The Danganronpa series is an interesting one for taking the visual novel genre and injecting it with more interactive gameplay challenges, but despite this the series itself can be a little formulaic. The three main games in the series all follow the same premise of 16 high school students getting locked into a killing game they can only escape by getting away with murder. Despite this, a colorful and interesting cast and increasingly complex murders manage to ensure each title feels different, but for its third outing, Danganronpa decided to get a bit more adventurous, breathing new life into the concept and taking some intriguing risks. While it doesn’t quite break out of its comfort zone, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony does more fully embrace both its set-up and its gameplay.

Danganronpa V3’s tale begins with the 16 students waking up in an overgrown academy that they can’t escape, a strange black and white robotic bear named Monokuma keeping them there with the help of his five Monokubs and their deadly machines the Exisals. Each of these students has an Ultimate talent, something they are exceptionally gifted at that influences their personality and skillset. Monokuma wants to pit these exceptional teenagers against each other in something he calls the killing game where the only way to escape their eternal imprisonment is to murder another student and get away with it, every other student given the chance to determine who committed the murder in a trial. If they can’t identify the killer properly, everyone but the killer will be executed, but if the killer is identified properly, only they will die. This set up immediately creates an air of suspicion and unease that carries into most every interaction with the other characters, but at the same time, characters try to work together and cultivate bonds in order to discourage their own potential death… or to ease suspicion if they wish to try to pull off a successful kill. The story ends up being a balancing act between the player having to deal with other characters trying to earn their freedom through murder while trying to uncover the true nature of the situation and uncover the mastermind behind this strange arrangement, but the game does follow a linear story and structure so that themes can be explored, characters can be built up and broken down, and most importantly, interesting murder cases can be established for the player to unravel.

While the majority of Danganronpa V3 does involve reading dialog or listening to the fully voiced trial segments, there are moments of gameplay that require the player to uncover the mysteries of both the killing game and the people murdered during it. Similarly to another action visual novel game that pushes against the genre mold Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, each death comes with an investigation period and a trial, Danganronpa keeping its focus more on how the characters discuss the clues rather than just their discovery. During the investigation, players uncover clues that turn into Truth Bullets, and during the trial itself the player is called upon to fire these at moving statements to either affirm them or disprove them. There are no real rules to the trial to limit what characters can say to either uncover the truth or obfuscate it, so the player is called upon to find contradictions to gradually determine who the killer is. The murderer is never really clear during the investigation beforehand, so the debate segment is all about putting what you found together with the behavior of the Ultimates to find out who the killer is so you can continue to survive. Sometimes though, the other characters might fixate on the wrong topic or a character might try to draw attention away from important subjects, so Danganronpa V3 introduces an interesting new concept to its class trials: lying.

While I was originally skeptical of the idea of being able to lie during a trial that depends on the truth to reach the proper verdict, the form it takes in the game makes for an interesting addition that adds an extra layer to the debates. First of all, the game makes sure to ease you into lying by prompting it pretty openly, and even when it dials back the obvious moments where you need to lie, it still gives subtle hints for a while like music choice and what your character thinks when the other characters quiet down. Still though, eventually you’re on your own figuring out where to lie, either using it to take optional back routes to the truth or sometimes having it as the only way to progress. Thankfully, lying just involves your truth bullets taking on the opposite meaning, so while it is a useful tool, it is usually quite clear what lies would be complete useless to try and the set-ups where lies are required can be keened pretty easily. It adds an extra layer of depth to the most common form of gameplay during the trials, and while you still might make mistakes while trying to determine the truth, the game isn’t too punishing. You can fail the trial, but you have a health system that allows you to make some mistakes, debates will loop if you didn’t identify where you should interject the first go through, and you can slow down time so you can shoot at the words that are flying across the screen. Most importantly, Danganronpa V3 does allow you to save during the case at any time that doesn’t involve gameplay, meaning you won’t have to retry and sit through everything again. You can set up safety nets when you aren’t confident where the debate is going or are worried you might lose your health and thus see the wrong verdict reached.

