At its core, Danganronpa is a melting pot of various philosophical puzzles that pulls together in such a way that it connected with me on a very deep, very real level. Without giving the ending away, the ultimate fate of all the characters (including Monokuma) left me more than a little shaken, and any game that's able to connect with me at that kind of primal level must be worth the investment.
You can leave this high school either as a murderer or as a corpse. The line between friendship and rivalry is blurred. You look into the soul of the characters where hope gets replaced by despair in an instant. This is an excellent morbid surreal whodunit.
A visual novel videogame which is a mixture of detective game aka murder mystery investigation and daily school life. Its strength are the well written story and characters atop the interesting cases that are intense. Some describe this as mixture of “Ace Attorney” and “Zero Escape”. The game is set in the famous (fictional) Hopes Peak Academy school. It is the most prestige school that exists and studying there grants you great recognition and opens all doors. But there is a catch. They do not take anyone and the only way to get invited is to have an ultimate talent and get scouted. Be it sports, science, writing or something else you need to be a prodigy. There is one exception as there is a lottery for one Ultimate Lucky student which is randomly chosen out of normal students. Our protagonist Makoto Naegi is the lucky one and the game starts on his first day when he enters the school where he faints. When he awakened he and the other 14 members of his class are trapped in a real nightmare. The headmaster in form of a seemingly robotic bear Monokuma explains to them that they are trapped and the only way to escape is killing a fellow student. But this is not battle royal as you have to get away with the murder undetected and there are rules that are enforced. After a dead body is found all students investigate the crime scene and after some time passes there is a class trial where the evidence is analysed and the culprit is decided by mayor vote. If they get the right person the culprit is executed. If the majority is wrong everyone except the culprit is executed. This is the setting of the game. I especially like the writing. Everyone is caught between hope and despair while you do not know who you can trust. The story has great twists and uses the characters excellent. Everyone is unique has their own motivations and values. I could understand everyone and they avoided the traps of making anyone one dimensional. Also the voice actors are great and near perfectly chosen. The gameplay is like I said a visual novel and less a true videogame. You wander the halls of Hope Academy spending time with fellow students and investigate murder cases when those happen. For the cases you collect evidence called truth bullets you use in class trials to fire at arguments (Visual system for discussions), present them and have some mini games. Those trials are intense and a highlight as the truth comes slowly out. Also Monokuma is a sadist that enjoys making your life more miserable. Maybe you will find out the truth behind everything. The graphics are dividing. I find them nice but they are 2,5 dimensional and look like the scenery books for children that unfold by opening it. The soundtrack is fantastic and enhances the atmosphere. Like I said the voice actors are fantastic. Overall this is one of the best Vita games and I fully recommend it. It succeeds in creating emotional moments, has strong characters I care for and intense class trials. An easy 10/10.
Easily one of the most intriguing games I've played in quite some time. It’s as if Persona and Phoenix Wright got together and had a little demon spawn that I didn't want to put down -- no matter how disturbing it can be at times.
Don’t let the name or presentation put you off: this is an impressive piece of interactive storytelling that gets more right than most other games with 10 times its budget.
With its twisted tale of murder and high school gone wrong, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc weaves a devilishly addictive tale you'll want to see through to the end.
It's a good idea from NIS America to widen access to visual novels out of Japan, as long as they make good decisions. And they don't. The publisher has maybe chosen something too spooky for the Western players. Only translated in English, DanganRonpa : Trigger Happy Havoc definitely forgets some who don't want to play 30 hours like that. The others could be interested in the crazy story but it's far too slow. Players have to read lines and lines of discussion before reaching, at last, a gameplay scene. And don't expect the visuals, in bad taste, to enhanced this not so good assessment.
I actually hate the first Danganronpa game, and I consider the anime to be the superior version to watch simply because it gets rid of a lot of the fluff that this game has. Sure, you don't really get the character interactions, but largely I consider the 1st cast of characters to be the weakest of the bunch, and honestly kinda not worth your time.Danganronpa has a super interesting premise of a killing game in which a number of contestants compete to see who can get away with murder. The problem with the first game is that the cast of characters and number of cases that are interesting are super minimal and tend to drag on for way too long. This doesn't helped when the final case is honestly just a super long exposition dump that kinda starts midway through the game till the finish. Add together that only half the cases are mildly interesting, and most of which don't have an actual good pay off led me to kinda hate the first game all the more.What is perhaps more annoying though, is that you kinda just end up growing attached to some of the characters and get invested to see who lives or dies, and while that design is purposeful, the execution (ironically) is not. Not to say that victims and killers don't get a fair spotlight, but if you don't do free time events or choose the wrong characters to get to know you end up with a limited amount of info on all the characters save for Kirigiri. I do have to name drop Kirigiri as a cast member, as she gets the lion's share of character development throughout the game, and it's honestly kinda jarring once you look at how much screen time other characters get. Add this fact with some of the other characters you see throughout the end not even getting a characterization kinda makes it all the more hurtful to realize just how wasteful the first Danganronpa is with it's cast of **** writing isn't the only problem with this game though, as the class trials honestly have way way too much filler to really be regard as important, and would have been better to streamline. I shouldn't have to play hangman or time buttons to get the truth out, and the constant breaking of flow from conversation just weakens the pacing all the more.Really I'm just kinda frustrated at what the original Danganronpa could have been, and how it failed to meet with my expectations that the anime had already shown me. While I do certainly like the series, I truly believe that the anime is simply a better experience as it keeps better pacing and gets rid of a lot of unnecessary fluff. Danganronpa is a good series, but the starting point is just too rough to recommend off hand.
SummaryFifteen super-elite students have been locked in the school and they are forced to live in this isolated community. There is a special rule for the students: only murderers can graduate from the school, and this rule turns the prosperous school into the despairing place. The protagonist, however, does not follow this rule. He investigate...