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[SPOILERS] Dangan Ronpa 2 Spoiler Thread | Aloha, Despair!

MSMrRound

Member
Island Mode ticket trips

I stuck to theatre for quite a lot of mine.

Just off the top of my head..what I went with...

Nekomaru is pretty solid with Theatre. His picks are "Sports movie", "Salty popcorn", "Go to toilet" (of course)

Peko's was "3D", "Animal movie"

Hiyoko: "Caramel popcorn", "Horror movie"

Souda: "Salty popcorn", "Action movie"

Gundham: "Curry popcorn", "Animal movie"

Fuyuhiko: Yakuza film, 3D

Nagito: Mystery movie


Jabberwock Park

-Teruteru: Find a spot and rest

Beach

-Mikan: "Bury her", "Collect seashell"
-Miharu: "Take everything off" !!!?!? Wow Miharu.

Library
-Twogami: "Search for treasure!" Can't rmb what the other one was, but it was pretty reliable too.

Amusement Park

-Chiaki: "This place is interesting!", "Hold hands"

Feel free to add on if anyone got any Island Mode tips as well.

I had to run Island Mode 4 times (first time was to gather remaining hope fragments/level up some skills), and subsequent runs you can only max Usami love gauge with 5 people at a time, so you need a further 3 runs (with all Monomi requests fulfilled)
 

Phocks

Member
I hope the cast of DR2 gets revisited again in the future. The twist the the crew is Despairhound was really cool. I want to see everyone's mismatched Junko parts.
 

LiK

Member
Did anyone else have to pause when they got to this line?

yea, looked like the dude is totally fucking her corpse in that shot too.

the reaction by everyone after that was great tho.

I stuck to theatre for quite a lot of mine.

Just off the top of my head..what I went with...

Nekomaru is pretty solid with Theatre. His picks are "Sports movie", "Salty popcorn", "Go to toilet" (of course)

Peko's was "3D", "Animal movie"

Hiyoko: "Caramel popcorn", "Horror movie"

Souda: "Salty popcorn", "Action movie"

Gundham: "Curry popcorn", "Animal movie"

Fuyuhiko: Yakuza film, 3D

Nagito: Mystery movie


Jabberwock Park

-Teruteru: Find a spot and rest

Beach

-Mikan: "Bury her", "Collect seashell"
-Miharu: "Take everything off" !!!?!? Wow Miharu.

Library
-Twogami: "Search for treasure!" Can't rmb what the other one was, but it was pretty reliable too.

Amusement Park

-Chiaki: "This place is interesting!", "Hold hands"

Feel free to add on if anyone got any Island Mode tips as well.

I had to run Island Mode 4 times (first time was to gather remaining hope fragments/level up some skills), and subsequent runs you can only max Usami love gauge with 5 people at a time, so you need a further 3 runs (with all Monomi requests fulfilled)

With Hiyoko, I mainly went to Jabber Park and chose all the worst things like "Destroy Statue", "Look for ants" and she liked it. "Also Take a Walk." she was the first i maxed out hearts with.

Byakuya was easy as well. I went to the Library with him and chose all the stuff real Byakuya would like.
 
Beat the game last night (started IF, got to the point right before the first killing setup starts in DR1's storyline). Only got past the intro stuff in Island mode.

Some of the plot twists in the last chapter took me by surprise or I didn't realize them until just before the reveal, but I managed to put the pieces together for most of them in the game before the actual reveal happened (like how Mikan was the killer in Ch3).

Laughed when the game made fun of not wanting to overuse the plot points from DR1 and purposefully screwed with the player trying to throw them off with Ch4's killing by making it seemed like the killing's mirrored DR1's killings. Also found the JoJo ORA ORA ORA reference highly amusing.

Wish they would have shown the despair remnants's forms in the epilogue but I'm guessing maybe they're saving that for a future game perhaps. Or maybe they're in that Another Episode game possibly.

