Durarara!! Relay

Durarara!! Relay is a PSVita game released on 29th January 2015 and developed by Kadokawa Games. It was announced for release during the Dengeki Bunko Aki no Saiten. It is a fully-voiced visual novel game with a broad range of playable characters across each chapter of the story. The gameplay revolves around basic dialogue options and speaking to the correct characters in the overworld.

A manga adaptation of the story was published shortly before the game's release, with new chapters released periodically. However, the manga's story is much more concise compared to the game.

Synopsis
It is January in the district of Ikebukuro (Tokyo) when Mikado, Masaomi, and Anri are in the opening ceremony of the third quarter at school. In the city, Simon continues handing out leaflets from his restaurant "Russia Sushi" and Shizuo continues throwing vending machines; nothing out of the ordinary in their daily lives. In the movie theater of the 60s, Yuhei Hanejima and Ruri Hijiribe star in the movie Case Bodyguard 2: Salaryman Ninja Gu, surrounded by great expectations. And every day, Celty continues her deliveries.

Gameplay
The player must first pick what chapter of the story they want to play. However, until the main story is completed and subroutes are unlocked, the game only progresses by completing chapters in straightforward progression. There are however hidden bonuses in most chapters that can warrant a replay.

Chapters consist of a combination of progressing through dialogue and searching for the objective in the overworld. The player character will have a limited amount of "action points" (AP) and "relationship points" (RP.) If the player depletes their action points before completing the chapter, they will be met with a bad end and have to restart the chapter. Action points are depleted by talking to characters with an exclamation or question mark icon above their heads, interacting with objects that have similar icons, picking up bonus items,

and restoring relationship points. Interacting with key characters and objects will progress the chapter further towards its ending scene, however some characters and objects will only give hints as to where the player is supposed to go or prove unhelpful entirely. Certain chapters have hazards in the overworld that will erase an action point if the player walks into them.

Relationship points are unnecessary for advancing through the game and simply unlock additional dialogue-only scenes. Talking to a character with a green icon above their head will advance the relationship between them and the character currently being played. There are also places in the environment, such as the cinema, that have this icon overhead. Interacting with these places will develop the relationship between the player character and whoever happens to be in the building or develop the relationship between two other characters entirely, who have some relation to the selected area. For example, selecting the cinema may develop the relationship between Kasuka and Ruri, as they both star in the movie showing. Every character relationship has up to 3 unlockable scenes. Every two increases of the relationship level between the characters will unlock a scene between them. Naturally, a relationship point will be depleted each time a character or place with the green icon is interacted with. It will no longer be possible to interact with these characters or places once all the relationship points are depleted, so the player will have to replay the chapter or spend an action point to replenish their RP if they want to get all the relationship advances available in that chapter. The player can view unlocked scenes, as well as their current progress for each relationship, on the menu.

Story
The events of this game take place between episodes 17 and 24 of the anime's first season. The events are not canon to the anime, with certain characters meeting under different circumstances than in the show (Celty and Emilia, as well as Kadota and Chikage.) Masaomi has resumed leadership of the Yellow Scarves, still working with Horada. Saki is still hospitalised. In the main storyline - route "A" - sandstorms of unknown origin have been plaguing Ikebukuro. Unknown assailants have been attacking innocent people during these sandstorms and causing property damage. A mysterious substance has been putting people in zombie-like states and enhancing their strength to superhuman proportions. Mikado investigates the cause of these incidents. Celty has to use the full extent of her power to suppress the source of the sandstorms. Shizuo's strength is put to the test when victims of the mysterious substance gang up on him. All the while, Izaya watches from a distance deviously. There are five sub stories available by collecting extras and completing sidequests in specified chapters. The sub stories each have significantly fewer chapters than the main story. C route's story involves an outbreak of mutant crabs. In T route Anri finds Haruna corrupted by Saika's influence again and Walker comes to her aid with a supernatural ally that can grant him powers reminiscent of Mikoto Misaka from Toaru Kagaku no Railgun. B route involves a hacker within the Dollars causing trouble for Mikado and Miyoshi, with guest appearances from Aoba and Chikage. In P route, Namie comes to see Rio as a romantic rival. Finally, M route has Erika fantasising about several male characters in romantic relationships with each other, much to the chagrin of those who have to listen to her fantasies. M route is the only route where each chapter must be unlocked individually through collecting certain extras.

Fully playable
Characters playable in the overworld and through dialogue.

Dialogue-only playable characters
These characters have playable chapters but they are dialogue-only with no overworld play.

Non-playable characters
These characters don't have any playable chapters.

Soundtrack
The main theme of the game is Reason, a song by Toshiyuki Toyonaga, the voice of Mikado Ryuugamine. Reason was that it was Toyonaga's debut single and was released on December 16th 2014, one month before the game came out. The game's soundtrack includes original music pieces, some of which have the same theme as Reason and some are intended to sound similar to pieces from the show, such as Izaya and Shizuo's themes.