BassForever
Member
This thread will openly spoil both Danganronpa 1 and 2. If you haven't played either and are clicking this to see someone's opinion if you wanna check it out the short answer is I don't recommend it. Last warning open spoilers abound below.
I guess I'll start with a mini lttp on DR1 and my thoughts on it. Danganronpa was a series I was really excited to get into, murder mysteries are some of my favorite stories, the set up sounded really enticing, and the promise of a mixture of action gameplay and rhythm based gameplay truly sounded like a lot of things I liked coming together. When I first started playing it I was on board, the set up gave a lot of promise especially the scene where everyone see's their motivation "I WONDER WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FAMILY GRADUATE TO FIND OUT" and like a sucker I was manipulated into liking the idol girl before she was violently murdered. The mystery itself I was able to quickly piece of most it together but it was the first case so that's fairly acceptable and I was excited for the first trial to take part. That's where the seams started to come undone.
I was playing on action hard logic hard and quickly I discovered the only way the game knows how to make action or logic hard is to have the cursor fly around the screen like the player is drunk and throwing lots of obviously incorrect evidence into your gun. As each new minigame or mechanic got introduced, the more I found myself increasingly frustrated since if I turned the action to a lower difficulty they were more time wasters then fun but on the higher difficulty they were far too frustrating to enjoy. Compounded by the fact the murder itself was fairly simple to figure out but I had to wade though tons of interruptions, pointless tangents, and stupid mini games to get to the point where I could actually show how the crime happened. When Leon was executed at the end of the case I already barely knew him and any sympathy for his semi self defense kill was rendered moot by how much needless effort it took to get him convicted.
Each subsequent chapter the pattern began to emerge fairly quickly, because of the games faux dating sim elements where the player can choose who to spend time with the characters I was starting to like were often completely unrelated to the murder victims or killers. To try and create feelings in the player the game frequently gives characters who are about to be killed or be the killer forced extra screen time so that the player is manipulated into feeling something for them when they die. This means half the cast frequently comes across as completely one dimensional outside of the characters who go on to become main survivors (Detective girl, Byakuya, library girl) or as said the ones who'll be featured as a victim or a killer in the upcoming case. This wouldn't matter so much if the mysteries were clever and hard to figure out, but when I was guessing either the killer or victim accurately before a murder even happened I quickly found myself growing bored and frustrated. This issue peaked in case 4 when I instantly guessed Sakura would be the killer or victim and one moment of seeing her dead body said "she killed herself this is a closed room mystery" and was 100% correct. At this point I was only powering though to see the plot explanation for why all this was happening.
Oh boy... the plot. I will admit the twist of the Juunko the player met in the intro being a twin sister to trick the audience was fairly clever, same with using that same dead body later to create a murder, but once Juunko started explaining why this was happening I honestly couldn't believe what I was seeing. Magic despair caused the whole world to go crazy and Juunko despite being some random 15 year old high school girl was able to set up this death game to crush the last remnants of hope by showing the bright future slowly kill each other off. Now I have a pretty high tolerance for out there plot twist, but magic despair breaks that tolerance barrier, doubly so since the game makes little effort to actually explain how such a thing is possible and as the credits began to roll I starred at the screen wondering if I somehow had gotten a joke ending.
So needless to say when Danganronpa 2 came out I had zero interest in playing it, I ended up yolo purchasing it cheap used at gamestop since maybe with a sequel they could fine tune some of the issues I had with the original. I should have learned from the first game, there is nothing but despair to be found.
Quickly into DR2 the same issues with the original quickly popped up in the sequel. The cast was collectively one dimensional and boring outside of the few main cast members (Nagito and Chiaki) along with whoever would be featured as either a killer or victim in the upcoming case. DR2 added another frustrating feature in the form of an in game tomagatchi that you can only raise by running around the island making the fast travel option completely pointless and needlessly padding the games length. The stupid thing doesn't even alert you when it poops so you have to stop every 90 seconds to make sure you clean up after the thing, ignoring it and letting it die over and over gets you an annoying BEEP BEEP sound when it's reborn/hatches/dies. The minigames were somehow even worse and there were more of them. Special shout out to the mind snow boarding thing which just sucked and went on for like 5 minutes. Combine that again with largely predictable cases outside of case 5 which despite making use of nonsensical super luck to happen was actually a fairly clever set up. The case works only because Chiaka and Nagito are the only two characters the player gets extended connection time with outside of free time so having them be the "victim" and "killer" made the ending fairly emotional which was the second time I actually gave a rats ass for a character death in a very long time.
