Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (2010)

Danganronpa is a strange mix of brilliance and ineptitude. Most of it is a brilliant story of fascist conformity on crack. A brilliant analogy for how even the most talented individuals can fall for society's schemes. And for most of the game, it's all told brilliantly.

It makes Danganronpa's final (and optional) act all the more disappointing. Like many brilliant horror stories, it struggles to wrap itself up in any cohesive way. It's almost as if the final act was written by a different person or was not the original ending in mind. It certainly doesn't feel like a truthful ending.

Regardless, as a fan of visual novels, Danganronpa is one of the best I've played. A satisfying blend of anime tropes and Agatha Christie plots that feels like what the Phoenix Wright series could have been if it had been willing to reinvent itself.

[THIS WILL PURPOSEFULLY AVOID SPOILERS BECAUSE I KNOW THAT THIS GAME IS VERY LINEAR AND REVOLVES AROUND ITS SENSE OF MYSTERY A LOT]

In early July of 2018, I completed Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc with some friends of mine in attendance. Although I played 99% of the game myself, it was fun discussing the mysteries with other people as we were all trying to figure it out together, trying to solve what really happened and figure out the true nature of everything. It took us a while across multiple lengthy settings (believe we started the game in late May maybe?) and afterwards we split up to play the other Danganronpa games on my own (still in the middle of Ultra Despair Girls), but it was fun having that joint detective environment, coming up with our own in-jokes and discussing what we thought would happen next. So what did I think of the game? While there are a few aspects I feel could've maybe been built upon, this is a solid game that I got really sucked into and provides a great foundation for other games to build upon.

I remember when I used to see posts about Danganronpa on Tumblr several years back I had no clue what it was. It had a distinct enough art style to recognize but nothing I saw in the posts I briefly glimpsed seemed to properly suggest what the point of it was and so I didn't really bother checking it out. If I had known what the games were about, I probably would've made a greater effort to check it out earlier. The premise of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is that you and a group of other high school students who are "Ultimates" at a given skill are all brought to Hope's Peak Academy, a prestigious school to be a light for the future. But it then turns out that something has happened to Hope's Peak, as all of you are now trapped in a simulated school environment where the only way to escape is to kill someone and get away with it (and leave everyone else to die), with the goal being to provide a symbol of despair towards the future as opposed to hope. Your goal is to get to know the other students and try to understand the mystery of why things are the way they are, as well as properly solve any murders that happen to expose the murderers and keep everyone else from being killed.

An important thing to note early on is that this game is very linear. I don't tend to play any visual novel-esque games because they tend to be so linear, but while there are certain areas it would have been nice to have a greater degree of control or impact, the game manages to find a way to still keep itself engaging as a game despite the linearity. And this is through a combination of just enough of a level of actual gameplay and a solid narrative, characters and style.

While the majority of the story and character beats are told through linear dialogue and even clue-gathering is pretty linear, there are opportunities for (limited) exploration at certain points, and you do get a chance to learn more about the individual characters from talking with them and giving them the right gifts which is up to your discretion, and these can give you certain slight advantages. But the portion where the gameplay really opens up are the class trials. Aside from some minor rhythm and precision aiming gameplay, if you knew the answers to everything this wouldn't be much, but the fact that you're solving the mystery and can't really tell how everything all connects, this is what provides the most engaging gameplay experience. Checking your truth bullets, reading up the transcript again, trying out a combination that didn't work and keeping track of how much time, slow-down gauge, and hearts you have left is where the game becomes more interactive. It's not a very hard game with how checkpoints are and how forgiving it is with these aspects, but figuring out how everything comes together can be challenging. We often felt stumped and like we must be idiots for just not being able to come up with what seems like the right answer. It seems to be most similar to the Phoenix Wright games. I haven't played one in about a decade, but I almost feel like this game's mysteries were even harder to solve and more personally engaging than the ones I played in that game because you get to know all the characters so personally, and the answers can seem really obtuse and hard to piece together at first, with lots of situations that seem like they're going one way and then completely change. And you get to learn a lot about the characters from these cases, both the victims and perpetrators, and how the rest of the cast respond to trying to uncover the truth. This game sold me on how you can make a really compelling game even when so much of it is so linear, if you put your time and effort into the right aspects. It may limit the amount of freedom you have, but giving just the right amount of interactivity can still make it really engaging.

