A Great Visual Novel, A Mediocre Game
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is a game I finished last year, but I didn’t review it at the time. I also recently finished Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, and wanted to review it. In order to properly contextualize my thoughts on that game though, I think it is best that I start with Danganronpa.
By now, many of you have heard of the premise of Danganronpa. You play the role of one of a group of students who have recently arrived at the prestigious Hope’s Peak Academy. Upon arrival, you pass out and awaken to find the school mostly deserted. All exits and windows have been blocked, and there is no means to contact the outside world. A small robotic bear named “Monokuma,” claiming to be the headmaster of the school, informs the students that they are trapped and must live out the rest of their lives in the school unless they are willing to kill one of their fellow classmates and are able to get away with it.
The story of Danganronpa reads like a combination of Battle Royale and Phoenix Wright, except even more anime. I do not use that term to be derogatory, as the way the game’s narrative uses anime stereotypes to constantly subvert the player’s expectations is quite masterful. The plot of the game is equal parts human tragedy, morality play, and horror movie. Some scenes in the game bring to mind movies such as Nightmare on Elm Street. Some sequences are both horrific and yet also humorous thanks to the game’s great sense of black comedy.
What makes the story work is the game’s memorable and diverse cast. Each character is based off an anime archetype and is referred to as one of the “Ultimates.” There is the Ultimate Gambler, the Ultimate Swimmer, and more. The game continuously uses the player’s preconceived notions of these archetypes against the player in clever ways. You’ll come to care about characters who by all rights you probably shouldn’t. For a game borrowing much from the slasher genre, it takes the inverse approach to many of those works and makes you hate seeing the cast killed off one by one. That plot’s misdirection is also used to make the player reach obvious solutions to obvious mysteries even while distracting them from the deeper mysteries going on. The narrative eventually wraps up in an incredibly satisfying way even while there is a certain ambiguity to its events.
The cutesy art design of the game is in constant contrast to its macabre and morose subject matter. Characters are presented as 2D drawings for the most part save some cutscenes. Blood is colored pink instead of red. Dead bodies are strewn about in what should be grotesque ways and characters are killed off in over-the-top sequences. And yet it is all presented in somewhat comic fashion. The dichotomy of the game’s art style at play with its grim imagery results in some of my favorite art design in recent video game memory.
Danganronpa also features a great soundtrack. There is something off-kilter and manic about the way the game mixes musical styles. For instance, the game’s main theme is a jazzy number with operatic chanting like something from Lord of the Rings. At other times, the score produces unnatural, almost unnerving sounds. Often times, peaceful, pleasant music is played in opposition to events that have just occurred. Even on its own, it’s a pretty wonderful score to listen to.
Unfortunately, the part where Danganronpa is a video game is rather weak. The game mixes different gameplay mechanics throughout, and none of them quite work the way they should. A typical chapter involves a visual novel opening along with some minor adventure game-style exploration. Breaking these parts up are “free time” sections where the player engages in Persona-esque social link events. You speak to your fellow classmates, give them presents, and choose from dialogue options in an attempt to gain favor with them. Each time you “level up” your relationship with that person, you gain either skill points or abilities you can equip with said skill points. Most of these skills come into play during the class trials. In theory, it’s a pretty sound system. In practice, the game holds back too many plot details for the main story to make these sections all that interesting. On top of it, the skills you can unlock are of wildly different value. The way the game kills off several characters per chapter is also at odds with this system as you’ll continuously get locked out of further development with characters and the skills they have. The developers seem to have had multiple playthroughs in mind with this system, but this isn’t really a game I could see most players coming back to after finishing.
Then there are the class trial sections. These portions start off well enough with Phoenix Wright-style investigation sections. You move around the school, click on different objects, and talk to classmates in order to gather evidence. It’s fairly straightforward though, and lacks much of the sense of discovery you get from similar sections in other games in the genre.
Once the trials start, things really start to fall apart. The parts where you engage with the story at this point feel more like a collection of mini-games than a cohesive effort. Instead of presenting evidence when you spot a contradiction, you have to shoot statements with “truth bullets.” You also have to shoot down pink text overlaying the statements you wish to contradict. Meanwhile, there’s a timer for each section, and although that timer is fairly generous, it’s still a nuisance given the way the game wants you to navigate statements. Other sections of the class trial include a hangman mini-game, filling in bubbles in a graphic novel, and a really rudimentary rhythm game. The hangman mini-game in particular is quite lame. None of these sections are particularly bad, but they are also just not very fun.
Danganronpa’s gameplay feels like a case of trying to be different for the sake of being different rather than anything entertaining. I’m not really sure how any of this gameplay is supposed to add to sections that should be about solving murder mysteries. Even ardent Phoenix Wright fans wouldn’t tell you those games feature robust or complex gameplay, but they’re also fun, satisfying, and they keep the narrative flowing at a good pace. While it’s important to note none of these gameplay sections ruin the game, they don’t exactly help it either.
Danganronpa is one of those games I can’t help but call three stars because of the ways it fails as a video game, but yet can whole-heartedly recommend to everyone as it’s still an entertaining and interesting visual novel. While the game portions are by no means great, they avoid being obtrusive. Between the numerous skills you’ll gain throughout the game and the ability to knock down the difficulty settings for the class trials, you won’t have any issues completing the game. With its pending release on Steam this month, fans of visual novels as well as the Phoenix Wright series would do well to give it a shot.