Now for the despair of waiting for the next game in the series to be released/localized. x_x

EDIT: Also, I swore I remember seeing a spoiler about Nagito's name and an anagram, but I NOPE'D out of it before looking anymore at it. Didn't remember the game pointing out about it, though. Is that an actual spoiler or something in IF perhaps?
 
Another Episode would be the perfect time to do so.

Luckily, fanart supplements until then~

ZZiSkUr.png
 
Hey now, she doesn't need a despair form.

Is that Yasuke further down the page? Makes about as much sense as Mukuro/Junko being there, I guess.

We should get a despair form of that ultimate plant guy that's in a lot of concept art despite having absolutely no role in the series.
 
I think there's pretty much no way we've heard the last of Chiaki. She's far too popular to stay gone and they could always say something like "Alter Ego made another one" or "hey we recovered her AI from the program". It's pretty much the same level of plausibility of Alter Ego making it this far. Wouldn't be surprised at all if we see her in Another Episode.
 

PK Gaming

Member
I think there's pretty much no way we've heard the last of Chiaki. She's far too popular to stay gone and they could always say something like "Alter Ego made another one" or "hey we recovered her AI from the program". It's pretty much the same level of plausibility of Alter Ego making it this far. Wouldn't be surprised at all if we see her in Another Episode.

Woah, made another one? The person who created Chiaki was Chihiro, not Alter Ego. (She was the A.I program he alluded to during his free time event)

And as much as I love Chiaki, I really don't want her to be mass produced. Just let her rest in peace ;-;
 

Moonlight

Banned
I finished the game.

kxRqHRB.gif


Didn't really expect AI Junko at all, and admittedly, yeah, she was a bit disappointing as the mastermind. I drove myself crazy thinking about who could have been, like maybe a Hope's Peak survivor or something, and nope, it was Junko all along. I had the notion that Monokuma was basically a mantle anyone could pick up and occupy, and I felt that there were a lot of idiosyncrasies in Monokuma's behavior in this game that suggested different masterminds (like the very direct approach of interfering with the students in order to affect motives, where alive Junko was as hands off as possible). Turned out that was just because she was on a self-imposed timelimit. Ah well.

Still, as long as she was there, Junko's always a treat. Mentioned this in the OT already, but her new 'default' personality was really funny and really well acted. And so, I didn't mind seeing her. Still, Nagito was by far the better villain in this game. The depths of his irrationality and internal logic, I find so much more disturbing and compelling than Junko's concept of embodied despair - not least of all because of the tangible brilliance in his cruelty. Junko's a little hamstrung by the fact that her thought process is totally opaque. She does a lot of things, schemes a lot, but we can't really appreciate the depth of thought that goes into it all. It's all way too big picture. I think stuff like Nagito's scheme to kill off everyone but the traitor, the bizarre, yet self-consistent logic just made it all feel so much more... cruel.

To put it simply, Junko's always felt like a hurricane. She doesn't really care about what's in her way, she just rips it up. Nagito's just a supremely twisted individual, and as much as I hate him, god, I can't think of this game without him.

Can't help but be a little dissatisfied with the survivors. I never liked Akane much, and totally hated Kazuichi. Dude's primary character trait just felt like his obsession with Sonia, and he never actually grew past it or took his goddamn hint. He's weirdly possessive of her and it's kinda uncomfortable. I mean, yeah, Toko's obsessed with Byakuya, but the game clearly acknowledges how unhealthy the relationship is. I don't really blame Sonia for getting sick of him. Akane was just... eh. I pegged her for an early death, was constantly surprised at how she kept surviving. She felt too similar to Asahina in character archetype to survive a game yet again, but I guess I was wrong. Wasn't really a big fan of her, ultimately - there was never any point where I felt her character traits were particularly endearing and while she had a character arc, it felt much thinner to me than Fuyuhiko's - admittedly, Fuyuhiko probably has the best character arc of any character in the DR series thus far. His growth and struggle to change himself, fucking awesome stuff.