But what kept up my investment in solving those mysteries was the framing of it all. The world of Danganronpa is very interesting, in a bit of an exaggerated, slightly unrealistic reality, but rooted enough in a real core when it came to characters and the environments they found themselves in. I don't want to talk too much about the story because I don't want to spoil it, but the way it unravels, adding mysteries upon mysteries, the palpable dread and tension and fear of what may happen next, and how everything starts to tie together and the bonds characters form and the sides they take, it's all fascinating stuff to watch all of these characters interact as the plot unfolds. And those characters, they're pretty much all well fleshed-out, with unique yet distinctive personalities and quirks, and you feel like you get to know them so well and how they approach situations, how they interact with each other, who they get along with, who they don't, what they aspire to, etc. They may draw from archetypes, but they all become distinctive characters in their own right. It was so much fun to see them being themselves and interesting to see how the situations made them all respond. Just to list some of note, while he can be almost comically dense and submissive, I think Makoto is a solid protagonist, a great viewpoint character for this kind of story. Kyoko, while seemingly almost too good at what she does sometimes, provides a compelling counterpoint to Makoto with her dominating personality and less wordy yet concise observations. Byakuya is always insufferable to be around and I really dislike him, but he manages to come up with interesting observations and I can't deny he's a well-written character. Monokuma is just the most perfectly aggravating character, so gleefully uncaring of anyone's wellbeing yet playing under the guise of a fair and just overseer, you just grow to absolutely loathe this smug bear. And of course anyone who's seen my Facebook feed from the time should know Chihiro is my favorite character from this game. Are they one of the best, most well-written, most fleshed out characters of all time? No, but I really associated with this character, I felt like I could relate to some of their feelings of weakness and insecurity, their timid and cautious approach to others, about idolizing others and putting their needs above your own to the point of de-valuation of the self and I found them kind of inspiring. Sort of some similar stuff to Shinji Ikari, though obviously not on the same level of depth.

Style is another thing that really helps this game. It has a very distinctive art style, that provides for some emotive characters with lots of personality and some really visually appealing and memorable designs. You can just tell right away if a character is from Danganronpa, they have a very distinctive look. The game has a really interesting stylistic choice where characters are represented almost like cardboard cutouts for the most part standing around wherever they happen to be, and you can look around rooms almost like a point-and-click where you can turn the camera a bit to the sides and up and down, with free character movement whenever you're on one of the main floors themselves. Considering how most VN-style games are just static backgrounds, that added dimensionality and some element of free 3D traversal really helps sell Hope's Peak Academy as a physical space with actual geography to it that you're familiarizing yourself with its layout.

Another important thing to note is this game's killer soundtrack. I was not expecting this game to have such a stellar soundtrack. The songs are incredibly memorable, they've pretty much all been lodged in my head, they're all great, and even when I've heard them so many times before, I loved it every time they started back up again. If I were to point out a consistent theme, it would be a kind of techno vibe, often drawing from jazz for some inspiration. Box 15 is my favorite song, I've listened to it on its own so many times, and loved whenever it started back up again in-game. Good sound design in general, great voices for all the characters, with memorable and charismatic performances, and great sound effects. Whenever we pressed the button that reveals all the hints in the area, my theater room's subwoofer would just rumble with this awesome bassy sound, and the sound effect for Free Time starting was also powerful and incredible.

If I had any gripes with this game, they're not really major, mostly personal things that don't really detract from the game. Just small things really. The game can be a bit too wordy sometimes, restating what has already been said, especially because Makoto likes to be very wordy and repetitious as he talks to himself, or really talking at length on a topic that should have been covered fine enough, like with how much talk there is about despair. In some cases, it could've been benefitted by not being padded quite as much, it's already quite lengthy as it is. Flashbacks can be helpful in bringing back certain info fresh in your mind, but also got overused at some points. While it's good the game makes sure you have all the truth bullets you need before entering a case, I wish it gave you a little more freedom and didn't make it so obvious where you're supposed to gather your clues. Story events in general tend to railroad you into where your character will be when it's not free time, so it would be nice to not be stuck having to be where the game wants you to be so much of the time, but then again I guess there isn't really a ton of content that would be outside of that. I wish the whole getting to know characters thing was a little more in-depth, like if it was more than just learning some story beats and maybe could have some impact on the main game or the influence you have on certain characters, but I really don't fault the game for not doing that. Just something I think could've been cool. The feature where you would lock onto certain parts of the dialogue to hone in on them does get tedious when you have to strike up conversation with a character multiple times. Moving around in the main floors can be clunky in how it controls but I do understand it's mainly there to prevent the map from feeling like static backgrounds instead of a connected environment so I don't fault the game too much for that. I also felt aiming could be a bit clunky, at least on a PS4 controller, it seems to be better on a mouse when I played Danganronpa 2. You don't get a ton of free time sometimes, but I guess that's what School Mode is for (watched some videos on the conversations you get from all the characters because actually playing the mode seemed like it could be tedious). Sometimes the voice clip they'll play to accompany a bit of dialogue seems ill-fitting, or they'll use the same one twice in a row (think this happened with Mondo). Some elements seem confusing in where they lead, either not seemingly leading to much, or remaining unsolved mysteries by the end, but I guess later games might end up answering those.

