If you've been with me during my gaming journey you know I have enjoyed my time with this franchise. The previous two entries were both amazing, mixing the perfect blend of detective investigation and pure anime-esque madness to be something special. Even when I wondered if they could capture lighting in a bottle a second time, I had to ultimately say, yes. But this time? It looked like it just might pull a hat trick with the trilogy. At least until the very end.
Story: Meet Kaede Akamatsu. She is a kidnap victim who just woke up in a locker and upon escaping such confines, found herself in a bizarre classroom. The place was overrun with vines despite it's insanely high-tech nature, the windows are closed tight with barbed wire, and just what business she or whoever stuck her in this locker could possibly have here is an absolute mystery. But she was not alone here in this strange place. In the locker next to hers, a young man named Shuichi Saihara found himself in much the same condition with similar memories explaining his predicament. It's just a shame neither of them have much else in their memories to go on.
Together the duo decided to try to figure out what is going on, at least for as long as they are allowed... which wasn't very long at all. The kidnappers also have some very high tech toys, and one in the form of a giant robot greeted them at the door of the classroom, chasing them down the hall and (along side a few of it's buddies) herded them to a gymnasium where 14 other students like themselves, all in the same scenario had been lead before. Once cornered, the pilots of said mechs revealed themselves to be animated teddy bears known as the Monokubs. They also proved themselves to not exactly be the best at their jobs. For one, these mechs were not supposed to be seen yet, being much earlier in process then they should be. And the other, the students were simply not yet ready for any of it.
You see, these students are not ordinary students, but students from Hope's Peak Academy: a place where the only way to get in is to be scouted as the best of whatever talent you were scouted for. They had been brought here with the memories wiped for a reason, but they were supposed to receive their memories of at least what their talents were by now. It... had not happened yet. So one costume change and one Flashback Light use later, this was corrected and they were shoved back into their lockers to start again... correctly this time.
And what are they starting? Why what else? When you're playing a DanganRonpa game, you are about to witness a killing game where survival and freedom is the prize to win and death the penalty for losing. The rules are basically the same as they are in every game in the series: the students will be cared for and live out their lives (in this case in a school made just for them called the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles) until a body is discovered by at least 3 students. Then it's up to the students to investigate and figure out who did it. If they succeed, the guilty will be executed and the killing game will continue. But if they fail, the murderer has won the game and everyone else faces that fate while they escape. This will continue until either someone gets away with the grisly act or only two students remain, crowning them the winners. But who's running this game, and why? And just how are they going to force our group of (admittedly exceptional) students to participate in such vile acts? That is what this story is going to challenge you to uncover.
Like the previous games, this overall mystery will be uncovered over arcs: one for each of various murders you will have to play detective and figure out to proceed. And there are plenty of twists and turns to keep this interesting to figure out as always. And hell, to the keen eye there will be details that will call back as you go to give you a better view of the big picture before the game ham-fists it to you at the very end, giving it an overall really out there (and frankly epic) picture and conclusion. However, I can not say this one is up to the same level as the last two titles, and for several reasons.
First and most immediate are the Monokubs. These little monsters are the children of Monokuma (a robot teddy bear who's split in half: one appearing kind and and the other demonicly sadistic. He has been the star antagonist of the entire series), but they sure as hell do not endear themselves as the antagonist you love to hate (and still somehow find funny as hell) like the original... and where he shares the spotlight with them, you will likely find yourself wishing they got smaller shares of it. Their antics do not endear (well besides one, but considering how much I found myself disliking them, I think you will understand the moment he starts why I say this) but annoy.
Second, the other characters are overall also not on the same level as the previous games. You might have a favorite or two, but I have to admit, this is the first game in the series where I have had some of the cast make me hope they are victims sooner then later so I just didn't have to hear from them anymore... and I reached that conclusion within 2 sentences spoken by them.
And third, while the game's overall story is actually really good and clever, the writing team got sloppy, both for just this game and the entire trilogy. There are details you will see early in the game that will completely be ignored for the rest of it, even as they are key pieces of information on those characters. The two I have in mind are not just minor details either, but reasons they are who they are and even driving factors to the entire story of the game.... and one completely not just reinterpreting the series like the they wanted, but straight up ret-conning the second game out of existence! In order to explain, I will have to give some MAJOR spoilers for both games, so if you wish to avoid them, please skip the indented and italicized section. Consider yourself warned.
"K1-B0 (Keebo) is in this school as the "Ultimate Robot" which gives him some extra abilities beyond what his fellow human students can do, which is important for how some cases are solved and later his "inner voice" he listens to being the audience the killing game is being played to entertain so they can have a say in how the game goes. He also becoming a weapon of war to play a major roll in the conclusion of this final chapter... but all of this is only possible because he is a robot... which he ISN'T in the opening scene.
