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[Review] Danganronpa

Akshay

Entry posted by Akshay

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This is my first ever review, so I would love feedback on this or even general advice on review writing!

The Setting

Danganronpa is a murder-filled mystery told over six chapters. Fifteen students are gathered at a school (ironically named Hope’s Peak) by an emotionally unstable teddy bear (Monukuma). The only way to leave the school is by playing Monukuma’s twisted game - to commit murder, without being caught. If the murderer is caught, he is brutally executed, if he succeeds he is set free while the remaining students are executed.

Gameplay

Chapters are divided into three parts, Daily Life, Deadly Life and the Class Trial.

Daily Life is where you the initial character development takes place. In this phase you can walk around and talk to other people, advancing the plot. You are also given “Free Time” where you can get closer to specific characters, which then unlocks power-ups that can be used in the class trial mini-games. The “Daily Life” period usually ends once a murder occurs. The nature of the game, makes most of these murders of the “whodunit” type. These tended to be fun and lasted around an hour each.

Deadly Life is the investigative period. You explore your murder scene and examine items as you look for clues to help solve your mystery. This holds several similarities to “Phoenix Wright” investigations.

The Court-Trials were basically the final showdown in each chapter where you solved the mystery. These were fast paced and interesting. The trial-system itself was horrible though. It was littered with some of the most irritating mini-games of all time. Several obvious statements that can be inferred from the evidence, have to be explicitly found through multiple mini games. On the other hand, the comic-style closing arguments was done very well.

The PC port was horrible. The controls were not mapped out well at all, and to advance text, you are forced to use your mouse rather than the enter key or spacebar. This was very irritating and definitely affected my overall experience with the game.

 

Soundtrack

The BGM is very catchy, the kind that ends up sticking in your head for a while. While not all of it is amazing, there will probably be at least one or two tracks that you will enjoy.

Visuals

The CG’s and graphics are beautiful and the video-clips are well made. One thing that could have been better was the gore. All blood and wounds, were a bright pink color. If it actually looked like blood, a lot of the gruesome deaths would have impacted me a bit more.

The Story

Danganronpa starts of very strong. The very first case tries to drive home that anyone can die. I enjoyed the first two cases the most. The third and fourth cases were good as well, but by then the number of people remaining had reduced making it easier to identify the culprit. The last two chapters, were basically the same case. While I enjoyed them a lot some things have still not been explained.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

the tragedy, what has happened in the outside world-

 

. Overall several good mysteries with innovative solutions. Also Danganronpa is Kinetic in nature. If you are given a choice, you either advance, or it loops back until you pick the right choice. The epilogue doesn’t really conclude the story well and is very open/teaserish in nature. (Most Spike Chunsoft games seem to do this, like 999)

The Characters

Most of the characters were strong personalities, the kind which would naturally end up being the center of their groups. Gathering them all in one place would naturally cause conflict. Most of them exemplified a single quality to an exaggerated degree, almost to the extent where their whole personality could be built around it. Each character was unique and interesting, which lead to interesting motives as well as murderers. While I could never support the murderer, I found myself understanding and sympathizing with the killers as well as the victims in some of the cases.

Pros

Great mysteries

Well explored characters

Fun investigations/Large World to explore

Court System/ Case Arguments

Monukuma

Cons

Pink fake blood/gore

Some plot points left unexplained

PC port

Court System/Bullet Time Battle (This had no purpose but to infuriate anyone playing the game)

Verdict – 9/10

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6 Comments

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MaggieROBOT

Good review, but I wanted to share my opinion about the plot points left unexplained.

Spoiler

First of all, I don't think there's any way to actually satisfactory explain what the hell happened out there, so I thought that the less the better. Like Junko herself said at some point, "think about some excuse and go with it". This is an absurd and crazy story, and I thought that the best parts of it were the ones that made the least logical sense. And about the credits rolling right after they open the door... I thought that was a good way to end a story about hope, leaving us with it. It would totally defeat the purpose of the last conversations to show us who's right. Then again, there's a sequel anime that went and ruined that.

Maybe that's an unpopular opinion, but that was what I thought. Try not to think too much about the answers if the journey was so good (you gave it a 9, so I guess you enjoyed it either way)!

But you're right about the PC port, ugh.

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Akshay
23 hours ago, Mr Poltroon said:

Does not like pink blood. 0/10 Review. Doesn't get the "essence" of the game.

The only reason I can think of is contrast? The whole game tried to do this, with cute teddy bears being murderous and huge muscular giants, being emotional and loving. Its just that a lot of the gore scenes were very sudden, so the shock factor would have been much higher with real blood and gore. 

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Odenvard

Overall, a decent review, though there are parts I disagree with, naturally. As already pointed out, the pink blood fits in with the theme of the game a lot better than "real" blood would have. Its kind of an inherently... "silly" game, in a sense. There are plenty of serious times in the story, but it all happens in the context of a very alien world. I also don't think its bad to leave things unexplained in a story like this. Lots of stories, VNs and stories in other mediums alike, try unnecessarily hard to try and explain everything, even when that's not entirely desirable for the type of story it is, or when it gets in the way of actually telling the story itself.

Of course, there was a sort of earlier iteration for this game, called Distrust*, that would have been a lot more gruesome (apparently, it was scrapped because it was TOO gruesome). It was essentially the same game, but it had things like red blood and such. If this form of the game was the one the was ultimately released, then the theme would have been quite different. Perhaps not for the worse, and I think it would be kind of interesting if someone released an attempt at making that a full game, if for no other reason than to contrast the experience with Danganronpa.

*There's a page on this on the Danganronpa wikia. Search something like "Danganronpa Beta" in your favorite search engine to find it, if you wanna read some details on it.

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MaggieROBOT
14 minutes ago, Odenvard said:

*There's a page on this on the Danganronpa wikia. Search something like "Danganronpa Beta" in your favorite search engine to find it, if you wanna read some details on it.

Man, thank you so much for this info! I love to find these trivia and I never heard about this before. Yeah, the black and white feel is lot more gloomy and the first execution, one of the most gruesome imo because it was so long and painful, was even worse in this beta version!!! And if that room on the fifth floor was really a nod to that version... cool!

Anyway, like you said it would be an interesting contrast, even if I already like Danganronpa like what it is now.

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Odenvard
7 minutes ago, MaggieROBOT said:

Man, thank you so much for this info! I love to find these trivia and I never heard about this before. Yeah, the black and white feel is lot more gloomy and the first execution, one of the most gruesome imo because it was so long and painful, was even worse in this beta version!!! And if that room on the fifth floor was really a nod to that version... cool!

Anyway, like you said it would be an interesting contrast, even if I already like Danganronpa like what it is now.

Heh, glad to have helped you learn something new :)

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