nowhat
Member
(Disclaimer: while I will try to avoid major plot points and concentrate more on the mechanics and themes in general, there will unavoidably be some minor SPOILERS. If you have any intention playing the games and haven't yet done so, I suggest stop reading. It's better to go in completely blind.)
I was aware of Danganronpa as a series, or rather had heard the name, but it really wasn't on my radar. I had stumbled upon Monokuma in the net of course, but didn't associate it with the games and it didn't make much impact otherwise - a strange looking teddy-bear for sure, but hey, Japan, not the most bizarre thing to come from there by a large margin. What really got my interest was reading "Discover the Creators" (basically puff pieces for various PS games from different game makers), where Yoko Taro was praising the series. If he thinks it's a mad game, I should probably look into it. Still I was hesitant to pay even mid-price for two old PSP games, but recently with 50% off, why not. And I'm so glad I did.
But before I start the gushing, it's not like the two games are perfect by any measure. In fact, they contain many elements that I despise in games. First of all, I feel that if the game takes the control away from the player for too long to show walls of text or cutscenes, I might as well read a book or watch a movie. Here you'll be reading a ton and especially the dialogue can be at times overly verbose and incoherent. Many times I found myself thinking "just get on with it already!!!" (but this may be a personal thing, I find myself thinking the same very often with meetings at work). HCI-wise both are for the most part "mystery meat navigation, the game". You'll be clicking items/people, trying to search for clues/advance the plot - sometimes, clicking just once will do the trick, but other times you'll have to click something else after that and then click again. You can press triangle to highlight the available "hotspots" in a scene, but there's no indication which of those are worth clicking. A lot of the time is spent just navigating between locations and this feels like artificial padding (although this is somewhat improved in the sequel). The minigames are passable at best, nothing in there that I'd want to play as standalone. And while I understand that the games need to be of the "my way or the highway" variety as a whodunnit cannot have multiple solutions, it's infuriating at times when I know what happened, but it takes time to figure out the exact way the game wants me to say it. Whether it's partially a case of "lost in translation" I cannot say (at times the correct choices seem rather odd).
And despite all this I absolutely loved both games. Let's start with the first one, "Trigger Happy Havoc". I knew pretty much that there's the aforementioned teddy-bear, some highschoolers and "trials" (whatever those may be), but that's pretty much it. And I have to admit, I spent the first few hours going "huh???" pretty much constantly. But after some time I started to get a hang of both the mechanics and the story. The story isn't instantly gripping in my opinion - sure, there's the questions of "what the fuck is going on and who am I", but in order to care about either question I'd have to care about the characters. That didn't happen right away (and isn't helped by the fact that I never pick up names instantly, especially foreign ones), but by the second trial I was pretty much hooked. The trials themselves (along with the preceding investigations) take a surprisingly long time, which lead to many nights of "oh I'll just play this bit to the end - fuck, it's 3AM again". Towards the end I wasn't quite sure there would be any kind of satisfying conclusion to the game, it felt like something that could just wither away. I was wrong - there most certainly is a conclusion. How satisfying it is depends on how twisted you are, I suppose, but it was something I didn't see coming.
Playing "Goodbye Despair" right after the first game felt at first like it wasn't a proper sequel, it seemed more like "Danganronpa 1.5". This isn't helped by recycling most of the soundtrack and that one character from the first game who now looks completely different, I wasn't sure whether it is a reboot or a sequel. But a proper sequel it is - again, it takes some time for the story to pick up or start to make any kind of sense, but once it gets going, oh boy what a ride it is. If the ending of the first game is twisted and surprising, this one goes to 11. Also I enjoyed the characters more in general (there are some absolute gems, like that team manager guy). And for the most part the game improves on the original, but it's not all good. The issues I have are with the minigames. "Logic Dive" is pretty meh, not terrible but not very enjoyable either, especially since accelerate is X and jump is triangle (as you pretty much should be pressing X constantly, who comes up with this control scheme). The rhythm game seems to suffer from some input lag, at least I found it to be much more imprecise than the first game. And "Hangman's Gambit", how I hate thee. Not that it was very fun in the first game, but this one is clearly designed for touch screens, it sucks with a controller. But still, I found the first game to be great, this was even greater. Whoever wrote these should probably be housed in a mental institute - but hey, you can keep writing there too.
I also quite enjoyed the art style - not the best-looking anime-ish game out there, but the "2.5D" approach is quite unique. The characters could benefit from more poses though, but what is there works very well and every character is distinct. There's some fanservice, but not to the point of annoyance at least personally (and the games can be quite self-aware of it and tropes in general). A special shoutout to the music too. While there could be more tracks, the music complements the atmosphere very well and at times (especially with the trials) it seems to make the events much more exciting.
There are also the non-combat modes for both games if you are so inclined. Personally I haven't yet even tried them and doubt I will, but who knows, maybe I'll get bored sometime. As far as replayability goes, perhaps not the most replayable games out there. I could see myself taking both for a new spin at some point, but it'll probably be a year or few before I even consider it. But I guess the main question is, was it worth it? At 20€ for both games, hell yes. It would have been at the original 40€ even. I'm so much itching to get "Killing Harmony", but at 60€ it still feels a bit steep for a visual novel. If there's a sale it'll be an instabuy for me.