But once again, this game completely falls apart in it's finale when it attempts to explain whats happening. Though most of the game Nagito and his insane hope ramblings are a constant reminder of the terrible back bone that's supposed to hold this franchise together, but the final trial truly takes that half broken glass back bone and shatters it into a million pieces. It wasn't just that magical despair took over the world, but Juunko the antagonist from the first game is actually the root of all despair... and somehow this 15 year old girl managed to infect MILLIONS OF PEOPLE with magic despair by manipulating a bunch of loser high school kids. Somehow our new cast all became infected with magic despair off screen and even went so far as to connect parts of Juunko's body to themselves to keep her will alive... they're all inside a vr video game made by the survivors of the first game in an attempt to rehabilitate them... a game infected with a virus that caused ai juunko to take over the game... and Hajime is able to save the day by going super sayian and creating his own future...................
And to further add insult to injury, leading up to this the game starts trying to be "clever" by having the characters read the actual plot of the series and say "this is stupid something like this could never happen" and "if we're in a video game does that mean my words are appearing on a text box" and "if we don't include a place like this people wouldn't believe this is possible (talking about giant animal robots that serve pointlessly as guards to block off various islands). So not only does Danganronpa 2 have bad gameplay and an awful story, it actively insults the player for sticking with it's nonsensical plot. What's worse is the games ending has a "they'll stay on this island in hopes that they're friends will wake up from their coma" which okay, fine, maybe dying in the game doesn't mean you die in real life but have a slim chance of recovery... why the fuck would you ever let Chef guy, Peko, Mikan, Ghundam, or Nagito ever come back to life when they actively attempted/succeeding in murdering people. It also makes this game feel completely irrelevant when the magic despair plot line is being resolved by the first games cast off screen and the first games cast has to bail out the dr2 cast for being mostly terrible minus SSJ Hajime in the last 5 seconds.
So is there anything I did like in this games? Well I'll admit the sound tracks are good the first game's in particular is outstanding. The art style is very striking and fun with everything bouncing up like paper puppets. Though I didn't find much of either game funny I did laugh at Nagito's "it's called recycling it's better then throwing it out with the rest of the trash" and at the games deliberate attempt to make Sonia Nevermind into the perfect anti waifu (not being virgin, doing tons of lewd things off camera that everyone irl saw, falling for Ghundam). I also appreciate the game being a good value with lots of bonus modes and content for people who want more hours out of their game even if I'm not going to check them out. I also smirked at the blatant advertisement for despair girls that Hajime said "I really want to get this game" which was a far better meta joke then anything they did in the finale.
So in the end, despite how much I want to like Danganronpa, the terrible story line and mediocre gameplay really hold it back. I know the two ongoing anime are supposed to clear up a lot of the loose ends from these games and that V3 is basically a soft reboot. I'm not sure if I'm going to watch the anime though I may play V3 in a few years if I find a cheap copy since my desire for murder mystery games over rides my frustrations with DR.
One final thought/frustration I have is... why don't these games make any attempt to make despair seem like a positive? Juunko is clearly bat shit crazy but when the game is trying to have the DR2 cast in a moral dilemma of hope vs despair endings the game doesn't really do a good job of giving the cast a reason to want to go with the despair route, and it gives zero explanation why anyone became the ultimate despair in the first place. Especially Hajime and Nagito the former who you'd think would want to fight back after seeing his fellow not ultimate's commit mass suicide for Juunko's entertainment and ultimate wanker Nagito's love of hope. I wish I could get what people saw in Danganronpa since it has such a passionate fanbase, I just don't think either game is particularly good they're both 5/10 at best, a fairly average experience that for what little they get right they get a lot wrong.
