I honestly didn’t expect to enjoy this game as much as I did. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc was fantastic. I wasn’t sold at first though. The game from its introduction came off as incredibly…campy to me. I didn’t feel it had much depth, and that actually followed through to the build up to the first case. It’s when that first case happens though, and that Danganronpa starts showing its complexities and layers, that I started absolutely falling in love with it.

What is Danganronpa?

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is a visual novel. The game begins by introducing you to the character you’re controlling, a character named Makoto. You’re told that you’re going to attend a university called Hope Peak’s academy – a place for the gifted individuals of this world. You can only be accepted at Hope Peak’s if you’re incredibly good at something, and in Makoto’s case, what he’s good at is luck. Named the Ultimate Lucky Student, Makoto gets an invitation to enter Hope Peak and accepts. However, were this strictly a story about a regular school life, I probably wouldn’t have liked it as much. That isn’t what it is.

Now, minor spoilers are up ahead. If you’re not interested, stop reading this article.

You’ve been warned.

As Makoto enters the school for the first time, he starts to feel dizzy, and then passes out. When he wakes up, he finds himself to be in a classroom, by himself. Exploring the school a bit after waking up, he eventually encounters other students. Things are odd from the get go – windows have metal plates over them and there’s an eerie and uncomfortable atmosphere surrounding everything. It’s when they meet Monokuma though that things begin to fall into a downward spiral. Monokuma, a talking teddy bear, tells them that they have two choices: live in harmony in this school forever, or kill a fellow classmate, survive a class trial without being found, and get out alive, the only condition being that everyone else dies.

Danganronpa is a fascinating idea. There is clearly so much potential here, and I’m happy to say it is capitalized upon. Apparently, the characters in this one are more grounded and realistic than the ones in the following two games. I happen to think that realistic characters work very well for this game. Thing is: Danganronpa can be a bit silly, mostly in terms of ideas and concepts. Some of the stuff that happens in the game, particularly the executions, can be a bit difficult to accept as logical fact. So, having realistic, albeit still exaggerated characters to gravitate to can help give the game a more humane feeling than I feel it would otherwise have. Danganronpa is very cinematic, and just straight up accepting some of what happens in it is key to having a great experience. Despite that, its always good to have humanity and realism in…most games, especially ones where character interaction, emotional bonds and serious concepts are such a vital part of the overall experience.

The game approaches its subject matter well. Character reactions to surprising happenings are realistic and understandable. You absolutely do feel humanity from the characters, and relating to them is quite easy to do, because of how relatable they are. They have quirks, but they ARE basically all geniuses after all, other than Makoto, who happens to be pretty normal compared to the others. Despite their quirks, the characters of Danganronpa are very human and personable. I really did feel considerable attachment to many of the characters in this game, and the game’s mechanic of daily living only amplified that. It legitimately made me sad to see what they had to go through.

Daily Living

There are two sides to Danganronpa: the side where you interact and form bonds with your classmates, called Daily Life, and there’s the game’s other side that comes into play when someone is murdered, called Deadly Life. I’d like to elaborate upon its Daily Life mechanic, and talk about why I feel it added a lot to this game.

The cast of Danganronpa is varied and interesting. As I was playing through the game, I often found myself wanting to know more about my classmates. The Daily Life aspects of Danganronpa helped me do this. With this mechanic, you are free to explore the school and talk to classmates. You then choose which one you want to hang out with, your character being able to hang out with someone twice a day. This is helpful in terms of learning about who these characters are. I will say that, based on the limited interactions I did do with other characters that deviated from what is necessary to progress the story (I did quite enjoy the mechanic, I just rush through parts of games often as a bad habit), I actually felt that the interactions between the characters could have been elaborated upon to a bigger degree than they were. Often a hangout session between two characters basically amounts to some text at the bottom of the screen that simply says what your characters did together. There isn’t much nuance to it sometimes, and seeing some…I don’t know, cutscenes or something occasionally (granted, I didn’t do this mechanic as much as I should have), would have been good.

As I got to know the characters of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc more and more, I began feeling very strongly about them. Whether it be disliking a character or liking a character, I felt very strongly about every single character there was, and when a character got found as a murderer, and/or was murdered, I always felt strongly about the outcome.

