@Th3solution I try to not roll my eyes too much at it too. My partner, whenever watching with me, will constantly respond in a way like "Oh, man, this is so dumb, I cannot believe they did this". For me I try to be aware of cultural differences too. There's a lot of stuff I like about Japanese culture, which draws me to games like these but also Yakuza, but there's also just stuff I don't understand. I try not to hate it too much.
But the upskirt shots and stuff, they're totally unnecessary to the game, I feel. I roll my eyes at those for sure.
And you're totally right about Jack being overpowered. I beat a few bosses now, and when I look up the guide to beating them, they all simply state "just use jack". I try to use that as less as possible to keep it engaging.
I also read a negative review before playing, I think it was Eurogamer, who stated there was no skill involved in the shooting mechanics. I don't feel that's true. I can easily make the 'perfect' shots for about 80% of the time if I try hard enough. I also feel that all my deaths (3 so far, haha) were justified, so...
The shooting mechanic works well enough. Some people just go into it expecting Gears of War or something, I think. I like the increasingly large amount of cool stuff you can do over the course of the game with that Megaphone Gun. And the puzzle rooms are kind of fun.
I quite like the music in this game, especially the very smooth theme that plays as you're exploring the city. And the cheery-yet-vaguely-sinister carnival-esque music that plays whenever the Warriors of Hope are on-screen. It's a great, dissonant accompaniment to whatever crazy thing they're planning or doing.
I really like the disturbing tone of the game. Especially the notes you find from the children and adults, some of which become increasingly cold-blooded. As usual, I feel like the stylized violence helps make it somewhat more impactful and memorable than if they opted for something more realistic and openly grisly. I don't get shocked by anything, really, but there are some really surprisingly dark moments, especially toward the end of the game, that help immerse you in the twisted, exploitative, and nihilistic headspace that these children have been living in for a while now.
I'm really enjoying Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc at the moment. I've completed the second class trial, which was a big improvement over the first one. With all the plot twists in it, I kept going back and forth with who I thought the culprit was, not being sure of who it was right up until the point where it became crystal clear in the trial.
Those rhythm games at the end of the trials still confuse me, and it's going to take some more practice before I get good at them. Thankfully the game lets you retry any sections you fail on instead of getting you to restart from the beginning of the trial.
So not last night but the night before 24 robbers came knocking at the door (Sorry (Not sorry 😜)) I ended up looking through the "Big in Japan" sale and stumbled upon the Danganronpa games there.
"Oh yeah this is the series that Kid, Ral and Crim's PushSquare avatars are all from" I thought (Not to mention I recall the praise) and with that decided to give the store trailer and screenshots a look.
Unfortunately at 30 seconds long and bugger all actually in it, not to mention the screenshots were completely unhelpful, I ended up looking thr series up on Youtube, found a nice no commentary playthrough of Trigger Happy Havoc and watched a couple of episodes...
... And then I watched a couple more...
... Which (surprise) led to me watching even more...
... By the time I did actually finish watching and headed to bed it was gone half two in the morning (I'd started at like 9pm or something) and had watched the entirety of the first class trial 😳
I can see why there's a lot of like for this wonderfully bonkers game.
Bloody shame I can't get it yet though and'll miss out on that especially tantalising sale price! 😂
Ah well! I'm hoping to get it sometime soon... It looked great, really caught my attention and I can't wait to see what happens next!
Also I assume "Danganronpa: Another Episode Ultra Despair Girls" comes after 1 and 2 but before the third game? Or is it not needed to enjoy the third?
The games go on sale pretty often, so I doubt you'll have to wait too awful long for the next one.
Anyway, I'll help provide some clarity.
Danganronpa 1 and 2 are part of the same story, and should be played before anything else in the series. Everything references them extremely heavily.
Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls is technically a spin-off, but it's referenced heavily in the Danganronpa 3 anime. If you're going to watch the anime, you'll really want to experience this beforehand.
Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School is an anime-only sequel to Danganronpa 1, 2, and Ultra Despair Girls that concludes the "arc" from those three games. It's a 24 episode series split into two parts that intertwine and foreshadow events in one-another. "Side: Future" is a 12 episode storyline that functions as the direct sequel to Danganronpa 2. "Side: Despair" is an 11 episode storyline that functions as a sort of prequel to the events of Danganronpa 2. Then there's a single "Side: Hope" episode at the end that caps off both storylines and properly ties them together at the end.
