Over the years Nippon
Ichi has brought us some truly weird and wonderful games. They normally come packed
with a twisted sense of humour and enough anarchic chaos to send the average
gamer mad. Danganronpa takes this weirdness to a whole new level and the end
result is a game as insane as anything we’ve seen before.
This is a heavily story
based game and much of the fun comes from unravelling the twisted tale so we
won’t be going into a massive explanation of it. You’ll learn early on that you’re
a student trapped in a school with a host of other students. Each of the
characters has been picked because they are the ‘Ultimate’ something. For instance
one is labelled the Ultimate Baseball star while another is the Ultimate pop
sensation.
Once you meet everyone
and find you are indeed trapped inside the school a strange bear-like creature
appears to tell you that you are trapped forever. That is of course unless you
can kill one of the others and get away with it. This results in much horror
and shock and the obvious eventual first murder. It’s here where the game
really gets going as you are tasked with uncovering clues to who committed the
crime and then taking them down in a class room trial at the end of the
chapter.
Each chapter splits
itself into a number of different sections. First of all you will have a
section where you are pretty much guided around the school to various relevant
story progressing points. At each of these locations pre-planned events will
happen and you’ll get the setup of the chapter. On occasions you will also get
free time to explore the school and talk to the other students. Doing this time
you can build social links which give you special skills and stat boosts, as
well as allowing you to learn more about the other characters and fill out your
personal files on them. Characters can also be given gifts to further develop
your relationship with them and the odd special scene will also play out if you
are in the right place at the right time.
After doing this a murder
or other event will normally take place and you’ll be put into the
investigative part of the game. Here you explore the school looking for clues
as to who the murderer is or what is going on. This then leads into the bizarre
classroom trial. The trial is effectively a set of mini games that must be completed
to win the day. It starts with a class debate where everyone says what they
think happened, if you spot something a miss you need to shoot the words with a
‘truth bullet’. At that point you will then correct the argument and it will
start again. Here you have a few skills you can use such as ‘concentration’
which slows things down. Others can be gathered from social links as you
progress as well.
If you challenge the
wrong point you will lose energy and sometimes you’ll have to use the combination
of the right bullet and right words to succeed as well. There’s a definite hint
of Phoenix Wright in there but it certainly carves its own path as well. Once
the debate is over you will need to piece together the crime. This is done by
adding in pictures to a partially completed comic strip. Get one wrong and your
energy will take another hit. Get that complete and you are onto the final part
of the trial which is the face off with the accused murderer.
The face-off takes the
form of a bizarre rhythm action game where you alternate pressing X and triangle
in time to the accused shouting objections at you. Hold out for long enough and
they will eventually crack under the pressure and give in. they are then
dragged off for a brutal and twisted death based around their ‘Ultimate’
persona. Of course if you fail to
identify the murderer then everybody else dies and it’s game over. The games only real issue lies here as well,
in that you can’t save during the class trial and they do go on for absolutely
ages.
In a way it’s kind of a
weird cross between the social links aspect of the Persona series and Saw and
is presented in much the same way as other Nippon Ichi titles. It’s also quite
a slow and thoughtful game with much of the time spent exploring and evaluating
what is going on and in that respect it shares a fair bit with a classic point
and click adventure. In truth we can compare it to all sorts of things but the
only way to really understand it is to play it as it’s quite unique in many
ways.
Overall, it’s refreshing to
see something as absolutely crazy as this come out. It’s certainly something different
and a break from all the other tried and tested formulas out there. It can be
slow at times and there is an issue with the length between saves once a trial
has started. That said these are the only real down points in a game which is
fun, interesting and a downright joy to experience. The mystery is good, the dialogue
is well written and the characters interesting. All the elements work together
well and for those looking for something different they really shouldn’t look further
than this.
8/10
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