Danganronpa 1-2 Reload

This is the first time I've played the Danganronpa series. At first, it didn't attract my attention to play it, but seeing it closely, I begin to understand what it's about, the game system reminds me of the Ace Attorney series about trials, but This time it is about a violent trial, what I liked the most about it are the executions of the characters, totally brigid, recommendable.

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 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 ****), 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 **** 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.

My numerical rating is for Dangonronpa 1; I couldn't finish the 2nd one. Compared to the first two Zero Escape games, Danganronpa isn't nearly as intelligent, mature, or believable. But at least it's not absolute trash (like the 3rd Zero Escape game). The setting is a school where students are trapped and they must kill someone, without getting caught, to escape. You'll spend most of your time investigating murder scenes and then determining who the murder is. The character interactions, mysteries surrounding the school, and murder investigations kept me interested. The character writing is relatively good when a character isn't doing something that involves the main plot. But when the plot demands it, the characters become uncharacteristic or outright stupid. As for the school's mystery, much of it becomes obvious due to various hints given by the antagonist, but the last few bits aren't made clear until the end. The final secrets aren't very profound or thought-provoking, but they were interesting enough. Investigating murders is good. Finding a clue and having the other characters have no idea what it meant while I was able to deduce exactly what it meant felt good. It's too bad that investigations are basically on rails: you're not able to proceed until you gather every clue, which made investigations seem fake and manufactured. The worst part of the game is the class trials. After all evidence is gathered, you go into a courtroom setting and argue about the evidence in a very tedious and repetitive way until you get to the conclusion. There's many issues with this. There's only one conclusion to reach, so you can't misinterpret the evidence except when built into the plot. Difficulty isn't based around logic, but shooting, rhythm, and spelling minigames. And when you have the option to make a choice, such as bringing forth evidence to disprove an argument, it requires reading comprehension more than reasoning; you must simply remember the details of a piece of evidence that you previously about. I felt like I was in elementary school again. Failure isn't possible. If you fail in a shooting minigame or choose the wrong option too much, you're automatically chosen as the culprit, even if most characters suspect someone else, and that section of the trial restarts immediately. For the few times I failed at making a choice, it was because I didn't provide the evidence in the right order. Unfortunately, the trials like to beat to death insignificant pieces of evidence before they move on to important evidence, which normally overrides the prior evidence. So even though you know exactly who the murderer is, and know which pieces of evidence proves it, you must first wait until everyone makes incorrect conclusions about each piece of insignificant evidence. After the group comes to a conclusion, you must irritatingly do it all over again in storyboard format. You must match up somewhat-vague pictures without descriptions to a storyboard so that the protagonist can restate the events for awesome's sake. Or maybe to remind everyone of what you talked about for the last hour, since the game seems to want people to improve their reading comprehension. So it's an okay game, but the main gameplay mechanic, the trial system, isn't interesting to an intelligent adult or anyone else who already has good reading comprehension. It it weren't for the murdering, it would be a great learning tool for elementary or middle schools. I then played the post-game mode, which is essentially a mobile game where you collect materials and build robots. You can also go on trips with the characters during your free time, but your relationships with them don't progress beyond becoming friends. There were no rewards that I could see and the gameplay was incredibly monotonous, so I quit after a few hours. And then I moved on to Dangonronpa 2. I was expecting improvements in the characters and plot, but I was wrong. Dangonronpa 2 gets even more unrealistic/unbelievable and the characters are dumber. After completing the first trial, which is so long it needs an intermission, I couldn't take it any more and quit. The first murder motive was simply stupid, dumber than any from Danganronpa 1. There was no intelligence behind most people's arguments, and all the characters treated this more like a game than real life (when compared to the first game). Also, the minigame variety and difficulty is ramped up, so if you were annoyed by the first game's mini games, you'll be twice as annoyed by these. All of the clues and choices are also much more vague this time around. So I ended up having to deduce which options the creators expected me to choose rather than the ones that made sense. I feel a bit deceived that this was advertised as an intelligent well-told story. It's simply not, unless you're moved by elementary-school writing. Don't waste your time unless you're okay with works aimed at kids.

Why is this a game? If I want a manga I'll read a manga. There's no interactivity in this game. The sounds are horrendously bad - just random squawking. There's nothing to do.

The game is trash as is anyone who thinks it deserves better than 1/10. Anyone who likes this game should come with a warning that they are absolutely not fit for society. People should have something to signal that they are a danganronpa fan so humanity knows to give them a wide berth and avoid any contact with them.