Ibuki was, of course, my favourite character, and I was so sure that she'd survive to the end of the game when I saw her. She was just... such an exuberant and lively character, and maybe for that reason she had to go, as she might have kept the back half of the game from feeling as heavy as it did, but... goddammit. It hurt so, so much. She just seemed too good to waste. And her death, or at least what we understood to be her death, initially, was probably the most brutal thing in the game.

I loved almost the entire cast overall, though. Kind of a departure from DR1 in how I got fairly selective with who I chose to get close with (in Asahina, Kyoko, and Toko), all of whom actually wound up weathering out the storm. I got weirdly invested in tons of characters (and I'll list y'all up soon) and for that transgression, DR2 just punched me in the face repeatedly. I liked Teruteru a lot, and he died. I liked Peko a lot, and she died. I liked Ibuki a lot, and she died (and god I am never going to get over it). I liked Gundham a lot and he died. And after that, after I thought that we'd finally gotten past the culling... Chiaki died. That hit me so hard, especially since I'd been kinda lukewarm on Chiaki in the beginning, and she'd rapidly been storming up my list of favourite characters as each chapter went by.

The cruel despairrrrr. Augh. At least there's a chance they'll all wake up. And I choose to believe they will. I've just gotta make that Peko and Fuyuhiko reunion happen. I've just gotta hope Ibuki wakes up. ;____;

I'm sort of glad that Sonia survived, at least. Especially after spending the whole game on pins and needles absolutely sure she was gonna die or be a killer or a traitor, augh. I swear that they intentionally gave Sonia a possible avenue to be responsible for the murder for pretty much all the cases.

...honestly, like, everyone except Fuyuhiko were the people I totally expected to die over the entire game. Although I did have that crippling and sad realization that Kazuichi was protected by Yasuhiro's spirit energy and so would make it to the end of the game against all odds.

I loved how they played with the 'game' concept. I kinda had my suspicions about it maybe being some sort of simulation at the beginning, but how far they took it was incredible, and it worked amazingly well on a thematic level in terms of contextualizing the whole conflict of 'creating futures' and how games are all made up of predetermined paths and resolutions.

also since this is a spoiler thread I can link this freely

2014-09-07-0514397ujqe.jpg


hnnnngggggg
 
Woah, made another one? The person who created Chiaki was Chihiro, not Alter Ego. (She was the A.I program he alluded to during his free time event)

And as much as I love Chiaki, I really don't want her to be mass produced. Just let her rest in peace ;-;

It technically wouldn't be another one since Another Episode takes place before SDR2. :p
 

MSMrRound

Member
And after that, after I thought that we'd finally gotten past the culling... Chiaki died. That hit me so hard, especially since I'd been kinda lukewarm on Chiaki in the beginning, and she'd rapidly been storming up my list of favourite characters as each chapter went by.

The cruel despairrrrr.

I know right ;_;

From what I have seen in the OT, Chapter 5 reaction posts have always been the best.

NEVER PLAYING SPACE INVADER/PACMAN/TETRIS EVER AGAIN.
 
Woah, made another one? The person who created Chiaki was Chihiro, not Alter Ego. (She was the A.I program he alluded to during his free time event)

Oh, oops. Guess I'll need to refresh myself on all this once I get that far in the localization...

Between her popularity and the tendency for AIs to keep coming back, I just have a hunch that we haven't seen the last of her (well... maybe we have chronologically). With Another Episode (pre-release AE info spoilers I guess in case people want to go in totally blind?)
bringing in maybe-Nagito and a Chihiro-esque computery type being shown in art, an appearance there in some form doesn't seem unlikely.
 

PK Gaming

Member
Oh, oops. Guess I'll need to refresh myself on all this once I get that far in the localization...

Between her popularity and the tendency for AIs to keep coming back, I just have a hunch that we haven't seen the last of her (well... maybe we have chronologically). With Another Episode (pre-release AE info spoilers I guess in case people want to go in totally blind?)
bringing in maybe-Nagito and a Chihiro-esque computery type being shown in art, an appearance there in some form doesn't seem unlikely.