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, while part of the mainline series, isn't really a continuation of the narrative from the previous three games and anime series. It does, however, function as a sort of spiritual successor to them. Knowledge of previous games isn't necessarily required, but it's HIGHLY recommended that you play this as your final game in the series for reasons I won't mention. This game, once you complete the story, has the normal dating sim postgame mode that the first two games had as well, but it also has highly fleshed out board game and JRPG modes, and the post-game content heavily references characters from every previous entry in the series, including the anime.
So, you can experience the series in three orders.
The "I don't care about the EU and cross-media lore" order. In this case, you'd play:
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
The "I don't want to have to watch an anime" order.
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
Finally, if you want to experience the series in all its glory, you should watch the Danganronpa 3 anime after UDG, but before V3. It also wouldn't hurt to read the mini light novels included with the Danganronpa games. And, if you're really hardcore, you can also seek out the Danganronpa Zero light novel that was never officially translated.
If you do end up going the multimedia route, I'd be careful to avoid confusing Danganronpa 3 (an anime-original storyline) with the exceedingly mediocre anime adaptation of the first Danganronpa game.
“Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls is technically a spin-off, but it's referenced heavily in the Danganronpa 3 anime. If you're going to watch the anime, you'll really want to experience this first.”
Ultra Despair Girls is set between 1 and 2. Yes, it’s a spin off and you don’t need to play it at all, no harm will come to your V3 experience if you skip it. It is however a great game and well worth spending the time to play.
The PSVR is the best VR system on the market today.
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Glad you enjoyed watching the start of the game. From what I've played of the series, it's really good (completed Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc, and halfway through Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair).
@Ralizah Useful info. I hadn't heard about the Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School anime before now.
A font of useful information as always @Ralizah and thanks for the clarification! I didn't even know there was a postgame element in the first two so that's fun!
And v3 having both a Jrpg mode and a boardgame in the post game content? Sounds pretty darn meaty!
I just hope that anime isn't too hard to find! 😅
I was utterly absorbed by it @crimsontadpoles. Great for my interest in the game... not so much that I only got four hours sleep before getting ready for work 😂
Glad to hear you're enjoying the sequel as well!
Previously known as Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy
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"You don't have to save the world to find meaning in life. Sometimes all you need is something simple, like someone to take care of"
@Ralizah@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I’ve played Danganronpa 1&2 and Ultra Despair Girls and really enjoyed them all. Somehow I’ve let V3 sit in the backlog; I think mostly because I bought the Vita version (because these are awesome on the handheld) but I’ve largely forgotten my Vita for the last year while I’ve focused on more of my PS4 backlog. I also was trying to procure the anime to get the full experience, but I think I need to just do the "I don't want to have to watch an anime“ version of Rali’s options. Maybe if you get into them then I can play alongside you Foxy by the time you get to V3
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
I watched both my brothers play through 1 and 2 on the PS4 and then they both played V3 on the Vita. I’d already played the first chapter of the first game and felt it was a bit grim for my taste, which is bizarre given I love the first two Zero Escape games. After watching them play it a year or two ago, I’d probably try again with them. At this rate we’ll all end up playing them at the same time 😂😂
It would be disappointing if Danganronpa returned after V3. It was, on a philosophical level, a very definitive conclusion to the franchise.
I think Spike Chunsoft will probably churn out games in the series without Kodaka's input, though. Money talks, and while it's not some huge, mainstream franchise, Danganronpa has a surprisingly large amount of cultural clout with anime and gaming communities.
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy "Meaty" doesn't even begin to describe it. When I was going for the platinum, I spent roughly 130+ hours with the game. Only 40 of those hours were the main story playthrough. The rest was all trophy clean-up/post-game content. The modes are actually quite interesting: you collect gold in the JRPG mode to buy character cards of various rarities from a sort of slot machine (the higher the rarity, the faster the card levels up and becomes powerful), which you then proceed to level up via the board game. These leveled up cards are then usable in the JRPG (they represent people in your party) to advance further, defeat more bosses, collect more gold, etc. so that you can use more gold to play for stronger character cards to level up in the board game to get even further in the JRPG, etc. So those two modes are really one massive side-game.