I guess I'll start with a mini lttp on DR1 and my thoughts on it. Danganronpa was a series I was really excited to get into, murder mysteries are some of my favorite stories, the set up sounded really enticing, and the promise of a mixture of action gameplay and rhythm based gameplay truly sounded like a lot of things I liked coming together. When I first started playing it I was on board, the set up gave a lot of promise especially the scene where everyone see's their motivation "I WONDER WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FAMILY GRADUATE TO FIND OUT" and like a sucker I was manipulated into liking the idol girl before she was violently murdered. The mystery itself I was able to quickly piece of most it together but it was the first case so that's fairly acceptable and I was excited for the first trial to take part. That's where the seams started to come undone.
I was playing on action hard logic hard and quickly I discovered the only way the game knows how to make action or logic hard is to have the cursor fly around the screen like the player is drunk and throwing lots of obviously incorrect evidence into your gun. As each new minigame or mechanic got introduced, the more I found myself increasingly frustrated since if I turned the action to a lower difficulty they were more time wasters then fun but on the higher difficulty they were far too frustrating to enjoy. Compounded by the fact the murder itself was fairly simple to figure out but I had to wade though tons of interruptions, pointless tangents, and stupid mini games to get to the point where I could actually show how the crime happened. When Leon was executed at the end of the case I already barely knew him and any sympathy for his semi self defense kill was rendered moot by how much needless effort it took to get him convicted.
Each subsequent chapter the pattern began to emerge fairly quickly, because of the games faux dating sim elements where the player can choose who to spend time with the characters I was starting to like were often completely unrelated to the murder victims or killers. To try and create feelings in the player the game frequently gives characters who are about to be killed or be the killer forced extra screen time so that the player is manipulated into feeling something for them when they die. This means half the cast frequently comes across as completely one dimensional outside of the characters who go on to become main survivors (Detective girl, Byakuya, library girl) or as said the ones who'll be featured as a victim or a killer in the upcoming case. This wouldn't matter so much if the mysteries were clever and hard to figure out, but when I was guessing either the killer or victim accurately before a murder even happened I quickly found myself growing bored and frustrated. This issue peaked in case 4 when I instantly guessed Sakura would be the killer or victim and one moment of seeing her dead body said "she killed herself this is a closed room mystery" and was 100% correct. At this point I was only powering though to see the plot explanation for why all this was happening.
Oh boy... the plot. I will admit the twist of the Juunko the player met in the intro being a twin sister to trick the audience was fairly clever, same with using that same dead body later to create a murder, but once Juunko started explaining why this was happening I honestly couldn't believe what I was seeing. Magic despair caused the whole world to go crazy and Juunko despite being some random 15 year old high school girl was able to set up this death game to crush the last remnants of hope by showing the bright future slowly kill each other off. Now I have a pretty high tolerance for out there plot twist, but magic despair breaks that tolerance barrier, doubly so since the game makes little effort to actually explain how such a thing is possible and as the credits began to roll I starred at the screen wondering if I somehow had gotten a joke ending.
So needless to say when Danganronpa 2 came out I had zero interest in playing it, I ended up yolo purchasing it cheap used at gamestop since maybe with a sequel they could fine tune some of the issues I had with the original. I should have learned from the first game, there is nothing but despair to be found.
Quickly into DR2 the same issues with the original quickly popped up in the sequel. The cast was collectively one dimensional and boring outside of the few main cast members (Nagito and Chiaki) along with whoever would be featured as either a killer or victim in the upcoming case. DR2 added another frustrating feature in the form of an in game tomagatchi that you can only raise by running around the island making the fast travel option completely pointless and needlessly padding the games length. The stupid thing doesn't even alert you when it poops so you have to stop every 90 seconds to make sure you clean up after the thing, ignoring it and letting it die over and over gets you an annoying BEEP BEEP sound when it's reborn/hatches/dies. The minigames were somehow even worse and there were more of them. Special shout out to the mind snow boarding thing which just sucked and went on for like 5 minutes. Combine that again with largely predictable cases outside of case 5 which despite making use of nonsensical super luck to happen was actually a fairly clever set up. The case works only because Chiaka and Nagito are the only two characters the player gets extended connection time with outside of free time so having them be the "victim" and "killer" made the ending fairly emotional which was the second time I actually gave a rats ass for a character death in a very long time.