Oh, I should have been more specific. Her making a reappearance in AE is definitely likely, but I don't think (or want) her to appear in DR3 and beyond.
 

PK Gaming

Member
She broke up with her previous band because of "creative differences" in musical taste. Presumably after that, she tried going solo but obviously that didn't work out because her songwriting skills are despair inducingly bad. I also read somewhere that her band got an offer to go pro, but Ibuki refused because she didn't want to sell out. There was also that incident surrounding E-ko.

When you put all of that together, she seems ripe for despairification.
 

Steel

Banned
tumblr_nbhihlrzch1qdm7hjpj.jpg


how the fuck did this girl become ultimate despair @_@

As weird as it sounds, there was something off about Ibuki(and all the other characters for that matter) that I couldn't quite put my finger on. For example, when you go to Ibuki's concert, and it's interrupted and you talk to her before moving on, she sounds pretty damn depressed, hinting at some mental instability. She was also one of the cast members in the twilight murder case who ignored a dead body and moved on like it was nothing.

In hindsight, the social time you spend with each of the characters seems to reveal a bit of mental instability. Except Nekomaru.

I can't even begin to imagine how Nekomaru became ultimate despair.
 

Moonlight

Banned
how did Sonia fall into despair? She's...a princess
Sonia talks about frequently being kidnapped (and having to remain stoic), constantly having to deal with coup d'etats against the royal family and assassination attempts, and having to put her country before all else. I think that's a lot of pressure to put on a person, constantly expecting them to never, ever think of themselves. Maybe the nation turns against the royal family, finally, and she loses it. I think she could have easily broken apart given the right (wrong) circumstances.
 

Bricky

Member
Just finished the game (on mean difficulty) after marathoning through it last week.

To my surprise, I actually managed to guess the twist from the very beginning. The whole Danganronpa 2 program booting just after you start a new game gave me the idea and some other subtle hints early in the story helped strengthen that theory (chapter start/end screen design, chicken to cow magic, etc). Especially once Hajima looked at the stars and felt someone looking at him I thought "this game is gonna go all meta on me isn't it". To be honest I expected the player to become an important part of the story like in a certain visual novel (those who've played it will know the one), but everything hinting at that turned out to be Monokuma joking around or me making wrong assumptions.

Anyway, it might not have gone as far as to actually break the fourth wall in a significant way, I still saw the simulation thing coming way sooner than I should have. I'm probably anticipating these twist endings too much nowadays, I blame the fact this is a visual novel from the same company as 999/VLR. How can you NOT be suspicious of at least one crazy twist from the get-go? ;D

Oh well, at least the fact everyone was involved with Ultimate Despair still caught me off-guard, that was a bleak turn of events. Once the necrophilia was brought up... lets just say I didn't expect the game to get quite that twisted... *Shiver*

Luckily, the actual class trials themselves were pretty much impossible to predict. All of them were extremely complex (holy shit Nagito) yet actually very solvable at the same time, that is extremely hard to pull off and I applaud the writers for it. Only had to refer to the GAF OT of the game once after being stuck half an hour figuring out what truth-bullet to shoot at Mikan to proof she was behind the fake hanging. That was the game being vague though, not the story, since I had already figured out she couldn't know how the camera was positioned before I gave up.

The gameplay itself... was pretty bad. Horrible even. Improved Hangmans Gambit my ass. Logic Dive had its charm, but every other mini-game made the game frustrating instead of fun. They might as well have copied the first game, at least those mini-games were so easy they did nothing to harm the overall experience even if they were lame. And how does rewarding the player for not quick-traveling all the time by giving him a digital pet that shitted so much it would make Nekomaru proud make sense in a game that is all about the damn story? They finally took away the need to grind for presents and then they replace it with a lame mechanic like that. Simply bad game-design (for a visual novel like this that is).