Even the dating sim mode felt more fleshed out than in previous games.
I still question to this day whether the arcade game trophies were worth going for, though. I still have gamer PTSD over listening to this for hours as I played the despair-inducing puzzle game Treasure Hunter Monolith over and over until the goddess of RNG blessed me with her favor and allowed me to get a high enough score.
@Th3solution Yeah, I enjoyed the anime well enough (it was a lot of fun watching it while it aired in Japan and engaging in speculation with friends about the mystery behind it; there was one particularly bananas theory that I still kind of wish had turned out to be true), but the references don't really factor in until you get to the post-game content, which is entirely separate from the main campaign. Realistically, you can play 1 and 2 and then be perfectly good to go with V3.
It is kind of frustrating that people will watch it in a sub-optimal manner thanks to the way Funi distributed it on DVD/Bluray, though. The two storylines making up the anime as a whole were designed to be watched in tandem. That's the way it aired. Bouncing back and forth between the two storylines allowed for neat foreshadowing and narrative parallelism that disappears if you binge each storyline at a time.
@KratosMD THAT scene did its job: I'll never hear Tsubasa wo Kudasai again and not mentally associate it with grisly images of mass murder.
You spent 90 hours on the post game content and clean-up in v3 @Ralizah?! 😲
I feel your pain though with the arcade game ... The puzzle boy/Jack Bros minigame in SMT 3 Nocturne is the bane of my existence! I can't even do it following a guide without losing my marbles 😂
Previously known as Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy
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"You don't have to save the world to find meaning in life. Sometimes all you need is something simple, like someone to take care of"
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Yeah. Admittedly, I tend to take a bit longer than average when it comes to beating games, but the post-game is still easily the longest part of the experience. Those modes felt like a love-letter to series fans, as they featured tons of possible interactions between characters from each of the games (and the anime). It was pretty cool watching the dialogues between characters who would have had no possible way of ever meeting one-another in the canon timeline of the series. It's sort of like fanfiction, but from the official source.
Ah, I never got that far in Nocturne, although I have seen footage of the minigame you're referring to online. Looks tough! If there's any substantial amount of time between DDS2 this year and SMT V, I think I need to dig into that game in 2021.
SMT V Is still in the ether isn't it @Ralizah? I don't expect that til 2023 or something the way that's going 😂
I probably said it after your DDS1 review but I think you'll appreciate it a lot more after the sequel (I do personally prefer the first overall) but the second is very good too. The only games I can think of that heavily revolve around Hindu mythology and themes that definitely gives the duology a unique feel.
Getting back on topic I actually started Danganronpa 1/2 Reload (Trigger Happy Havoc obviously) on Friday. I intended just to look it over, see the controls and what reload's menus actually consisted of nefore leaving it to a later date.
My daughter however came in, saw it (I was actually looking at the second's title screen graphic so she saw that pink bear) and asked what it was and I just handed her the controller and told her to give it a try,
She ended up finishing the prologue on my account, had completely forgotten that til I told her too 😉. Luckily we found out what the fast forward function is through the text so she didn't have to sit through all that again herself... She's on Chapter 3 now!
I ended up playing the first chapter by myself on Saturday so I'm now where I watched up to on youtube.
I may start chapter 2 tonight...
I was also thinking of making my posts a bit different for this seeing as it's so character based and heavily revolves around spoilers.
Putting my thoughts on each character at the end of each chapter, see how my predictions for the chapters ahead pan out and such... I bet there's gonna be some way off guesses that'll be fun to read back in hindsight 😅
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Your character guesses would be great fun, each case is so much more than it seems. It would be interesting to see who you think did the murder at the start of each chapter and then see if you’re right!
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Yeah, Atlus announced SMT V well before proper development started. So while people like to start the clock around 2017, realistically, it only started around mid-2018. So I'm not expecting an update for another year or two. SMT V and Metroid Prime 4, both announced fairly early in the life cycle of the device (SMT V was literally announced before the device released, lol), could very well be among its final major exclusive releases.
