Don't
worry, he's not taking my place on Sundays, this is just temporary.
We'll be figuring out when Nathan's articles get published in the
future.
-Alex
Shannon
We
westerners really do end up missing out on a lot of cool stuff when
it comes to video games. Granted a handful of games can sometimes
cross the regional gap and escape Japan, but with most games we can be
left out in the dark. However, the specific game I'm going to be
talking about today did
make its way over to the west on the PS Vita. However since I don’t
actually own
a PS Vita I instead decided to play the PSP version, which has been
fully translated by Project Zetsubou. Thank goodness for fan
translations.
I
stumbled across Danganronpa after finishing the exceptional RPG
persona 3 portable. I had recently picked up a PSP and was looking
for a new game to play to fill that void you get after finishing a
game (you probably know what I’m talking about). Out of pure
curiosity, I downloaded and applied the patch… and was pulled into
a game that I couldn’t put down until the end.
Danganronpa
was released originally in 2011 by Spike (now known as Spike
Chunsoft) on the PSP. It was a Japanese exclusive game. but received
high enough praise for a sequel to be made and for both the first and
second games to receive official
western releases on the PS Vita in updated form. For this review I
will be looking at the original PSP version with the fan patch
applied, as I don’t own a Vita at the time of writing (although I
will revisit
this game when I get my hands on a Vita, and can comment on the
remake). Please bear in mind that there may be translation
differences between the fan patched version and the official version.
Just throwing that out there. Anyways, I’d say it is about time to
take a trip to despair academy. Let’s begin
Story:
Now
I will try to keep this section as spoiler free as possible, since
Danganronpa is a heavily story driven game. So to avoid spoilers I’ll
only talk about the starting plot and setup.
You
play as Makoto Naegi, an ordinary
student who has been selected out of a ballot to attend Hope High
School, a school which takes on the extremely talented and hopeful
and has been said to give students a hopeful future when they
graduate.
However,
upon taking your first step through the gate you fall unconscious,
and find yourself trapped inside Hope High with fourteen other
students and no way out. Well, ok there is a way out… Meet
Monokuma, the big bad of the game. Monokuma says that the only way to
get out of this school is to successfully murder someone and get away
with the murder. If the rest of the students correctly identify the
murderer then they get punished, otherwise the murderer will
“graduate” and be allowed to leave the school and everyone else
will be punished. And by punished I mean executed.
The
story doesn’t screw around. It throws you right into the heat of it
pretty quickly and is paced brilliantly. The writing for each of the
characters is also excellent, and you get quite close to them, even
the ones that get offed quite quickly.
The
tail end of the game is where the story really starts spiraling and
is by far the most entertaining part of the game storywise. Overall,
it's a very nicely done plot that is both interesting and well-paced.
10/10
Gameplay:
Now,
the gameplay by far is the most interesting part of the game.
Danganronpa is one of those games which seems to take bits and pieces
from other games, and throws them into a blender to make one
extremely fun game. You’ve got the evidence gathering and trials
from Ace Attorney, a social link system similar to Persona 3 and 4,
plus first person exploration and some mini games thrown in for good
measure. Because of all of that stuff this section is going to be
quite long, but I am
going to split it up into 2 sections. Class Trial gameplay and
Exploration/Clue Finding gameplay.
So,
let’s start with the exploration gameplay.
You
explore the academy from a first person perspective, moving and
turning on the spot with the circle pad, running with the circle
button, strafing with L and R, moving the camera with the D-pad and
interacting with things with the Cross button (Editors
note, that's the X button). Objects you
can interact with (usually doors) will be highlighted when you move
in front of them. It’s standard stuff. When you enter rooms,
however things take a more Ace Attorney approach.
Inside
rooms, you're fixed on the spot and can move your crosshair with the
circle pad (Editors note, that's the
joystick on the PSP). Again, objects
you can interact with will be highlighted, and have a sound cue when
you hover over them. The D-pad still moves the camera, except the
camera can only pan to the left or right a specific amount due to the
lack of free movement. Probably the most useful feature in this game
that I wish was in Ace aAttorney is when you hit the Triangle button
the game will highlight all the objects you can interact with in the
room with a blue circle. This doesn’t give you any form of penalty,
and is extremely useful when you are trying to find that last item to
examine.
Now,
before you actually go around looking for evidence, you're in a
segment called Everyday Life. There is one of these sections each
chapter, and you can use them to interact with your peers who have
been locked up with you, and earn skill points and skills that can be
used in the trials. (I’ll touch more on this later)
Everyday
Life usually goes on for a few days. Once a murder happens and the
body is discovered, then the game shifts into Neveryday life. This is
the part of the game where you do the detective work. Every time you
find a new piece of info you get “New Ammo”. Yes, evidence is
called ammo in Danganronpa (you’ll see why later). You can check
your ammo from the Ammunition Menu on your electroiD. “ElectroiD?
What’s that?” I hear you ask. Well, basically it's a really fancy
pantsy student ID, where you can view a map and teleport around the
school floors at will, (useful for navigating around the rather large
school) view your ammunition as mentioned before, view student
profiles, view school rules, and save your game. You can open your
electroiD almost everywhere by hitting the square button.