Although the Non-Stop Debates and the Truth Bullets/Lie Bullets system makes up the meat of the class trial experience, the game does throw in some other forms of gameplay and, for the most part, manages to turn argument into entertainment expertly. When an argument between you and another character becomes too heated, a sword game occurs where you need to cut through their words and eventually present the proper fact to completely destroy their objections. When the whole group is split on a decision, you take the reins of your side of the debate and must identify keywords in the opposition’s claims and counter quickly with your own side’s opinions on the subject. Sometimes, multiple characters argue all at once and you need to penetrate the cacophony to find the important subject that needs to be discussed. These and a few other action segments all manage to take the real feeling of a debate and inject some gameplay elements into them expertly, but there are a few other forms that don’t quite capture things as nicely. Mind Mine has you uncovering a picture of something relevant to the discussion through a small puzzle game, and Hangman’s Gambit (which seems to be something the series always redesigns as it struggles to make it work) involves spelling a term with hidden letters. Mind Mine is innocent enough, but Hangman’s Gambit often involves you struggling to be on the same page as the game when it comes to figuring out which word they want from you exactly, and since the English language is full of synonymous terms and the letters aren’t always all available to start, it can be difficult to decipher how exactly the game wants you to express the answer to the current question. These aren’t too offensive ultimately despite their flaws, but the last game, Psyche Taxi, feels like the developers were required to make a segment that looks like gameplay to even the average joe. Psyche Taxi involves you driving a car to collect letters and build questions that you answer by picking up the right pedestrian. However, these segments drag on for a long time, often involve the repetition of information rather than truly uncovering anything, and ultimately feel out of place in a game that otherwise gamifies debate so well. It’s not too difficult to imagine a game style that connects related questions to uncover something (maybe something that involves connecting topics by weaving threads through them), but I feel such unrelated gameplay styles are best reserved for things like this game’s casino area and the post-game minigame content.

Speaking of that casino, when there is no trial going on or murder to investigate, the player gets to explore the school they’re trapped in, the options existing to earn coins for collectibles or the player getting the chance to interact with the other characters to better know them. While the gradually thinning cast is necessary due to the nature of the killing game’s rules, there is a post-game mode that lets you see the interactions with cast members you missed out on. These interactions help you learn more about your fellow students, and in a game where the personalities of the characters so heavily influences the directions the debates will take, the personalities on offer are where a lot of the drama, heartbreak, and suspense are derived from. Most of Danganronpa V3’s cast manages to earn their place here quite well. While not every Ultimate talent ends up being relevant, the personalities of these ultimate students can take on many forms that might spice up debates or build towards some interesting character arcs. While you can expect some strong arcs and interesting angles from certain characters, the necessity of killing some off means some never get to shine, and since the game isn’t afraid to kill off most characters at any point, this sometimes comes with the price of less developed characters sticking around and other more potentially interesting ones on the chopping block early.

The standout of the cast has to be Kokichi Oma though. Danganronpa V3 doesn’t just introduce lying as a mechanic, but embraces its battle with truth as a full on theme. Kokichi almost exists as an embodiment of lying, the character reveling in the mischief and uncertainty his constant lying can cause. He constantly throws people off the trail of the truth even when it puts everyone in jeopardy just to see their reactions and the mayhem it might cause, but then he’ll swing things back with truths only he knows so that he can’t be completely dismissed. He inserts himself into important situations and manipulates the rest of the cast to always keep you guessing, and he’s not the only one who adds to the air of suspicion that floats around the whole setting. Maki Harukawa’s reserved and standoffish nature makes her immediately suspicious, Rantaro Amami can’t seem to remember who he is but knows things others do not about the killing game, and Ryoma Hoshi, despite appearing to be a child with the innocuous talent of Ultimate Tennis Pro, is immediately revealed to have a surprisingly deep voice and a dark past of killing a group of mafiosos. There are characters who exist on the other side of the spectrum though, with Ultimate Astronaut Kaito Momota trying to encourage belief in each other and the Ultimate Pianist Kaede Akamatsu trying to get everyone to be friends. Some characters don’t really play into this dichotomy but add a unique voice to debates, with Korekiyo’s unusual love for human behavior causing him to chime in constantly and Miu Iruma’s sexually charged persona distracting focus. While your personal tastes may dictate which characters you like or dislike, I feel most of them serve a pretty strong purpose, either by having the depth and complexity needed to be interesting characters or having a personality that can be developed later on or serves as a way of twisting the discussion so you must work to unravel it.

