I'll get my positives out of the way before I get into my many negatives. The idea of the trial is good. The plan, the motive, the victim and blackened, all of that was great. Taking the characters where in Danganronpa would either be endgame deaths or survivors and making them the first deaths was great. It plays heavily with expectations.  The ending of the chapter is also great and makes me wonder how the rest of the game will go.

 However, the actual logic of the trial is all over the place.

First, let's talk about the elephant in the room. What happened to that entire hour? So Diana walks into the boiler room at 8:45, has a tussle with Wolfgang, and the generator blows up by way of lithium bomb at 9:35. Diana's explanation of the events looks as if, at most, only 5 minutes had passed. 

The moment she called Wolfgang's name, he woke up. That's like a minute, maybe minute and a half .

He confusingly stumbles and mutters about his some vague stuff about his past. That seemed to only take around two minutes. 

Wolfgang swipes at her. Thirty seconds at best. 

Diana picks up the taser and points it at him. Again, thirty seconds at best.

Then Eva drops  the lithium battery.  

What happened to the remaining 45 or so minutes??? 

They even bring it up in trail, but then it's just brushed aside.  Speaking about brushing aside, they never actually explained how Eva managed to steal the lithium battery and taser from their respective dorms. They explained how she knew about the existence of the lithium battery and taser...but, wait a second. Why would she assume that Desmond's blackmail quote meant he had weapons in his dorm? The motive was about secrets, not what was in their dorms. Not only that, but HOW DID SHE STEAL THE STUFF. The game just explains how she knew about the items, but not how she got them, and used her knowing about them as proof she took it. 

I assumed they were going the route of because they all distrusted her that they stayed away from her long enough for her to take the things she needed without being noticed, but that just never happened. As far as the narrative is concerned, she has the items and how she got them doesn't matter, despite the fact her method of retrieval being a core element of pinning her as the blackened. 

Also, one last thing, but this one is minor. 

How did the boiler room door lock? So, Eva turned the lock around. How did she do that, they never explain. But,  the lock was turned so it would lock from the outside, trapping whoever's inside. But who locked the door? Doors don't just automatically lock.  Diana opening it meant that it wasn't locked so she could get inside, and Eva couldn't lock it cause she was at the game tournament.  Did the door just lock itself?

Also, no one pointed out Wolfgang's portrait. Just thought that was weird. 

The first half of the trail was alright, but once we get to the second half, it just turns into a mess of logical fallacies. The ideas are there for an amazing trail, but the actual logic isn't thought through. Hopefully they learn from this and the first trial is just a hiccup as it's the first real trial. 

One last thing, that bullet hell minigame needs fixing. Just give it a small square hitbox like most bullet hell games and don't make the hitbox the size of the entire character and it'll fix so many issues with it. 

I agree with the criticism about the huge time gap. That plot hole immediately jumped up at me at first.

During the later parts of the trial, they heavily imply Eva needed to know the EXACT second Diana walked into the room so she can trigger the trap right after. It kind of makes me think whether there was some miscommunication among the writers surrounding the evidence.

It would make much more sense if the note Diana received told her to go there in the middle of the tournament. Or if the trap was triggered around 9:10-ish at the latest.

I honestly also have a bit of an issue with the trial asking me to remember one liners that happened outside of the investigation real time hours ago, personally. Plus some of the solutions to Non-Stop debates seem to just... derail the conversation to an unrelated topic someone happened to mention which felt a bit moon logic-y to me? But it may just be a skill issue tbh.

Also I 100% expected them to mention how similar Diana and Wolfgang's mom look and for it to be the reason for Wolfgang's hostile reaction (given the blackmail and Eva knowing about it and blah blah blah).

But hey, it's a first chapter and the rest of it is absolutely stunning, so I guess I can kinda let it slide...

They also need the fix the Non-Stop Debates because a lot of gameplay aspects are just poorly designed.

Like the Truth Bullets. Why are they so disorganized? Why is the image of the "internal end" of the cable clearly WAY TOO LARGE to fit through the grate (and inconsistent with how its shown during the closing argument)? Why does the bullet never specify which end is the "internal end", a term that likely differs from region to region? Why are Wenona, Ulysses, Eloise and Desmond's alibis under the "Blackout" truth bullet?? Just MAKE IT ITS OWN BULLET. I don't remember the Storage Closets bullet ever being used so it's clear that not every single bullet has to be used during a class trial. They can just be purely informative.

Which comes to my second point. The trial relies way too much on the player's memory. I'm not gonna remember who initially suggested the time for the competition, or who didn't speak during a certain story segment 4 hours ago or that someone was holding this object during this point of the story which was actually a device to tune in to the cameras situated around the entire school (because obviously that's not a stretch to assume at all). A lot of segments during the game were literally just guessing trial and error because while I knew what information they were asking for, I simply didn't remember because details like that are easy to slip from the mind hours later, and there were no informative truth bullets to help. I'm not Makoto Naegi.

There are also some more minor creases I would've liked to have smoothed out. Such as clarifying when the culprit actually fired the Taser Gun (or clarifying that they even shot it at all) or explaining better how the cable managed to fall through the entire ventilation shaft when the intact end would've likely been heavier than the burnt end. Too many things just get glossed over during the trial (or worse, brought up then prompty ignored without resolution).

I still really liked this chapter, and want to like it more still. This is the most ambitious fan adaption of Danganronpa to date (and the only one that's actually been developed into a game as far as I know). The characters are enjoyable and diverse (and extend past the tired japanese tropes and stereotypes that Spike Chunsoft repeats in every single game), the actual storytelling and progression of the Class Trial is interesting and engaging (I certainly mentally ruled out everyone in the Videogame Tourney as a suspect right off the bat). They just need to fix the many holes in their logic because while a Class Trial is certainly a spectacle, it's also supposed to make sense.