Characters were interesting, but as a group I somehow liked the original crew better (keep in mind; I haven't read most of the backstories yet). Stopped disliking most of the initially boring ones as the game progressed (Fuyuhiko had a great character arc), but how Akane "Aoi 2.0" Owari made it to the end is beyond me. Even the somewhat less interesting characters in the first game still had a certain charm to them (Yasuhiro comes to mind). Hungry Miss Braindead Bigboobs did absolutely nothing to redeem herself, oh how I wish Monokuma shot her instead of Nekomaru. Or even better; get murdered instead of Ibuki.

Oh, and a small final complaint; came across a lot of spelling errors, mostly in the first half of the game. I didn't even notice them in the first game, but some of them were quite bad this time and I'm not even a native english speaker. A shame!

Closing thoughts; Absolutely loved it and overall a better experience than the first game (greatly improved pacing). Game feels like a 9/10, but the objective critic in me screams 8.5/10 because of its godawful minigames.

Now to actually read the spoiler thread, I still have tons of questions unanswered. Is Nagito just crazy or is there a reason he always acted weird? Why did he have the same Ultimate talent as Makoto (I actually thought it WAS him at first)? What is his relation to the protagonist (they clearly hinted at there being one in Chapter 4 and 0)? The hell was wrong with Mikan post-trial? Why did her execution suck so much? Shall we ever find out how tasty Monokuma's curry is? I NEED ANSWERS!

E: Oh wait, Mikan thought she would get to see Junko again of course. That should have been obvious after the last chapter.
 
how did Sonia fall into despair? She's...a princess

Fall of a kingdom?
Reversal of public opinion?

I dunno, being a princess seems like easy target for a despair attack.

Hell, her going to Japan could easily be her way of escaping from the pressures of being royalty at home.
 

Moonlight

Banned
Oh hey can we talk about how amazing and sad it is that the password to Hope's Peak wound up being '11037'?

Retroactively made the lamest clue in Danganronpa 1 into something totally brilliant.
 

LX_Theo

Banned
Fall of a kingdom?
Reversal of public opinion?

I dunno, being a princess seems like easy target for a despair attack.

Hell, her going to Japan could easily be her way of escaping from the pressures of being royalty at home.

I doubt the first two. Her skills would be much less useful if Junko took those routes.
 

Vylash

Member
Sonia talks about frequently being kidnapped (and having to remain stoic), constantly having to deal with coup d'etats against the royal family and assassination attempts, and having to put her country before all else. I think that's a lot of pressure to put on a person, constantly expecting them to never, ever think of themselves. Maybe the nation turns against the royal family, finally, and she loses it. I think she could have easily broken apart given the right (wrong) circumstances.

idk, she didn't seem to be all that upset about any of that, but i guess that's why junko is junko
 

MSMrRound

Member
Sonia was a slave (to her duties as a princess). She wanted emancipation. See what I did there?

That's why she transferred to Hope's Peak Academy from her small European country, and was eager to try and experience new things that she could not back in her kingdom.

Not too hard seeing Junko pouncing on something like that...
 

Moonlight

Banned
idk, she didn't seem to be all that upset about any of that, but i guess that's why junko is junko
Well, we don't really know the specifics of what might have pushed her over the edge, but I think there's definitely a bunch of opportunities in her past and position that could have led her to despair in a big way.
 

Steel

Banned
Anyone else feel like the worst part of the ending are the characters that survived to see it? Fuyuhiko was OK, but everyone else was... Less than interesting, less than intelligent.
 

MSMrRound

Member
Souda might serve some use in trying to revive the comatose classmates, but man, Akane is just useless.

She didn't even improve as a character after Nekomaru sacrificed his life for her.

Heck, all she was throughout the game was rawr food rawr fighting.

What even happened to her talent as a gymnast? I don't see her doing much with THAT talent of hers >.>

She's Yasuhiro-tier of uselessness.
 

Vylash

Member
Akane survived because the creator has a busty brown girl fetish obviously, 2 times in a row they've survived
 

Moonlight

Banned
Anyone else feel like the worst part of the ending are the characters that survived to see it? Fuyuhiko was OK, but everyone else was... Less than interesting, less than intelligent.
Sonia was a more than competent investigator (she even found out about the fake bombs), fairly intelligent as a reasoner (if overly emotional), and she had tangible growth from the beginning of the game to the end. I'd say she definitely deserved to make it as far as she did.