I was aware of Danganronpa as a series, or rather had heard the name, but it really wasn't on my radar. I had stumbled upon Monokuma in the net of course, but didn't associate it with the games and it didn't make much impact otherwise - a strange looking teddy-bear for sure, but hey, Japan, not the most bizarre thing to come from there by a large margin. What really got my interest was reading "Discover the Creators" (basically puff pieces for various PS games from different game makers), where Yoko Taro was praising the series. If he thinks it's a mad game, I should probably look into it. Still I was hesitant to pay even mid-price for two old PSP games, but recently with 50% off, why not. And I'm so glad I did.
But before I start the gushing, it's not like the two games are perfect by any measure. In fact, they contain many elements that I despise in games. First of all, I feel that if the game takes the control away from the player for too long to show walls of text or cutscenes, I might as well read a book or watch a movie. Here you'll be reading a ton and especially the dialogue can be at times overly verbose and incoherent. Many times I found myself thinking "just get on with it already!!!" (but this may be a personal thing, I find myself thinking the same very often with meetings at work). HCI-wise both are for the most part "mystery meat navigation, the game". You'll be clicking items/people, trying to search for clues/advance the plot - sometimes, clicking just once will do the trick, but other times you'll have to click something else after that and then click again. You can press triangle to highlight the available "hotspots" in a scene, but there's no indication which of those are worth clicking. A lot of the time is spent just navigating between locations and this feels like artificial padding (although this is somewhat improved in the sequel). The minigames are passable at best, nothing in there that I'd want to play as standalone. And while I understand that the games need to be of the "my way or the highway" variety as a whodunnit cannot have multiple solutions, it's infuriating at times when I know what happened, but it takes time to figure out the exact way the game wants me to say it. Whether it's partially a case of "lost in translation" I cannot say (at times the correct choices seem rather odd).
And despite all this I absolutely loved both games. Let's start with the first one, "Trigger Happy Havoc". I knew pretty much that there's the aforementioned teddy-bear, some highschoolers and "trials" (whatever those may be), but that's pretty much it. And I have to admit, I spent the first few hours going "huh???" pretty much constantly. But after some time I started to get a hang of both the mechanics and the story. The story isn't instantly gripping in my opinion - sure, there's the questions of "what the fuck is going on and who am I", but in order to care about either question I'd have to care about the characters. That didn't happen right away (and isn't helped by the fact that I never pick up names instantly, especially foreign ones), but by the second trial I was pretty much hooked. The trials themselves (along with the preceding investigations) take a surprisingly long time, which lead to many nights of "oh I'll just play this bit to the end - fuck, it's 3AM again". Towards the end I wasn't quite sure there would be any kind of satisfying conclusion to the game, it felt like something that could just wither away. I was wrong - there most certainly is a conclusion. How satisfying it is depends on how twisted you are, I suppose, but it was something I didn't see coming.
Playing "Goodbye Despair" right after the first game felt at first like it wasn't a proper sequel, it seemed more like "Danganronpa 1.5". This isn't helped by recycling most of the soundtrack and that one character from the first game who now looks completely different, I wasn't sure whether it is a reboot or a sequel. But a proper sequel it is - again, it takes some time for the story to pick up or start to make any kind of sense, but once it gets going, oh boy what a ride it is. If the ending of the first game is twisted and surprising, this one goes to 11. Also I enjoyed the characters more in general (there are some absolute gems, like that team manager guy). And for the most part the game improves on the original, but it's not all good. The issues I have are with the minigames. "Logic Dive" is pretty meh, not terrible but not very enjoyable either, especially since accelerate is X and jump is triangle (as you pretty much should be pressing X constantly, who comes up with this control scheme). The rhythm game seems to suffer from some input lag, at least I found it to be much more imprecise than the first game. And "Hangman's Gambit", how I hate thee. Not that it was very fun in the first game, but this one is clearly designed for touch screens, it sucks with a controller. But still, I found the first game to be great, this was even greater. Whoever wrote these should probably be housed in a mental institute - but hey, you can keep writing there too.
I also quite enjoyed the art style - not the best-looking anime-ish game out there, but the "2.5D" approach is quite unique. The characters could benefit from more poses though, but what is there works very well and every character is distinct. There's some fanservice, but not to the point of annoyance at least personally (and the games can be quite self-aware of it and tropes in general). A special shoutout to the music too. While there could be more tracks, the music complements the atmosphere very well and at times (especially with the trials) it seems to make the events much more exciting.
There are also the non-combat modes for both games if you are so inclined. Personally I haven't yet even tried them and doubt I will, but who knows, maybe I'll get bored sometime. As far as replayability goes, perhaps not the most replayable games out there. I could see myself taking both for a new spin at some point, but it'll probably be a year or few before I even consider it. But I guess the main question is, was it worth it? At 20€ for both games, hell yes. It would have been at the original 40€ even. I'm so much itching to get "Killing Harmony", but at 60€ it still feels a bit steep for a visual novel. If there's a sale it'll be an instabuy for me.
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