Also what's up with that pink blood? There's one scene in particular where the blood isn't pink which makes me even more confused with why it had to be that way. Guess they got away with it the one time?

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc can seem a bit too linear and a bit too wordy at some points, and certain aspects can seem a bit clunky/underdeveloped, but it was still a fantastic game to play through. An engrossing narrative and universe, with interesting, charming, motivated characters that it was fascinating to watch interact and try to solve the mystery of Hope's Peak Academy together, with beautifully distinctive artwork and excellent voice acting, sound design and soundtrack composition. You may be doing a lot of reading and watching, but there's just enough interactivity to give a sense of investment and personal engagement in what is happening. I definitely recommend it to everyone, and I can't wait to see what I uncover playing through the rest of the series.

I'll be the first to admit that other than a few exceptions I haven't been a huge fan of Spike Chunsoft's writing. That applies especially here, Danganronpa as a VN primarily falters on its leading appeals. The storytelling on its own is disgustingly shallow, characters are fumbling archetypes with only two characters getting even a decent chance at characterization. The final chapter especially blows the entire thing on its head, making it clear how ridiculous it disregards logic, which while wouldn't be an issue for a thematically heavy VN, Danganronpa's other half literally works on case logic.

Which, speaking of the cases themselves, are fine. Case 3 is pretty bad, but Case 1, 2, and especially 4 all make good use of logical points at contradictions while slowly constructing how every murder went. The only real pressing issue to these cases structurally is that the "why" for most of the cases is so shallow and neglects the heart that the game enforces in the last chapter. With exception of Case 4, anyway.

What keeps the game alright to me, however, is the atmosphere. The academy in of itself is a strong cohesive place, which sounds off when it slowly gets more and more surreal, but it really works here. Going about it for every case and finding the history of it is pretty interesting (to a point, where the story rears its ugly head).

Despite how I take a hammer to Danganronpa, I still managed to enjoy myself overall. It has a lot to do with the signature aesthetic that is etched into my mind at this point, and the very few strong moments of the story still stick with me far beyond my playtime. For that, I recommend Danganronpa just a tad, for anyone interested in the series on that alone, despite its issues. (6/10)

As a core gameplay experience, Danganronpa is unimpressive. The art, for the most part, is nothing special. The controls outside of the novel portions are clunky. Heck, even the most important aspect of a visual novel, the text, is blurry and seems stretched. The characters don't stray far from their tropes, and at it's simplest description it is a murder mystery of which there are countless of in the anime/manga/visual novel format already.

What Danganronpa does so well is how much mystery there IS. What exactly is Monokuma? Why are you trapped in this school? New information about people is revealed that sheds new light or reveals falsehoods. Why would they lie? What is their motivation when their turn comes up in the class trials?

From within the locked, cramped constraints of Hope's Peak Academy, Danganronpa builds a world block by block through its dialogue and revelation that you can't help but see through to the end. The tropes that you assumed characters were going to stick to become blurrier as the truth becomes clearer. Each single answer brings with it several new questions, and this momentum only picks up as the game goes on until its climax.

Technical flaws aside, it's an experience worth having, and I've continued straight away into v2 with high hopes.

First time playing this game. First time spending more than 5 minutes with a Vita game. First time playing a visual novel style RPG if we don't count that hour and a half I spent with Persona 4* last year... There is so much happy in me right now.

Only had enough time to play through the entire Prologue but I'm already hooked. Can't wait to spend more time with this one.

* - Loved Persona 4, but stopped playing it after my PS2 crapped out and haven't started again as it's on my PS2 project list and I'm holding off until then.