the more sense it makes. Especially since the parts that seemed most farfetched are probably Tsumugi lying or fabricating things. For example, the audition tapes are almost certainly her cosplaying.
I still would have preferred them to do things with some of the more interesting concepts presented rather than just throwing them away. The third case is the biggest example of it: you have a motive that would be interesting to see actually get used and the potential for there to be a murderer who isn’t the case’s blackened. Even the first case could have been more interesting had Kaede attempted to claim the first blood perk; it’d be interesting either way if they let her use it or if they use that moment to reveal she’s innocent, which could have made the first trial even crazier. But overall, I still enjoyed the game. It probably had my favorite cast of the main games, so all the deaths stung that much more.