Class Trial is in session!

Danganronpa’s other side, its darker side, is called Deadly Life. When a body is found as having been murdered, an announcement plays on the intercom. Monokuma, the deadly teddy bear, announces that a class trial will begin soon. You are then thrown into an investigation. During the investigation you observe your surroundings, places of interest, and attempt to find out who murdered the victim. The investigation aspect of Danganronpa is well done. As more murders happened, how the murders happened became more and more complex. I, over time, began to find myself having a harder time putting two and two together…but that just made eventually figuring things out that much more satisfying.

Eventually, the investigation comes to an end, and the class trial begins. There are a few mechanics that play an integral part in the class trials. There’s the central mechanic of the trials, a mechanic where you “shoot” a bullet onto a sentence (the bullet representing a piece of evidence that supposedly contradicts the statement). This mechanic is elaborated upon later in the game. There’s also a rhythm game that doesn’t serve much purpose other than to switch things up, and an occasional “complete this word” segment.

Danganronpa’s Class Trials are tense, exciting, and filled with twists and turns. The way these cases play out is more often than not interesting and engaging. I really liked the Class Trials in this game, even though there was a case or two I felt a bit more ambivalent about (not because they were bad, but because the others were particularly good). The cases were intelligently written…but sometimes leaned toward being too intelligently written. I was often at a lost as to what exactly happened during a case, and it often took me until the end, the moment where you (literally) piece everything together and put on paper what happened, to figure everything out. It sometimes surprised me that the characters were capable of thinking up such elaborate schemes to not be found. I suppose that both added challenge to the game and added depth to the characters, however.

Characters

Danganronpa’s characters, as I’ve already mentioned a few times, are great. They’re an integral part of this game, so they pretty much had to be, but what struck me as particularly great about these characters is the fact that they all stood out and were unique in their own ways. The characters at initial reveal seem a bit surface level. It’s when you get to know them, though, that they’re revealed to have more depth than originally thought. Overall, I would say this cast of characters is original and unique. They play upon their themes quite a lot at first, but their themes (their “ultimate” and reason as to why they’ve been accepted into Hope Peak) become less relevant as time goes on. I would say that the characters and the writing carry this visual novel…which seems an obvious statement to make, but Danganronpa’s writing is particularly good. The key to making this a good game was to have the characters be believable, and plot progression be interesting. I feel the writers and developers absolutely succeeded at both.

I hated, I liked, I loved. What you’re given in this game is a very varied and different set of individuals. Some of them are quite loveable, while some others are inherently dislikeable. Some of them I simply liked as well. What I can say with certainty is that any character that had time to be fleshed out, I felt some type of way about.

Realism

I don’t want to paint the wrong picture. One of my biggest (and to be fair only) complaints with Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is its lack of realism. The characters are realistic, yes, but I don’t feel much else is. The question: “why are they being forced to live in a school forever and why is there a talking teddy bear?” for starters is answered, but perhaps not satisfyingly so. I can tell you guys that, without going into spoiler territory, the murder trials are by far the most complex aspect of this game, and a lot of the mysteries that surround the school itself are a bit surface level.

Still, I was enthralled. Seriously. I loved my time with this game, and am very excited to jump into the second, and eventually the third. I would definitely consider myself a fan of this series. A big one. I just want expectations to be tempered. Danganronpa lacks realism in a few areas that some people could see as being key areas. I definitely do stand by my statement that if you’re willing to open your mind up, you will have a great time with this game. It is so so entertaining (there’s zero denying the entertainment potential of the concept in of itself). Just, again, temper your expectations. Expect this game to be very fun, but flawed as well.

Conclusion

Danganronpa is fantastic. Its characters are great, its story progression is great, its daily life/deadly life mechanic is dynamic and works very well. I have a few complaints, but I’ve honestly gone through all of them in this article. The majority of this game is really, really great. I felt surprisingly connected to the characters, and cared about what would happen next. This is speaking as someone who wasn’t necessarily expecting to love this game at all. I thought the concept just wouldn’t work, that it would come off as cheesy and that the characters wouldn’t carry the experience. Simply put – I was wrong.

I’m feeling a 8.5/10 for Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.