3/5 ★ – NiGHTS108's review of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.

You know, for the longest time I kinda thought Danganronpa would just be one of those series that I never touched, but I finally took the plunge recently and, well, for a visual novel like this I’m actually quite pleasantly surprised. Just looking at this game by itself, I genuinely don’t see where so much of the hate is coming from with this series, because Danganronpa 1 is actually a pretty strong visual novel with quite a few likeable characters! This game is honestly such a vibe, despite releasing just at the start of the 2010’s, this game feels very 2000’s and you can tell it’s when most of the dev time happened. The artstyle, music and even the UI just ooze charm to me. I know some people have taken issue with the character design, which I’ll admit is hit or miss, but I generally like it. The characters themselves are… weird. Initially I really hated all of them, and I do still hate at least some of them, but I did actually find myself warming up to a lot of them really quickly and during the class trials they get a lot more opportunity to show off their individual personalities, good or bad. Eventually I really started enjoying some of the characters by the end, especially Kyoko and Chihiro. Oh, and Monokuma is just great from start to finish. Love that guy, I’ll just be listening to Hifumi try his damn hardest to be funny, and then here comes Monokuma, popping out from the floorboards with his cartoon slide sound effect and goofy ass theme, it’s great! Serving as the villainous presence for the vast majority of the game, he’s the perfect mix of funny, annoying and genuinely intimidating. You’re at a picnic and you find a dead body XD, indeed. The murder mystery itself is a setup by Monokuma. A bizarre game he plays with the students of Hope Peak, the school all 15 characters attend and are imprisoned in. Usually he’ll pass out some kind of “motive” which will lead to a murder, which leads to investigation, which leads to a class trial. For something like this, I must admit I think all the characters have really great chemistry with one another. Rarely does one feel irrelevant within the overall trial. The murders themselves are also (usually) pretty well done! The Chapter 4 locked room scenario in particular was actually really intelligent. More than once characters will also try to intentionally put you in the wrong direction, sometimes even if they didn’t murder anyone at all. Some of them (Chapter 3) are really stupid though. Is this game actually trying to convince me a completely rational reaction to hearing a corpse has disappeared wouldn’t be to get someone to make sure the other one doesn’t? Come on. Not to say this is all just it in regards to the story though, clearly the whole concept of “This toy bear thing taking over an entire school” isn’t exactly natural, and there is a larger story at play here. Sadly this is where Danganronpa kinda starts cracking at the seems to me. I don’t wanna do a whole extensive discussion of the plot here, so I won’t go into the most detail, but it honestly feels like quite a bit of stuff got removed here? Chapter 6 is supposed to be a big payoff, but honestly left me with far more questions than answers. Kyoko’s character arc ends in a really strange way, as basically the second main character to Makoto. She just, finds her father, the original headmaster of Hope Peak academy’s remains in his office, and then her character kinda just ends. She doesn’t really do a lot for the story after this, and basically leaves Makoto to pick up the pieces of the mystery. The “BIG TWIST” that everyone’s been waiting for takes place in the final class trial, where, just apparently Junko was the big villain all along, swapping places with the real 16th student who ended up being killed pretty early on? I mean… sure? I guess? Except like, nothing about this really makes much sense? Junko kinda just ends up as a really generic “dark lord” character who just embraces despair because… she’s the villain. This game also doesn’t really explain, like, anything to do with “the tragedy” that everyone keeps talking about. I get leaving your story up to interpretation and keeping details subtle but, like, 1. You’d think Junko would explain what started her whole evil plan, and 2. They… literally never explain anything about the tragedy at all. This is my biggest problem with Danganronpa to be honest, things just seem to happen a little too conveniently for what the plot is demanding. Oh, of course the 3rd murder actually worked, of course nobody decided to actually make sure nothing happened to the second corpse, yeah, duh. Also, uh, I’m not gonna get into it but the way they handle Chihiro as a character is, say, less than ideal. I’m kinda struggling to think of just how to end this review because Danganronpa is some of the most divided I’ve felt on a game in a while. On one hand, it’s a mess. It’s unfocused, bizarre and the story fails to remotely explain some of its biggest elements. On the other… I mean, I did genuinely like it! It intrigued me, and honestly I couldn’t stop thinking about it! It’s genuinely such an interesting game. I’m not sure how I’d really recommend Danganronpa, but I’d say just take it with a big grain of salt. I’ll definitely be looking at the sequels some time, and hopefully my opinion on the first game will rise! Grade: B- Difficulty: C-