And while this is bad, it's not even the most egregious issue with the writing. That goes to the "Ultimate Cosplayer," Tsumgi Shirogane. Early in the game, she is proven to be unable to cosplay as anyone else in this killing game because she breaks out in "Cospox" if she tries to cosplay as anyone real. This is taken as absolute truth until the absolute last case in the game where she reveals herself as none other than the newest rendition of Junko Enoshima, the villain of the entire franchise, cosplaying as the ultimate cosplayer. Further pushing this narrative, she then proceeds to cosplay as all the various characters from the last two games seemingly at random... why? Because they were fictional, as is everyone here.
If she meant this as everyone was a made-up character in a game who never existed in any possible way, it would have suggested to me this entire series is literally simulation of some sort, which I would have been ok with for the most part. Some would think it a cop-out, but literally a fictional world written by a writer and made real for those who inhabit it is an idea I've seen in several other stories of various genres and done well. I would have considered this one of them since it would even explain the absolutely insane technology on display between this and the last game. But this is not what she meant. The killing games are a series of events where people are trapped in a fictional world with fictional personalities and histories pressed on them and an audience watches to see who will live, who will die and to vicariously live through the struggle.
This becomes an obvious issue since it means the cospox rule doesn't exist even though Tsumgi demonstrated it directly breaking into one massive purple rash when she attempted to cosplay as one of the other cast of this game, creating a contradiction that was used to clear her name in previous trials, breaking this game itself further. But it becomes an entirely other issue with game 2 due to it's ending.
To explain, the final trial in Danganronpa 2 is not so much a murder trial as graduation ceremony, at least on the surface. However, nothing in this series is ever that simple and it is revealed the whole game was a simulation program made in an attempt to reverse the damage Junko had done to some of her followers and rehabilitate them to the world (only for it fall flat due to a virus in the system manipulating the virtual world they had been placed in for it). No one won a killing game so much as were rescued by the survivors of the first title when a computer virus programmed with the mind of Junko commandeered the process, using it to kill the minds of those connected so it could literally use their bodies as hosts and be an even worse Ultimate Despair then the last time. If this game's logic applied, the original survivors should have been participants, not brought in last second to end the game like that.
What is here is actually pretty good for the most part, and I want to commend the writing team for completing the story of their universe so that it actually IS complete, but they just tripped so badly, not only over details they set for themselves at the start of the game, but in the previous title as well that they effectively ruined what could have been one of the best highlights to end a trilogy on. It was impactful. It broke the 4th wall in ways that made so much sense it almost made the player part of it's writing. It frankly had the makings to be genius. But makings don't make it so since it breaks not only itself with key details to it's ending contradicting what it gave us throughout the game, but then proceeds to basically only make sense if you erase DanganRonpa 2 from the franchise, makings is all I can give it.
5/10
Graphics: In essence you are about to explore an over-the-top world with outlandish details becoming the normal in just about any scene in the game, creating a space in two styles: one for inside rooms you will be exploring and one for the corridors and grounds of the academy you are stuck in. In the rooms, you are effectively looking at a 3D diorama of whatever room you are in where it will fold in the walls and pop in whatever objects are there before finally placing effectively paper dolls of any characters in the room with you. The detail involved is lovingly drawn and/or painted for just about everything in this game, but it is blatantly all 2D sprites in a 3D space. Furthermore, you will not be zooming in and out of these rooms at your own will, since the camera will basically let you pan to see more and change your angle, but do little else. Sometimes this will reveal details you can investigate easier, while other times it may just distort the look of the room since objects in it were drawn at an angle you are no longer viewing, but overall each room really does look very good and incredibly varied. For a school there are shockingly few actual classrooms, leaving room for all kinds of crazy locations scattered about the place. You will not get bored with your surroundings.
And the same is true for the areas between these rooms, though they do trade some detail for freedom. Don't get me wrong, there is still plenty to see and if feels every bit part of the world you are in as the rooms do, but being able to get up close means you can see the limits of the tech the game was made with far easier since you can get up close to at least some of what makes the world. Add to this the fact that these areas were designed for you to move around in and they definitely look a little sparser then the rooms do, at least if you stop and think about it. But you really do have to do so to notice since in these areas, you are likely just making your way between locations or looking for specific things in the environment to interact with and the style of the artwork matches up with the rooms, something important for a world as absolutely insanely varied in a single academic grounds as this to keep everything cohesive.
