Danganronpa 2 is one of the most obnoxious videogames I've ever played.
Knowing what to open a review on can be difficult sometimes but I'm hard pressed to come up with a better starting line than that. Sure, I could use this opening paragraph to fill you in that Danganronpa 2's premise is near identical to the first game's with the exception than the setting has moved the 16 high school students to a tropical island this time around, but instead we're going to bro this review up and dive headfirst into the mechanics because they have become a serious issue.
The "action" segments of the trials from the first Danganronpa were the absolute worst part of that game, and in an attempt to improve these sections Spike Chunsoft have instead made everything about them worse. I went into this game with the action difficulty lowered because I didn't want to go through the same headaches again and these ridiculous minigames still distracted from the trial and took away from the story. Somebody on the development team, hopefully an unpaid intern, thought the best way to convey arguments and logic leaps during a murder trial was to put in Fruit Ninja and the special stages from Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
I wish I was joking.
A new minigame called "Rebuttal Showdown" kicks in when another character disagrees with a new claim your character makes during a trial. Here the opposing character's testimony will appear on the screen, then you either slide your finger across the Vita's touchscreen to slice through their statements, or alternatively if you don't want to fail it 18 times in a row first you just use the D-Pad instead. Succeed and you'll move on to the next phase where you'll actually have to contradict a statement with some evidence (the same way you would normally, revealing this as the hollow gimmick that it is). First off, this completely distracts from what's going on in the trial because you're encouraged to maniacally slice statements so fast you can barely read or process them. Secondly, what's the deal with this anyway? Isn't this game supposed to be gun themed? Stylistically what sense does it make to throw in something sword based?
Next up is "Logic Dive", where for some reason you slide through a rainbow tunnel on a snowboard, avoiding gaps and other obstacles, and whenever the game suddenly remembers it's a puzzle game you get a plot important question and follow the route with the correct answer. It's mostly monotonous and a waste of time, but still occasionally manages to take you by surprise with the precision required.
Then there's the (Improved) Hangman's Gambit, which has been "improved" from the first game the same way a radiator has been "improved" after you set it on fire. Before you simply shot at floating letters to spell out the solution to a question. Now there's a complicated grid system where you have to shoot two matching letters into each other, then fire the combined letter with another button into the solution, getting all the letters in the right order AND you can't allow different letters to bump into each other or they'll explode and you take damage. If this sounds a little ridiculously overcomplicated it's because it is, and more often than not the words or phrases you have to spell out aren't short either.
(this mechanic is so bad that I actually felt inclined to research it, apparently in the Japanese version the phrases were much shorter due to alphabet differences so the player only had to spell out around 4-5 letters each time instead of 15. That's unfortunate, but it's still a rubbish mechanic and I personally suggest in Danganronpa 3 they improve it some more by removing it from the game entirely)
This was a big issue for me with the first game too but the sequel pushes these buttons even more; the trial segments are just not that great okay? They're perfectly fine when they're actually about testimonies and puzzle solving, Danganronpa 2 does also add an interesting feature where some testimonies will have statements you can use evidence to confirm instead of contradicting. However, instead of running with those kinds of ideas every single trial is dragged down with at least half a dozen tone-ruining, pace-shattering distracting minigames and honestly it starts to become a drag.
Here's the thing though, it's not just that these minigames suck by themselves, it's not even the fact that they distract from the game's narrative in the worst way possible, it's the fact they give the game a completely unnecessary accessibility problem. As much as the developers seem to be embarrassed by this, Danganronpa IS a visual novel, an interactive murder mystery which is arguably the greatest genre of fiction there is and has near universal appeal. If these minigames are capable of slowing down and irritating someone who's been playing videogames most of their life on the lowest difficulty setting, then they're damn sure dealbreakers for people who haven't.
It's something I find endlessly frustrating, no-one seems to like these things, they have no reason to be there in the first place, they only hurt the game in the long run and their biggest achievement is the fact they make the game unplayable to a large group of people. That's a damn shame if you ask me!
It's also a shame because aside from the trials becoming more obnoxious and a whole bunch of extra needless gamification thrown in (you now have an XP bar and fill it up by interacting with objects and walking around...seriously) I think otherwise Danganronpa 2 is a step up from its predecessor! The murder scenarios especially are a lot more elaborate and clever, with cases being decided by less obvious details and one-note character motivations. I predicted the outcome correctly on all five cases in the first game, I wasn't sure about ANY of them in the sequel, and I can honestly say I never felt the game was being cheap in that regard. Danganronpa 2 does occasionally stumble into an over-obsession on details that hurt the non-Takumi directed Ace Attorney games, in several cases the hint you're given when called on to choose the real murderer is so seemingly insignificant it borders on ludicrous that the game seriously expects you to remember it. However, the cases have a lot of fun with their own hyperbole (especially the fourth one) and the scenarios are more interesting for it.
This might split opinion, but to put it in the least spoilery way possible, I liked the ending to this game better than the first too. Trigger Happy Havoc's ending felt like little more than a bunch of poorly explained tropes and ended on a whimper for it, Danganronpa 2's ending is certainly not immune from tropes or poor explanations but it definitely ended on more of a bang and I think it's far more likely to stick with me.
What's also interesting about Danganronpa 2 plotwise is the relationship to its predecessor, in that at times it almost feels like a remix of the first game than a direct sequel. It is a continuation of the overarching Danganronpa lore (which again in the least spoilery way possible, is REALLY silly) but the basic premise of high school students being stuck in a location with killing another and surviving their trial uncaught being the only means of escaping. But characters, plot beats and even murders almost feel like alternate world versions of those from the first game. This is without a doubt intentional since the game makes endless jokes and references at the expense of Trigger Happy Havoc, but it take away from the game's identity somewhat. Many people seem to end up preferring the first game despite Danganronpa 2's better scenarios and I think this is a big part of the reason why. I have no idea what the plans are for Danganronpa 3 but going through these same motions probably isn't going to work again.
I generally liked Danganronpa 2, and once again the core premise and scenarios were interesting enough to keep me playing through all the way to the end without feeling like a core, but I must confess I don't see what other people find so endearing about this series. The sharp subtext of an Ace Attorney title concerning justice, truth, the legal system, morality among other themes is swapped out for a bunch of anime dribble about "hope vs despair" and people being defined by their single talents. Stylistically it's all over the place and seems to have no idea what it wants to be; it uses iconography of guns, swords, retro games, stageplays, anime and manga while backed to techno music without marrying any of this into a distinct style. Although there's no gross case centred around transphobia this time around, the series continues to burst with misogyny and weird fan service. (There's one scene where the female characters are revealed one by one in their bikinis via panning shots while a handful of male characters comment on their breasts.) The interactions between the characters and unveiling of the murders is well handled, but it all happens to the backdrop of a very silly overarching plot. It didn't make sense in the first game because they didn't really explained it. It didn't make sense in the second game because they DID explain it.
What it all adds up to is a fun little visual novel that seems utterly ashamed of the fact that's it's a visual novel, and throws as many gimmicks and jingles as many keys in your face as it can. I do like it but I also struggle to love it. Danganronpa 2 might be incredibly obnoxious at times, but it's the kind of obnoxious that you start to miss once you've been separated from it for long enough. If you played the first game and you're willing to forgive it for that, then Danganronpa 2 is definitely for you.
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