Anyways,
your goal in Neveryday Life is to find all the evidence you need for
the school trial. Once you have found everything, the game will
automatically advance to the Class Trial, the other part of the game.
Bout
time we cover the class trials then!
Class
trials are the part of the game where you need to find out who is the
murderer. This is done by playing a selection of minigames, yes
minigames. Don’t flip out though, as these are pretty fun. I’ll
cover these one by one in order of how often they appear.
Nonstop
debate
This
one pops up the most by far.
You are thrown into a sort of testimony debate between the surviving
members and you, quite literally have to shoot down weak points you
see in their debate with your ammunition aka evidence (hence why it
is called ammunition). You move your crosshair with the circle pad,
fire with the triangle button, fast forward with the circle button
and switch ammunition with the L button.
On
higher difficulties, more ammunition is loaded into the chamber,
meaning you have to figure out the correct piece of ammunition to
fire at a weak point. Weak points are pieces of yellow text that you
can see throughout statements. The higher you set the difficulty, the
more weak points are present. But only one is the correct weak point.
Once you find the correct ammo to fire at the correct weak point you
just point and shoot. Easy right? WRONG. The game throws a bit of a
monkey wrench in if you set the difficulty for the action sequences
at normal or malicious. Firstly you have random chit chat that
invades the debate. This is purple text that usually flies right in
the bloody way of weak points. To clear this text you need to aim
your crosshair at the purple text and hit the cross button. You
receive a time bonus for each piece of chit chat you knock away, but
if you hit a statement that is part of the debate you’ll receive a
time penalty (usually around 20 odd seconds).
Secondly,
sometimes the ammunition you have collected actually
won't work against any of the present
weak points. So what do you do there? Well if you hold down the
triangle button while your crosshair is above a weak point you can
actually load that weak point as AMMO and fire that at another
weak point to break it. It’s a clever system and really increases
the number of possible answers especially if you are playing on
malicious. Only slight annoyance about this is that if you happen to
miss the weak point you had to load, or you end up missing, then you
have to fast forward through the rest of the debate, wasting time
just to load the weak point in again. However, in my entire
playthrough I never actually ran out of time.
To
combat all of this crazy crap the game throws at you the game is kind
enough to give you the ability to concentrate. Concentrating is done
by holding the R button and it slows down the flow of time as well as
stopping your crosshair from drifting around like it’s tripping on
something. However, using concentration drains a gauge at the top
right of the screen below your health (which I’ll get to later). If
this gauge runs out then concentration stops, so you gotta be quick.
So
that pretty much covers nonstop debate, so it's time to move on to…
Epiphany
Anagram
This
is probably the least interesting of the mini games, to be honest.
It's basically hangman. Shoot the letters flying towards you by
aiming and hitting triangle. Concentrate to slow down time with R,
and that's about it. Moving on
Machine
Gun Talk Battle
This
one is quite interesting. Machine gun talk battles are basically a
sort of rhythm game. Yes, a rhythm game. Hit the cross button in time
with the beat markers scrolling along the bottom of the screen to
lock onto verbal insults thrown at you by your opponent, before
hitting the triangle button to fire and destroy them. Deplete their
life gauge, and then fire the killshot at their statement to destroy
it and prove them wrong. Easy right? WRONG AGAIN. If you're playing
on normal or higher then at one point in the game you will be
introduced to the fact that you have to reload. This is done by
hitting the square button in time with the beat. If you run out of
bullets, then you can’t lock onto anything. On top of that, you now
have more than one killshot loaded into your barrel, meaning you have
to cycle through to find the right one to shoot at your opponent’s
statement. Finally, a new concentration power is introduced, but this
time your opponent has one as well. Your opponent can, at any time
hide the beat line that scrolls at the bottom of the screen meaning
you have to go by ear. However, to even the playing field you can hit
the R button to immediately bump up the tempo and give yourself
unlimited ammo for a limited period. However, if you're like me then
you will rarely have to use it, as I have a good ear for detecting
beats in music. If you're able to detect timing in music ,then you
will have no problems here.
Finally
it is time to move onto the final mini game;
Climax
Logic
This
one is the most interesting I think. You have to reconstruct the
entire murder case from start to finish in manga format (Editors
note; from right to left, like in Japanese comics).
The bottom of the screen has a bunch of circles which correspond to
panels. The Circle Pad moves your crosshair, and you hold Cross to
pick up and drop panels. By hitting cross over a question mark you
can get a hint about what panel goes there. Simple but fun.
Now,
I think it's about time I cover the health bar. You start with a
total of 7 hearts, which drain if you mess up somewhere. Such as
firing the wrong ammo at a weak point/firing at the wrong weak point,
picking the wrong letter to fill in the word in the hangman game,
letting the verbal insults get too close so they explode in machine
gun talk battle, or misplacing a panel in Climax logic. Health is
also depleted if you end up presenting the wrong ammo or pick the
wrong option when asked a question during the class trial. If the
health bar drops fully you fail.
