![]() ![]() Just about everything you learned during a given murder’s investigation – and even information and evidence introduced by other characters – is important somewhere along the line. This is when everything becomes less Virtue’s Last Reward and more Phoenix Wright, with the fruits of your investigation coming to the fore. ![]() Character development, exploration, and murder investigations are all well and good, but the real star of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is undoubtedly its murder trials, overseen by the devious Monokuma. I especially loved how when you enter any given room in the school, load times are concealed by parts of the room – the walls, chairs, and even people within – coming together over a few seconds. Then again, this is only a minor gripe in a game that otherwise totes beautiful graphics. Spike Chunsoft has opted to use pink blood, which removes some of the graphical oomph of each murder scene. Unfortunately, while the murders are brutal, the in-game illustrations don’t always match the brutality. This is especially true when you consider that getting to know characters requires in-game “Free Time,” a limited resource that may have been better spent getting to know someone else, someone still alive. I loved how unsettling this was, how nervous it made me, and how disappointed I was when someone I was really getting to know was snuffed out. Danganronpa’s emphasis on character development – and specifically on talking to various characters, learning more about them, and at times befriending them – means that you can start getting close to someone only to find their cold body the next day. ![]() The murders in Trigger Happy Havoc are often brutal and always sudden. Danganronpa totes an excellent cast of unique characters. This, in turn, opens up new, totally optional sequences with your fellow students. Constant exploration is further rewarded by the discovery of gold coins with Monokuma’s face on them, currency that can be spent at the school store to buy presents that can be given to your fellow classmates. This gives you a new supply of rooms to discover and mysteries to stumble upon, made all the better by Danganronpa’s intuitive quick travel system that rarely forces you to walk around the school on foot (though you can, if you want, in first-person view). Exploring Hope’s Peak Academy might not sound fun, but it is, especially when you consider that a whole new section of the school opens up after each trial is over. After being given a short period to investigate the murder, you’re thrust into a life-or-death trial to prove who’s responsible. The protagonist, a non-descript teen boy known as the “Ultimate Lucky Student,” can travel around the school, exploring and talking to his fellow students. Trigger Happy Havoc’s six chapters – each taking at least three hours to complete – work in predictable cycles. And so the seemingly never-ending murder mystery gets underway. You see, Hope’s Peak Academy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and the students quickly find themselves trapped within the confines of its walls, teased and tormented by an adorable – yet scary and entirely unsettling – teddy bear named Monokuma Each individual student will be kept at Hope’s Peak Academy in perpetuity unless one of them kills a fellow student and gets away with it, securing their release. But there’s a huge, very serious catch, one that gives Danganronpa its unique feeling of juxtaposition. Prepare to be humming a couple of these tunes after a few hours of play. And then there’s the catchy soundtrack, one that has only a small selection of tracks, but one that never seems to get old. The voice acting is also well above the quality usually found in Japanese ports. Spike Chunsoft did an especially nice job of writing great dialogue – dialogue that NIS did an equally wonderful job translating – that elicits laughs and gasps with regularity. Pretty much all of the characters – save one very specific example – are likeable and interesting. Indeed, Danganronpa’s unique cast of characters rest at the core of the experience. ![]()
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