During my everlasting research about mystery murder games, Danganronpa was a name that I always stumbled across. I finally decided to try it after seeing a massive discount on a Playstation Sale and the game positively surprised me
The game is a visual novel with a pre-determined path as the player passively watches the story unfolds, doesn’t seem very exciting in the surface but theDuring my everlasting research about mystery murder games, Danganronpa was a name that I always stumbled across. I finally decided to try it after seeing a massive discount on a Playstation Sale and the game positively surprised me
The game is a visual novel with a pre-determined path as the player passively watches the story unfolds, doesn’t seem very exciting in the surface but the narrative is so freaking good that gets you hooked from the very start.
A little rundown of the story: fifteen students find themselves captive in an school building until Monokuma, a mysterious talking plush bear – you heard it right, shows up and explains that the students must murder each other without getting discovered in order to be allowed to return to the outside world. So every chapter deals with a murder, the subsequent investigation and the class trial. Besides each murder stories that is also the mystery behind Monokuma, the school and the outside world in a compelling and addicting narrative that only Japanese storytelling could provide us.
The game works on an anime style with still images and dialogue boxes as the storytelling media (as I said it is a visual novel). During the period known as “Free Time” the player is given freedom to interact with one of the characters and learn more about them; basically you walk toward someone and press X to engage conversation. Here is the weakest part about the game: the Free Time should be more developed and at least give us more exciting things to do. Don’t get me wrong the conversations are entertaining and have that typical distinctive anime style with a bunch of humor thrown in between but ultimately they are meaningless to how the plot unfolds.
The true highlight of Danganronpa is the Class Trials, where you gather the clues from the investigation and discuss with your classmates whodunit. The best and most utilized mechanic is the Non-Stop Debate: as the dialogue unravels you have to pinpoint the contradiction/lie in someone’s speech and use either a clue you gathered from the investigation or something a character said as the correct counter-argument; the difficulty range from easy to straight up guessing as some contradictions are a tiny detail that you pay no mind. The class trials have other mechanics like the Hangman’s Gambit (basically a hangman minigame… this sucks), the Bullet-Time Battle (a rhythm frantic battle where you must press the correct button at precise times to win) and, another one of my favorites, the Closing Argument where you revisits everything that happened during the crime using the correct panels to describe the murders.
A warning: Class Trial are long as f*ck. They take at least one hour and a half, you can save anytime you want but I like to do the trials in one sitting.
There is a break between the investigation and the beginning of the trial. After you get the final clue the game sends you to a corridor, opening the door ahead triggers the trial, what I like to do here is to revisit every clue and see what I can make of the crime (how it happened, my main suspect and whatnot) before having the game unfolding it in the Class Trial itself. And don’t be fooled with the cases, although the first one murderer is really obvious and retarded the subsequent cases are absolutely nothing like it and leave you completely in the dark. I would say that from the third case onwards I had little to no idea of what happened.
And the writing of the cases is the best thing about Danganronpa, as they are surprising and really clever. The game is all about the narrative honestly so if you happen to hear a spoiler your experience is basically ruined.
The second game works just like the first but in a different setting and with a different cast. If one thing, the cases of the second installment have slightly better writing although the overall main mystery of the first one was better. Class Trials are much better though as they add more mechanics and improve old ones: for the Non-Stop Debate you can also consent (instead of just counter-argument) and the Hangman’s Gambit turns into an awesome minigame now.
Danganronpa really surprised me with its amazing narrative. I’m a 100% gameplay guy but even then this story based game managed to captivate me. It’s basically an interactive book where you press X to pass text boxes and while I do think that is a lot of room for improvement (mostly the Free Time sections) I assure you the story is so much f*cking better than any American triple A game could ever dream of.… Expand
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