Note: this is a review specifically for DDLC+ content. I rated the base game of five out of five and if you want to see why you can click here. I'm going to assume that you've read that before you read this one.
https://channel3.gg/post?id=278398
The highs: it's always fun seeing more of our favorite characters in a context that's not quite so awful. I really like all of the extra features as far as the gallery and the music player, especially since I'm currently working on a YouTube video about this game and it makes my job a lot easier. I also appreciated that this isn't just a straight up port of the original game, but they actually had to rebuild the game from the ground up in a new engine and they made the graphics better, and the additional content looks beautiful.
The mids: the side stories are OK. But it's sort of like the Star Wars prequels where because you already know that things are going to go completely off the rails it kind of feels like a lot of the stuff doesn't matter, especially because the protagonist from the first base game is nowhere to be seen here. A large part of what made the base game work was the fact that you were actually taking part in the story so while yes, it was technically more of a visual novel, the game did a good job of distracting you from that. Here it's basically just a visual novel about cute anime girls, which for me personally was never really the point
The lows: I really, really hated the meta-verse stuff. It makes the side content completely meaningless because you eventually learn that the side stories take place in like an alternate universe, where Monika was never given self-awareness. In general, I feel like in popular media over the last 5 to 10 years, there's been a huge push to make everything part of some cinematic universe, and I just felt like it was totally unnecessary here, specifically because DDLC was such a character driven story in such a small setting, which is part of what made it work so well. I didn't actually get the plus version of the game until after fully completing the base game because the base game was just such an amazing experience, but as soon as I started encountering all of this Multiverse stuff I immediately lost interest
The other thing this does is it makes all of your experiences in the base game meaningless because in the base game, everything took place within the literature club for the most part and even Monika being a self-aware AI really was just motivated by a desire to be with the player. The Multiverse stuff introduces all of this added lore that'a like she's trying to actually escape to save parallel versions of her friends that are in the "real world" in some other universe and it's just like what the hell is even going on anymore. It's not that the additional law is poorly written, and in fact, I think it's actually quite well done. I just didn't really see the point. This has the additional impact of making everything from the base game suffer from "it was all a dream" status where it's like even within the context of the original game now everything that you did was meaningless
Now honestly, you really don't need to go through any of this and the vast majority of people won't be able to find this content unless they're specifically looking up spoiler guys online, but still that's kind of beside the point
I guess in summary, the Multiverse stuff really takes away from your experiences in the base game, but it's so well hidden that it doesn't really matter all that much in the end, and the extra content has enough heart that I think the plus version deserves some credit