BUT.
But but but but BUUUUUTTTT. You are allowed to try again from the
exact mini game or question you failed at with a full life bar with
NO penalty whatsoever except for a small point drop, no matter what
the difficulty. The game is EXTREMELY forgiving with failure (which
will happen a lot, trust me) and I honestly don’t mind. I was
playing on malicious difficulty and failed many times, but being able
to restart right off the bat with a full life bar was nice and kept
the pace going. The game isn’t brutally hard and you won’t find
yourself rage quitting unless you aren’t good at logic puzzles, and
set the logic puzzle difficulty on malicious for some daft reason.
In
summary, Danganronpas gameplay is quite varied and interesting. I
like the exploration and clue finding, and the class trials are
really fun and tense. However there is the odd dud mini game here and
there, namely the hangman one.
9/10
Graphics
and sound:
Bout
time we moved on. Let’s start with the graphics
The
graphics for Danganronpa, for a PSP game are really damn impressive.
Textures look nice and detailed for the PSP, and nothing looks
extremely jarring or out of place. Character portraits are nicely
detailed and well designed, with some characters having designs that
are out of this world (namely Genocider Syo). When you’re
exploring the academy, characters will appear as paper cut-outs for
lack of a better word and will pivot to face you head on, doom style.
Sounds odd but it looks perfectly fine. To top it off the game runs
silky smooth with no frame drops in sight. I’d say it pushes the
PSP to its limits. The cherry on the cake are the execution cutscenes
which are animated REALLY well and have an amazing art style to them.
Now
the soundtrack. In a word. Awesome. The soundtrack was composed by
Masafumi Takada and it fits the game really well. From the kick-ass
jazzy opening theme, to the epic sounding theme that kicks in near
the second half of the game, to the awesome and strange track played
during nonstop debates with samples of gibberish for some reason.
This whole soundtrack is just AWESOME and it fits the game really
well.
Voice
acting is spot on too. Quite a few characters have unique voices to
them which really make their personalities all the more interesting.
By far though the best performance again has to come from Genocider
Syo. I would link a voice clip but that might throw in spoilers, so
feel free to look it up if you want but be aware, possible spoilers.
Overall
Danganronpa is a gorgeous looking game with a great soundtrack and
awesome voice acting to boot. It’s hard to find a fault in this
area apart from the fact that a few of the songs are a little meh.
Then we have the elephant in the room… The colour of the blood.
They coloured the blood… PINK. Yes you read that right, pink. Out
of all of the things in Danganronpa the pink blood I think is the
most interesting. However, I found I got over it pretty quickly. Just
be aware that despite the pretty morbid murders the pink blood can
kinda drop the shock value a little.
(EDITORS
NOTE. Nathan originally had a passage in the previous section about
the presentation, and he had his facts a little wrong. He thought the
blood was pink because the developers wanted to bring down the rating
of the game. But I looked into that, and I found out that the pink
blood was actually a deliberate stylistic choice by the designer to
contrast with the morbidity of the subject matter. I pointed this out
to him, but he didn't have time to rewrite the passage, so I figured
I'd mention that in a note -Alex Shannon)
Despite
that minor issue with the presentation however the game does look
great overall.
9/10
Enjoyment:
Time
for the most important section. How much did I enjoy the game?
Well,
I started playing Danganronpa last Sunday evening at 8 pm, and I
finished it on Tuesday at 5pm. So I clocked it at about twenty hours
in around 2 and a half days. That should give you an idea on how
addicting it was for me.
I
had a blast playing through it. When I started I took the plunge and
jacked the difficulty of both the logic puzzles, and action sequences
up to malicious, and really I highly recommend you do that as well.
Danganronpa is sadly one of those games where the first experience is
the best one, as the answers will always be the same each time you
play. To get the most satisfying experience you really need to
play on malicious, as the feeling you get when solving a puzzle or
calling someone out is just amazing. Danganronpa gave me a feeling of
satisfaction when I solved a murder, or successfully figured out a
puzzle which is something that can only really be done with a game
like this. The story is very well done, and keeps you on the hook.
Couple that with the gameplay, and you’ve got a game that is
basically the entertainment equivalent of superglue. You won’t
wanna put it down until the very end. Incredibly addicting, extremely
satisfying and most importantly, fun.
10/10
Final
verdict:
As
you have probably guessed. I highly recommend this game. If you have
a PSP then play the English patched version (Editors note: Be sure
to import the game from Japan first!). If you have a PS Vita buy
the official translation with extras, and then play the sequel
straight after (which never got a PSP translation). Just play it. I
don’t care what method you use, if you like games like Ace
Attorney, and love logic puzzles then you will LOVE this game.
Danganronpa
gets a Highly Recommended
Thank
you very much for reading (this was a really long review I know), I
hope you enjoyed it!
BDVR
Guest author Nathan Green signing off.
Age
Ratings:
CERO: D
OFLC: M (Unrestricted)
ESRB M
PEGI 16
Cover
image from http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/
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