But once again, this game completely falls apart in it's finale when it attempts to explain whats happening. Though most of the game Nagito and his insane hope ramblings are a constant reminder of the terrible back bone that's supposed to hold this franchise together, but the final trial truly takes that half broken glass back bone and shatters it into a million pieces. It wasn't just that magical despair took over the world, but Juunko the antagonist from the first game is actually the root of all despair... and somehow this 15 year old girl managed to infect MILLIONS OF PEOPLE with magic despair by manipulating a bunch of loser high school kids. Somehow our new cast all became infected with magic despair off screen and even went so far as to connect parts of Juunko's body to themselves to keep her will alive... they're all inside a vr video game made by the survivors of the first game in an attempt to rehabilitate them... a game infected with a virus that caused ai juunko to take over the game... and Hajime is able to save the day by going super sayian and creating his own future...................
And to further add insult to injury, leading up to this the game starts trying to be "clever" by having the characters read the actual plot of the series and say "this is stupid something like this could never happen" and "if we're in a video game does that mean my words are appearing on a text box" and "if we don't include a place like this people wouldn't believe this is possible (talking about giant animal robots that serve pointlessly as guards to block off various islands). So not only does Danganronpa 2 have bad gameplay and an awful story, it actively insults the player for sticking with it's nonsensical plot. What's worse is the games ending has a "they'll stay on this island in hopes that they're friends will wake up from their coma" which okay, fine, maybe dying in the game doesn't mean you die in real life but have a slim chance of recovery... why the fuck would you ever let Chef guy, Peko, Mikan, Ghundam, or Nagito ever come back to life when they actively attempted/succeeding in murdering people. It also makes this game feel completely irrelevant when the magic despair plot line is being resolved by the first games cast off screen and the first games cast has to bail out the dr2 cast for being mostly terrible minus SSJ Hajime in the last 5 seconds.
So is there anything I did like in this games? Well I'll admit the sound tracks are good the first game's in particular is outstanding. The art style is very striking and fun with everything bouncing up like paper puppets. Though I didn't find much of either game funny I did laugh at Nagito's "it's called recycling it's better then throwing it out with the rest of the trash" and at the games deliberate attempt to make Sonia Nevermind into the perfect anti waifu (not being virgin, doing tons of lewd things off camera that everyone irl saw, falling for Ghundam). I also appreciate the game being a good value with lots of bonus modes and content for people who want more hours out of their game even if I'm not going to check them out. I also smirked at the blatant advertisement for despair girls that Hajime said "I really want to get this game" which was a far better meta joke then anything they did in the finale.
So in the end, despite how much I want to like Danganronpa, the terrible story line and mediocre gameplay really hold it back. I know the two ongoing anime are supposed to clear up a lot of the loose ends from these games and that V3 is basically a soft reboot. I'm not sure if I'm going to watch the anime though I may play V3 in a few years if I find a cheap copy since my desire for murder mystery games over rides my frustrations with DR.
One final thought/frustration I have is... why don't these games make any attempt to make despair seem like a positive? Juunko is clearly bat shit crazy but when the game is trying to have the DR2 cast in a moral dilemma of hope vs despair endings the game doesn't really do a good job of giving the cast a reason to want to go with the despair route, and it gives zero explanation why anyone became the ultimate despair in the first place. Especially Hajime and Nagito the former who you'd think would want to fight back after seeing his fellow not ultimate's commit mass suicide for Juunko's entertainment and ultimate wanker Nagito's love of hope. I wish I could get what people saw in Danganronpa since it has such a passionate fanbase, I just don't think either game is particularly good they're both 5/10 at best, a fairly average experience that for what little they get right they get a lot wrong.