Even the characters add to this vibe in their very style despite being every bit as varied as the world itself. Everyone's character just oozes out of every lovingly hand drawn and painted image, but, outside of specific cutscenes, you will never see any animation in them. They are all stills and something akin to paper dolls to show who's there and a general mood they might be in. Even changing that expression and tone is done by twirling the doll to reveal the other like it's drawn on there, somehow just adding to the unreality that is this entire franchise in a nutshell.
Overall, this is not a technically advanced game, but it an absolutely gorgeous one who's style can and will pass the test of time.
8/10
Sound: If you have played other games in this series, the music here is going to sound very familiar to you, starting with an opening title theme that hasn't changed since game 1. It's bombastic, energetic, catchy, and absolutely amazing. Nor is it the only tune you will remember, as many old songs from the first game seem to be back (or at least some remix of them). It all kinda blends together, but does so in the best ways possible. If you stop to listen, it is always pleasant, whatever the mood it's portraying. And when you just let it become the background like it's designed to, it never fails to be an enhancement to the scene... especially when it drops away suddenly for dramatic effect. The design team absolutely nailed the use of this out of the park.
Sadly I can not say the same about sound effects, but that's because there really isn't a lot of them, and the most common sound you will here is when you click to progress the text. Occasionally you will get sounds of metal clanking around as those giant metal robots you saw at the beginning stomp around either clearing grounds, building areas for the students, or even just patrolling to be sure none of the them break the rules of the killing game. You might also hear weapon fire, debris falling and other occasional sounds, but this isn't a game that's very heavy on this.
Which leaves us to voice work, and this is actually pretty good for the most part. When you are in fully voiced sections, everyone's acting chops seem to be exactly where they should be, delivering the scenes with all the impact they deserver and should have. There aren't really any stand outs in a good way this time around, however so much as these moments since they tend to be only for key story points or the trials that bookmark the chapters of the game.
Outside of that, you will have small quips and catchphrases for the characters voices, but little else, and this is probably the first real weakness in audio I have to mention. A lot of these are simply throw away with few that will stick with you at all.
The other, unfortunately is one of the voice actors. While playing you will meet a tiny guy named Ryoma Hoshi who is here as the Ultimate Tennis Player. And even though the voice actor matched his personality pretty well as "little Mr. Edgelord," it doesn't match his look at all. Basically it's like listening to a deep gruff voiced hardboiled detective speaking out of a 6 year old and is pretty jarring. Thankfully he's not the talkative type though, so this is more of quip then a real problem.
8/10
Gameplay: If you've played either of the main games in the franchise, you already know the general flow the game will take, at least for the most part. The first chapter will start out exactly as you might expect with story-sections being interwoven with "free time" or time for you to interact with your fellow students by hanging out, offering gifts, and trying to progress their own separate stories. These stories are separated into 5 parts and can be sped up by offering the right gifts according to the tastes of the students you want to befriend, and getting them all completed will unlock benefits you can buy and turn on for the "trial" phase of the chapter, but we will get to that in a little bit. The gifts that push it forward, however, are available in a few places. The most basic of these places is a "gotcha" game you can play in the school store with coins you have collected up to this point. And these will be awarded for how well you complete the trials as well as found throughout your play by "shoving" things in the various rooms you visit. This will "break them" and allow you to collect the coins within.
The other way you can get gifts will be unlocked later in the form of casino games you can play, but to get to them, you have to get to the new part of each chapter after the first will start with. In these portions, either Monokuma or the Monokubs will show up and offer the students "rewards" for a job well done on the trial they completed. While the quotes are pretty necessary since the stuff tends to be offhand junk, it is actually important as these items will be keys to open new locations on the academy grounds, adding a new phase to the beginning of each chapter. During this time, you will only be in the corridors and outside areas as whatever you find will open new paths therein to reach the new locations before your actual free time section.
Of course that free time can't last forever, and eventually the story will lead to "a body being discovered" and the next phase to begin: investigation. This is exactly what it sounds like as you will now investigate the crime scene and related locations as well as talking to everyone related to try to get a picture of what happened and potentially who committed the murder. This will be fairly straight forward at each chapter and ultimately lead to the main events of the series: the trials.
These trials are a lot more linear then the other phases as in essence, it will boil down to debating with the students to reach a conclusion about who committed the murder and how they did it. This will come in the form several mini games and multiple choice questions that you will have to complete properly to progress. Those minigames include things like debates of various sorts where you will have to listen to the arguments about the current point and in respect to "truth bullets" you have available. Someone is either saying something very wrong or very right and you will have to "fire" at points you either want to agree or disagree with to proceed. Hell you will even be required to lie once in a while this time around. You can increase your time to aim by using focus to slow things down, but the option has a limited charge.
