1.5/5 ★ – NiGHTS108's review of Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls.

Oh you thought I was done after Danganronpa V3? Haha. Ahaha. No. Ultra Despair Girls is… interesting, to put it one way. It may just seem like another Danganronpa game, but it is actually quite the turn for this series, full of many new ideas that take the typical games in a new direction. Now, I’d rather be positive earlier on in this review, because I sure as hell won’t be later as you can tell by the 3/10 ranking you can see at the top of this page, so I want to discuss what’s, shockingly, my favourite aspect of Ultra Despair Girls, and that would be it’s gameplay. That’s right, Ultra Despair Girls breaks quite heavily from the whole killing game format seen in the other games. Although there’s definitely still elements of a visual novel here, naturally, there’s no free time, class trials, or really much that defines every other game in the series. You instead control Komaru (Makoto from the first game’s younger sister) and Toko, the titular Ultra Despair Girls, and the game is really much more of a third person shooter. The story lends quite well to this shift, as this is an interquel between Danganronpa 1 and 2 in the middle of an isolated city overtaken by despair, where Monokumas roam the streets, and Komaru uses this bizarre megaphone hacking gun thing to take them down. It’s an elegant system, you steadily gain more types of ammo to use with your hacking gun, each with a variety of different effects to combat against an ever increasing range of Monokuma types. It takes certain elements from the main games, specifically skills and truth bullets, and recontextualizes them under a different genre of game entirely. There’s quite a bit of fun to be had with using your environment and the enemy types within it to your advantage. Sure, you could just use your basic Break ammo to destroy every Monokuma in the area one by one, or you can start a dance party with an Alarm Monokuma, which will distract every Monokuma nearby, and then use a Bomber Monokuma to finish them all off at the same time. Yeah, okay, this game is pretty goofy, but Danganronpa’s already a goofy series. The puzzle solving elements are one of the most enjoyable things about Ultra Despair Girls, either just in a regular fight to optimise your ammo, which can be scarcer than you think it is, or in the game’s dedicated puzzle rooms. Sometimes you’ll step into a room and have to kill a group of enemies in a specific way, making sure they all die at the same time, killing them all with a certain ammo, etc. You get a top down view of the room at the start too, so you can plan things out. These are mostly very easy, sure, but I actually quite like them. It’s satisfying to just have everything work out perfectly, and it’s a good way of teaching the player about the game mechanics and how they can be used to your advantage. I’ll admit I don’t particularly care for the bosses at the ends of chapters, the only really good one was the Big Bang Monokuma at the end of the game, and an honourable mention goes to that hunter robot at the end of Chapter 4, I guess. The bosses aren’t bad but they’re just slightly basic and predictable which is unfortunate. I prefer this game’s light puzzle elements to just pure combat and the bosses don’t usually really allow for that. If there is one issue I have with the gameplay though, it’s Toko’s inclusion in it. At pretty much any time, you can swap out Komaru for Toko, who’ll transform into her Genocide Jack form and just start destroying anything. She’s completely invincible and can wipe out effectively any horde put in front of her. Her only drawback is a time limit, naturally, which can be replenished by finding batteries. The issue is, well, she kind of helps way too much. Now, I get why Toko’s inclusion is like this, this is a spinoff of a visual novel series after all, not a genre particularly known for gameplay. Maybe she works as an optional easy mode, sure, I mean it’s not like I ever used her, especially since this game is easy enough as is, but from where I’m sitting, I really wish her inclusion didn’t boil down into being the “Oh Shit I’m Going To Die Now” button. She can effectively just brute force her way through every puzzle and encounter in the game with next to no drawbacks. I mean hell her abilities can even be upgraded, as if she wasn’t strong enough in her base form. (You can upgrade Komaru’s truth bullets too, but to be honest this system is a little shallow and only really useful for being able to carry more ammo.) I feel like the dual protagonist idea could have been executed a lot better, because as is I’m just controlling Komaru for 99% of the game. It would have been cooler, at least to me, as more of a tag team system. So I’ve talked about how the gameplay takes quite a unique turn, but that also applies to the story. As I’ve mentioned before, this game breaks from the typical killing game structure of Danganronpa and really goes in more of its own direction. The game takes place in Towa City, a completely new location, in between Danganronpa 1 and 2. As mentioned before, a city suddenly plunged into the depths of despair, where innocent citizens are mauled by Monokumas. Komaru, after a year and a half of being imprisoned, plans to escape the city, and soon meets up with Toko who aims to rescue a Future Foundation member held hostage, Byakuya from the first game. They effectively have everyone important to the lives of DR1’s cast imprisoned and hunted down, and are using the threat of killing Byakuya to prevent the Future Foundation from arriving. It’s why Komaru, Makoto’s sister, is here. The thing is though, I don’t really find many of the characters in this game interesting besides Komaru herself. A lot of characters end up dying within, like, five minutes. Especially Aoi’s brother and Chihiro’s dad. Even the characters who don’t happen to instantly die. I’m gonna be honest, I don’t really think Ultra Despair Girls’ story has the impact it thinks it does. There’s ideas I like here, like the ending is pretty interesting with the plan to carefully lead Komaru down the road of becoming the new Ultimate Despair, it’s an idea that works on paper but doesn’t really have a huge effect. I mean Komaru feels better, like, 15 minutes later with Toko slapping her hard across the face, and she snaps out of it instantly. It feels weird talking about the climax of the game like this, but it just feels slightly underwhelming. The only really great part of the story is, well, the Ultra Despair Girls themselves. I think Toko was a pretty good pick out of Danganronpa 1’s survivors to be involved in a spinoff. Her interactions with Komaru are great, I understand why some would think it’s just annoying banter, and it can come across that way whenever they walk into another puzzle room all like “WOAH ANOTHER ARCADE