Introduction
Danganronpa is a murder mystery Japanese video game franchise created and developed by Spike Chunsoft for the Playstation Portable, Playstation Vita, iOS and android spanning two visual novel games, a third-person shooter spin-off, multiple smartphone titles and various manga, anime and novel adaptations.
First person view in Danganronpa
The game is played in
first person, with the only time you see your character is during the Class
Trials. The gameplay, as expected of a visual novel includes mostly text
reading where each chapter is split into three parts; exposition, investigation
and Class Trial.
The exposition is where
the plot progresses and the player is given Free Time to increase friendship
rates with the other students by hanging out or giving them gifts. You will be
able to get to know the person progressively better, with them talking about
their worries or their pasts. At the end of this part, a murder will typically
occur.
Investigation starts and
the students go investigate on their own. Here, you go around the school,
talking to your classmates on their findings while searching for clues yourself
in the form of items you target and inspect. If it proves to be something that
could help in the trial, it is filed under the ‘Ammunition’ category of your
menu to be used in the trial later.
Using 'Ammunition' to 'shoot' the contradiction.
The Class Trial is a
combination of an auto-run discussion going back and forth between the
remaining students and several mini games that are played by the player to
further the discussions when they’ve hit a block. One such mini game is where
your proof becomes ‘ammunition’ to ‘shoot’ the contradictory statements that
run across the screen while your classmates chat. Another being a game where
you have to hit certain letters to form an unknown word, something similar to
Hangman. The last being a puzzle timeline, where the player uses comic drawn
puzzle pieces of the incident to place them in chronological order and show
exactly how the murder was carried out.
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Danganronpa: Trigger
Happy Havoc is the first of the Danganronpa series and was available on the
PSP. Its story depicts sixteen high school student from the prestigious Hope’s
Peak Academy, including Naegi Makoto the main character who find themselves
locked within their school grounds without any memory of how they got there or
who had trapped them. In the confusion, a monochromatic teddy bear by the name
of Monokuma appears to tell them that there is no way to escape.
Unless a student manages
to kill another student and get away with it.
The way it works is that
if there has been a murder, there will be a period of time where the other
students are allowed to investigate. Gathering information and clues to who the
murderer is before they are called to a Class Trial where everyone works to
root out the killer and get them to either admit it or have undeniable proof of
the person’s crime.
If the class manages to
guess the right person, then only the murderer gets killed.
If they guess wrong, then
everyone except the murderer is killed and the murderer is set free.
The game itself has
excellent mysteries increasing in difficulty as the game progresses with the
circumstances of deaths being varied and for me, mostly baffling until the
Class Trial takes place and everything starts to come together. The game’s art
has a very unique style, where the environment and people are made to look like
pop-up cards which do actually pop or drop on screen when the player enters a
room. I really like the irony of having something that feels childish in such a
dark game, which can also be said about their bright neon pink blood. Yes, it
took me a while to get used to this too.
The music they used really
helped set the mood, with more a relaxing song playing in the background in the
daily life sections to lonely piano keys after a couple of classmates have been
executed. Most of the music was tense with a sense of dread that kept me
looking over my shoulder, which honestly made me appreciate the times where the
daily life tunes were on. Just like how the characters would feel to have a
short interval from seeing all the murders and executions of their constantly
shrinking circle of friends.
The story is easy to
follow, and is especially well done in the Class Trials where even when
everything is jumbled up in a mess, the game takes its time to explain every
single detail on how what could have happened and what could not. Breaking down
the murder to a point where it slowly untangles and shows itself for what it
is. This could also be taken as a slight negative as the game could take much
longer than necessary to explain a section of the murder, depending on the
player themselves.
Along with the murders
the plot unfolds, building up to the big reveal at the end where the main
villain comes into light and unexpected revelations are made. All in all, it
was a story filled with twists and turns and despair, flipping your understanding
over on its head several times over while causing you to lament your own
helplessness in a hopeless situation.
The characters stand on
their own, being vastly different from one another and feel real as each, be it
killer or no, has their own reasons and can be quite relatable. The Free Time
scenes are a bonus, adding to their characters in a way that feels personal
with the player themselves as you choose who to spend your Free Time with.
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
The sequel to the first Danganronpa
takes place on an uninhabited series of vacation islands connected by bridges
and introduces a new cast of students from Hope’s Peak Academy. With many
things similar to the first game, including the hazy memories of the past, the
crew is greeted instead by a stuffed white and pink bunny who calls herself
Usami, their supposed class teacher who insists that they are here to become
friends with one another.
This wasn’t taken all
that seriously by the group of students who, with any lack of choice, begun to
live on the islands. The peace and confusion doesn’t last long however, as a
familiar monochromatic bear leaps into the scene, locking down the island and
rendering Usami’s ‘powers’ ineffective and lays out the same rules he did in
the first game.
This time however,
Monokuma isn’t so patient as to wait for the murders to happen by themselves.
Oh no, he leaves the students be for however long he wants to before stepping
in to give them all a little ‘incentive’, as he calls it, now forcing their hands
to kill not only to escape the islands but for more personal reasons.
Danganronpa 2 takes all
that is managed in Danganronpa 1 and makes it better, now with an even more
diverse and distinct cast of individuals starring Hajime Hinata, the main character
this time around. It retains its pop-up style with updated graphics and pink
blood which gives it a nice sense of identity, the music keeps a certain tune
reminiscent of the first game, like a remix which I think is a nice touch for
nostalgia’s sake while adding a new mini game to the Class Trials in which the
player navigates their character through a mind tunnel while answering
questions that are asked whilst avoiding gaps in the floor. It also features a
short part where the player plays as a different character to solve a puzzle,
unlike the first game where you could only control Naegi.
The story takes an even
darker turn compared to the first, bringing to light under table research, and
the followers of the original villain in Trigger Happy Havoc as slowly, some of
the members of the group start going a bit crazy. Not to mention, the murders
have turned intricate, with elaborate tricks and gimmicks and a bit of inside
knowledge about the killer themselves where little details within conversation
could become important later on. The developers definitely spent a lot of time
coming up with these. This ups the challenge, and left me in awe at the
conclusions.
Now on to the characters.
They are as diverse as they come, from psychopaths to the deluded to the royal.
It’s a fascinating bunch to interact with and to get to know. As well as sad to
see them killed. I feel that the second game did much more on the emotional
department, making some Class Trials too heart-wrenching to bear. Overall I’d
say it was a great sequel and it tied up some of the questions left by Trigger
Happy Havoc.
On a last note, the sequel does feature some of the protagonists from the first game and it was really nice not only to see them again, but to know a little about how they’ve been doing after the events in Danganronpa 1.
References
Danganronpa. (n.d.). Retrieved August 3,
2015, from http://danganronpa.wikia.com/wiki/Dangan_Ronpa_Wiki
Danganronpa. (n.d.). Retrieved August 2,
2015, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danganronpa