Another possible game will have you "thinking through the current point" in the form of driving a car in an arcadey-racing game where you try to collect the letters to build a question and then run into the girl who represents the correct answer to it once revealed. Get the right one, and she jumps in your car Get the wrong one, and well.. it gets messy. Further variety is added with a candy-crush style game to uncover pictures that represent possible answers to a question you are trying to resolve.
In all cases, you will take damage for any mistakes you make or lose outright if you run out of time before you complete the minigame. (Not that time is really tight.) If this happens, you will be marked as the blackened (murderer) and it's game over... kinda. You can choose to not give up and retry this last puzzle with a full health bar, making the game exceptionally forgiving despite what it's about, so don't be afraid to make mistakes. But then you can also make the game even easier for yourself with those bonus traits you earned from your free time friendship quests, so even more this really isn't a game to worry much about having a tough time: there is usually a way to releave the difficulty.
Finally when the minigames are all finished to reach a conclusion, you will have a series of three events. First of these is a final argument with the blackened, represented by a rhythm game and frankly the one place I can argue people with a controller likely will have an edge. Basically on keyboard, you will be asked to hit the WASD keys in time to the beat, using focus once it's charged to make which button you hit no longer matter for a while. But this was arguably the worst part of the game for me, as the rhythm didn't always match up with the tune particularly well and I tend to think of these keys as the direction they represent so seeing them directly did not help me too much in game (why I say what I do about a controller here). If you can get through this battle you will be given a puzzle to complete a final question by the accused and slam home one last closing argument to win the case.
Most of the time, this will be followed by (although it can follow) the minigame to put the pieces together in how the crime was committed. By this point the court case should have put the story together, and it's up to you to assemble it in a comic format which will once completed, be read to explain exactly what happened.
And finally once all of this is complete, the trial finished up with voting and punishment. Voting will literally require you to pick who you think is guilty, which should be easy enough considering you just pieced their actions together and making this a formality more then anything since it's majority rules and with the case completed properly, everyone but the blackened will likely be voting your way. (The blackened might vote for you to have committed the murder, which in all honesty I found kinda funny when it happened.)
With this final piece of the game finished, you get to hear from the convicted why they did what they did, watch them be executed (sometimes creatively, sometimes not... I'm gonna be honest I think game 2 did this one the best), and then some reflection from the remaining students to wrap up the chapter.
This formula will continue until the few trials where events around them and a much smaller and close-knit group of students plotting to find a way out will tweak the formula some, but the end result is the same.
Honestly I think the trials are the obvious highlight here, as the who-dun-it vibe and each individual case is actually really good, leading to a great time to figure it out, while the rest is anywhere from really good and/or kinda funny to good enough to deal with to get to the real meat of the game. And it's all been fine tuned to the point of an absolutely amazing experience. Just wish the last chapter didn't destroy the story it was supporting so soundly in the last hour or two of the entire game.
8/10
Bugs: For the most part, this game ran exactly as it was supposed to. However it did have one very annoying issue which will likely rear it's head when you play:
- THE CONTROLS: THEY DO NOTHING! It's going to happen from time to time and there really is little you can do about it, but on semi-regular occasions, the controls will freeze and prevent you from doing anything for a few seconds before resuming to work right. Fortunately this game generally waits for you to click to continue and (at least for me) I never saw this happen in the middle of a minigame, so it did not get in the way of the game, but this not only happened to me, but seems to be a common issue.
Digital Rights Management: Unfortunately this is not a DRM free game. However in all cases it seems the only DRM involved is the launcher for the store you get the game through.
Source: PC Gaming Wiki
Score: As I finish this game, it's clear the devs wanted to end this entire franchise right here and do so in style and with a bang. They thought they were being clever and really they could have been. The gameplay is solid and the individual cases are straight up some of the best offered yet. However, the overarching story they exist in was pretty sloppy, contradicting itself in the nature of details the main villain will ultimately have as well as perhaps the single most key character to tell the tale around, resulting in a very unsatisfying feel unless you are willing to turn your brain off and forget as much from the early game as our cast of characters do from their lives. Further insult to injury, what should have been a re-interpretation of the rest of the series turns into a retcon that straight up erases the second game in the trilogy. This is pretty egregious, especially when this spoils all the potential it had.
I wish I could be nicer, but where the game is as much a visual novel as it is a detective game, that story is way too important to forgive these issues, and so I have a really hard time recommending this game. In fact, I don't.
6/10
System Requirements:
- Intel Core i3-4170 @ 3.70Ghz
- 4 GB RAM
- NVidia Geforce GTX 460
- Windows 7 (64-Bit)
- 26 GB of Hard Drive space
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (5700X) 3.4 Ghz
- 32 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB VRAM)
- Windows 11 (64 Bit)
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