MACHINE”, but I find it genuinely pretty charming most of the time. I really like Toko’s arc about actually making friends with Komaru and learning to value her. She has a lot of great moments in this game in general. Komaru is also a pretty great protagonist, her and Toko really have good chemistry. Haiji’s another new character, and he’s pretty much the only new guy who isn’t linked to someone from DR1 in some way, but they don’t really do much with him. He has a fairly large presence in the story, sure, but you really get the sense they’re building up to something with him, and then just nothing comes of it. He starts as kind of an asshole, he ends as kind of an asshole. I almost wish he was the mastermind all along or something like that, because I sadly don’t feel very strongly about the actual antagonists. This time it’s these 5 kids, who call themselves the Warriors Of Hope. They’re something of a parody of typical old JRPG style protagonists, like in Final Fantasy I or Dragon Quest III, with all five of them taking a different “class”, and you defeat them all one by one across the five chapters. So in reality they’re more like Final Fantasy I’s four fiends. They’re the ones dominating the city, and plan to turn it into what they describe as a children’s paradise. The thing is though, they’re not really actually threatening antagonists, like at all, and while yeah obviously they’re not because they’re all like, 9, you really get the sense that there’s some kind of threat behind them. Even the leader of the group, Monaca, isn’t particularly menacing or anything like that. It’s revealed quite late into the game that Haiji and Monaca are related, and you’d think this would lead to the reveal that he’s the one controlling the Warriors Of Hope all along, and that would explain why all the other members seem to fear Monaca so much as they would really be fearing Haiji, but nope. The Warriors Of Hope contribute to this feeling of Ultra Despair Girls’ story overall feeling like something of an inconsequential side plot, which is surprising because there’s actually some pretty dark implications with all of them. There’s the idea that they’re all victims of different forms of child abuse of all things, which explains their motivation for wanting to kill all the adults in Towa City. Something of a way of taking revenge. Again this could link into Monaca’s power over them. What if Haiji was actually closely working together with Monaca, and both of them use the warriors for their own personal gain and can keep an eye on Komaru to lead her steadily down the garden path of becoming Ultimate Despair, but it doesn’t really happen like that. Interestingly the Warriors Of Hope are actually quite a big part of Ultra Despair Girls’ story. I do have one issue with the way this theme of child abuse is handled though, which… well… What we actually get is this horrible, unpleasant mess of a story that constantly has to undermine its potentially only kind of interesting themes by means of unsubtle illustrations of minors getting abused (as if it wasn’t obvious what was already happening) and also just hordes upon hordes of fanservice. I guess there’s your content warning… It’s all downhill from here… This is unfortunately another case like Danganronpa 2 where I can’t really discuss my biggest issue with the game that easily. I’ve only discussed the story in concept, because in execution..? It just actively ruins Ultra Despair Girls for me. This game just absolutely cannot keep its big mouth shut and in the process leaves this game with an utterly dreadful aftertaste. As expected, this is of course the worst by far in Chapter 3. I mean really. Do I need to explain to you what I think the issue is with having a flashback to one of the characters being used for child pornography? Like they very much imply that’s what’s up with Kotoko’s character, but really I don’t need to explain how A FLASHBACK TO THAT EVENT IS CROSSING A LINE. Oh yeah! Also how could we forget the end of Chapter 3! Which is probably home to the worst thing I’ve ever seen in a video game. I don’t even know how to begin to describe this. So, Komaru ends up being captured by Kotoko, and she… uh… is strapped to this bizarre torture chamber device, and groped by Kotoko using a wide range of mechanical hands as a very creepy perverted form of revenge for what she experienced. Oh and that’s not even the bad part, because they make a MINIGAME OUT OF THIS. I hate this. So much. Oh boy I sure want a minigame of the main character being sexually assaulted! Fuck off. Chapter 3 is easily the worst example I could have picked but the rest of the game isn’t a whole lot better! Like I don’t really need illustrations of Nagisa being worked to his absolute limit connected to an IV strip, or that part of Chapter 4 with Toko and Komaru having a falling out, and then a fight against the Genocide Jack form where she can tear off your clothes, or just the general ridiculous amount of panty shots in this game (Including one like less than a minute into the game, consider that your warning) or, you know, how Haiji just casually heavily implies he’s a pedophile on three separate occasions??? Not like any of the characters call him out on it. I guess to its credit it’s not like it’s portraying any of these things as good… but THAT’S NOT REALLY A HIGH STANDARD TO MEET. What’s so painful about this is that my overall issues with Ultra Despair Girls aren’t really massive fundamental problems or anything, it’s just this endless stream of terrible ideas that makes the game incredibly uncomfortable to talk about and even more so to actually play. Seriously, I know at least one person on the dev team for this game should be on a list somewhere. I take back every bad thing I said about DR2’s fanservice, it’s NOTHING compared to the utter travesty that’s Ultra Despair Girls. Maybe the reason I couldn’t feel anything for this game’s ending is because quite frankly, by the time I got there, I was just begging for the experience to be over already. Is Ultra Despair Girls completely and thoroughly irredeemable? No. Far from it. Just looking at its core, I do believe Ultra Despair Girls has its heart in the right place, but as a whole it just comes across as incredibly ignorant, insensitive, and indecent. I wish I liked Ultra Despair Girls, I wish Ultra Despair Girls wanted me to like it, but it just gets dragged down so hard by all these relatively small things it just ruins the entire experience of what would otherwise be a perfectly harmless spinoff. It’s a real shame we have to end the review on this note, but taken as a whole Ultra Despair Girls is utterly deplorable. It’s probably the most egregious example I’ve ever seen of a game being less than the sum of its parts and for me its comparatively small negatives easily outweigh the positives for me. It’s just not worth it. Grade: D+ Difficulty: D