I do think Akane and Souda are bottom tier, though.
 

Rubedo

Member
Anyone else feel like the worst part of the ending are the characters that survived to see it? Fuyuhiko was OK, but everyone else was... Less than interesting, less than intelligent.

No. Sonia is pretty awesome and Akane and Fuyuhiko are top tier. Kazuichi is lame though.

Did you do Akane's FTEs? That's partially what made me like her a lot. She's not just some random dumb bruiser girl. Her backstory actually contains a lot of stuff that was pretty heavy. When I read it, I was surprised both because I didn't expect the game to delve into the sort of stuff she mentions and because she seemed more upbeat than her backstory would imply.
 

Vamphuntr

Member
I enjoyed the game but ended up being disappointed a bit by it. Everyone was saying the game was much better than the first but personally I don't agree with this. The trials were better but the rest was kind of iffy.

I enjoyed the trials a lot more in this one since they are actually challenging without being impossible logic wise but the minigames are absolutely terrible. The hangman's gambit is awful in this one. It simply takes longer to finish and you lose more health because of how the board fills itself. The logic drive was simply boring and had no place in the game, if you want to make a string of logic deductions, you can always do it like in Ace Attorney 5. The sword rebuttal is terribly irritating and also confusing in the English version because of the vertical text that is rotated.

I couldn't stomach some characters because they were so bad. Hyoko, Souda, Nagito, Nekomaru, Mikan, Akane and Fuuyuhiko (pre-Peko's execution) were insufferable. I'm not sure how a character that keeps talking about taking a shit got in the game. Maybe the script editor was absent that day or something.

I also thought there was way too much creepy pervert crap in the game compared to the first. In the last trial they even mention people having sex with Junko's corpse or how some people wanted to see Sonia pee in her pants. Jesus. Seems it's hard to make an ace attorney like game without that kind of crap.
 

DaBoss

Member
Akane has no redeemable qualities. Even her ultimate ability was pretty much useless and got them into trouble rather than help them.
 

Rubedo

Member
I did. She was still hella dumb and irritating.

Well I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I found the whole thing about how she was essentially sexually exploited by both her employers and her multitude of shitty stepdads to be something very unique about her and it felt like surprisingly heavy territory compared to what most people's FTEs are about. And the fact that she's essentially numb to people taking advantage of her just because of her appearance combined with the neccesity of needing to do it anyway.

The fact that she finds none of what she was put through odd is just...interesting. I thought it was a nice spin on a character that seemed somewhat fanservicey beforehand (talking about weaing no bathing suit, no panties, etc) but turned out to have more of a reason for being the way she is.
 

pariah164

Member
Oh hey can we talk about how amazing and sad it is that the password to Hope's Peak wound up being '11037'?

Retroactively made the lamest clue in Danganronpa 1 into something totally brilliant.
Especially after you hear the reasoning behind it. Dammit, Makoto, you are still a good person. ;A;
 

Mdesilva

Member
Akane has no redeemable qualities. Even her ultimate ability was pretty much useless and got them into trouble rather than help them.
I think it's weird how both the Ultimate Gymnast and Swimmer basically just eat really badly more than they demonstrate physical abilities.
 

FluxWaveZ

Member
I enjoyed the game but ended up being disappointed a bit by it. Everyone was saying the game was much better than the first but personally I don't agree with this. The trials were better but the rest was kind of iffy.

Yeah, a lot of people liked to say how DR2 was dramatically better than its predecessor, but I do not think so. Overall, I think I preferred DR2 slightly more because the classroom trials and cases were that much more engaging, but DR1 also had better qualities such as its novelty, its music and its setting.
 

Vylash

Member
Akane's free time events made me like her, but in the main game her main role was "my gut" aka useless, but at least she didn't try to kill everyone like Hina
 
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