While I wouldn't count the original DDS among my favorite Atlus games, it was an incredibly unique experience, so I am looking forward to the sequel. There are still so many SMT games in my backlog. I don't know why I even care about SMT V!
RE: Danganronpa, I do think it'd be fun to read predictions of yours, as well as your guesses about the larger mysteries at work. It's always fun seeing people discover one of your favorite series for the first time, y'know?
Interesting to hear that your daughter is playing it as well! I'd be interested to know what she ends up thinking of it.
Thanks for the warning @KratosMD. I don't have email notifications set up I don't think so I'll give that a check and make sure to only look at this thread via the site. I'll make sure to give it a bit of space should someone reply I don't know!
So here's my thoughts for the End Of Chapter 1
Yasuhiro Hagakure: He's a bit of a goofball and ok I guess. He hasn't had much of a role though. At the moment I can see him ending up as a victim. Especially as he just popped up on the image for chapter 2
Junko Enoshima: Taken too soon. If there's some mastermind amongst the students though... There's a possibility her death was faked somehow? It's the only death so far not involved in the trial directly. Seeing as only chapter 1 is done and dusted who knows what'll happen... I could just be wishing to have seen more of her lol.
Celestia Ludenberg: I've got my eye on her as she seems like quite the crafty one. Not much I can really say yet for certain about her though.
Sakura Ogami: I like her. Not much else to really say as she hasn't had much of a say yet.
Hifumi Yamada: No. Juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust no.
Mondo Owada: I like him. Why couldn't Deacon St.John be more like this hotheaded biker dude? His hair is the most ridiculous anime hair I've ever seen though. Was the joke Monokuma makes about his hair in the japanese script or just a localisation joke? Either way it's great. He's pretty cool!
Chihiro Fujisaki: She's adorbs. I need to talk to her in the next chapter. I have a sinking suspicion she's going to be murdered at some point and I think she's too precious to actually be a killer.
Kiyotaka Ishimaru: Not really much to say about him yet. I can see him maybe snapping at some point due to him being the moral compass of the group... him breaking those impeccable morals of his seems... perfect given the twisted situation.
Byakuya Togami: He's an ass. I think they aren't going to be bumping him off juuuust yet... I'll genuinely be surprised if he doesn't make it through the next chapter at the very least.
Toko Fukawa: She has problems! Not gonna lie I think I actually kinda like her though despite her massive inferiority complexes and that she's kind of a b***h to the others. Especially poor Aoi 😂
Leon Kuwata: I can't say I really liked him ? Not particularly sad at him leaving. It sounds like he's voiced by the VA for Shinjiro from Persona 3 (The English Va of course)
Sayaka Maizono: Can't say I particularly liked her either? They picked my least two favourite character's to be bumped off first (Well aside from Junko) so... that's something.
Makoto Naegi: Unless there's a "would you kindly" moment I doubt I'll have much to say about Makoto. He's not that interesting of a protagonist?
Kyoko Kirigiri: I assume she's actually the Ultimate Private detective or something as she's way too calm about all this dead body stuff. If there's someone in on it all but still taking an active part in the game... it'd be exceedingly obvious if it was her but for now Kyoko is the only one whom sticks out at the moment. Who knows. Maybe she's the Ultimate Unlucky student or something?
Aoi Asahina: Not much I can really say about Aoi. She's fun and I like her... I shall chat to her in the next chapter hopefully!
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I’ll also share in the excitement of you getting to experience the games for the first time. Hopefully no one will spoil it for you. You know us regulars will give you the decency to not spoil things for you, but Kratos’s cautionary tale means maybe you should avoid reading comments from unknown users. So post on the thread, but don’t read it. 😄. That should be possible. I hope you get on better with this than the other recent games you’ve played.
Edit: sorry, wrote that while you were posting; you’re way ahead of me.
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy It’s gonna be so fun seeing these as the twists start rolling in! I think you’ve inspired me to play the game for myself starting today, I’d only seen both my brothers playing through it since I played chapter 1, spent my free time chatting to Leon and then finished the chapter saying ‘Yep, this is grim’.
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