1.5/5 ★ – FireFoxie's review of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc Anniversary Edition.

Platforms played on: Xbox Series X (Gamepass) I remember playing Danganronpa 1.2 Reloaded on the PS4 years ago and that I really enjoyed playing both games. When I saw it was on Gamepass, I was really excited to revisit Hope’s Peak with all its eccentric characters and crime solving. Now, having replayed the first game through again, I’m left with the question of “Why did I like this?” The game starts off really well and I really enjoyed it from the prologue through to chapter 2, but once the game hits chapter 3 it really feels like the writers got extremely lazy. It didn’t help that almost every character followed some really over done anime trope or was created purely for fan service. Outside of a handful of characters, most of that entire cast I ended up hating on my second play through of Danganronpa. In fact, one character I would put on my ‘Most Hated Characters of All Time’ list because of how much I couldn’t stand them. The pacing is probably one of the worst problems in this game. The class trials were just boring and drawn out. The mini games like Truth Bullet or Bullet Time battle were kind of lame because if you mess up or got the wrong answer than you’d have to keep repeating the same dialogue over and over again till you got it right. I felt like these mini games were just filler to make the class trials longer. I ended up putting almost 36 hours into this game by just playing through the story, not including the extra mode. I’m not one of those gamers who believe hours equal value or quality when judging a game’s merit. There is no reason this game of this genre should be this long especially when the killer or victim for each mystery is never random. However, It’s not all bad. I really enjoyed the character design and art style. The school was a blast to explore and Danganronpa does a great job of utilizing all the rooms during the murder mysteries, so it never felt like the rooms went to waste. There is also School mode which is a neat little extra as well since it’s like a what if scenario if there was no murders and it’s kind of like a tamagotchi game mixed with dating. My favorite part of Danganronpa was the music which I think is really great and in fact I like it so much I’m considering purchasing the soundtrack. Overall: After replaying it for the second time, I realized Danganronpa didn’t age well, and it wasn’t as good as I remembered. Sadly, because of all the problems it has I won’t be replaying this game for a third time. Pros: *great art style *amazing soundtrack *good voice acting *School mode Cons: *hate-able characters *lazy writing *no replay value as the killers/victims are never random *games goes on for way too long