However… not everyone gets off well. Danganronpa struggles a bit with characters who aren’t currently in the spotlight, often making them fall back on certain character traits until they must do something important. The most egregious and unfortunate case of this is Tenko’s constant chastisement of “degenerate males”. She inserts it into most any discussion and with little provocation, meaning you can rarely count on her to provide anything interesting in the debates besides baseless sexism. While Tenko is pretty one-note, Angie Yonaga and Himiko Yumeno both start off constantly going on about the god Atua and their belief in magic respectively until eventually these two do manage to justify themselves and develop a good angle when the main story’s spotlight is focused on them. There are weaker cases of it elsewhere like K1-B0, the Ultimate Robot, falling back on accusing people of robophobia, although the fact that one student is a robot does make that a pretty reasonable line of discussion when it comes up. The game does have a science fiction lean, the main enemy is using death machines to keep you in line and is a talking robotic bear after all, but the game never goes too out there with its concepts that it stretches credibility, and when fictional concepts are introduced to a case they are well-defined so logic will always carry you through. The worst characters have to be the Monokubs though, Monokuma’s little assistants who are styled with absurd personalities. They threaten to have an interesting angle at times, but for the most part, their presence serves to insert non-sequiturs, slow things down with their reactions, and drag things out when they go off on tangents. While I do think shifting away from Monokuma would help alleviate the gradual staleness the character is accruing through sequels, the Monokubs don’t seem like the way to do it. They also lead to the game’s fuller embrace of more mature subjects, particularly sexual themes, and while talking about it more openly is better than how previous titles pussyfooted around it and inserted it into conversation awkwardly, the game might put off some players with its more mature (and immature) dialog.

There are certainly characters who make up for these failings, with some nice surprises among the cast. I mentioned Ryoma’s unusual inversion of his appearance, and another character, Gonta Gokuhara, manages to take the “feral child turned gentleman” idea and give it extra layers. Gonta is too quick to trust, kind to a fault, and concerned with behaving properly but still incredibly physically capable, all of it culminating in a character with a unique voice. There is a rainbow of personalities around to spice things up. Characters who are capable and will work with you, people who just act like regular teens, and off-the-wall weirdos to feed into the mysteries and debates as well as humorous and lighter moments so the atmosphere isn’t constantly oppressive. While some moments are a little too goofy that they slightly hurt your ability to take the game’s premise seriously, for the most part the game makes sure that when things are serious it doesn’t do anything overly disruptive, making sure to devote time to showing how hopeful or desperate its characters are in the face of this dire situation.

THE VERDICT: When all the pieces come together, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony’s missteps and flaws don’t drag down the total experience. The murders are all unique mysteries to unravel, Danganronpa V3 letting you feel that satisfying feeling of putting the pieces together and identifying the culprit. Characters are established enough to have their actions hold emotional weight and the story all culminates into an insane ending that cemented it as my favorite of the trilogy. I can see it being contentious to certain people, but just like the rest of the game, Danganronpa V3’s ending explores new ground and toys with the concepts that have been presented in the previous titles, ensuring that it isn’t just a retread of the same ideas. It’s got all the elements that earned the previous titles so much love but pushes things further, it’s just a shame it sheepishly took a few steps back when it it got too close to some more daring ideas.

And so, I give Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony for the Playstation 4…

A FANTASTIC rating. Although things seem quite familiar on the surface for a returning Danganronpa fan, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony throws in all kinds of twists and turns that the series needed to remain fresh. The murders and the greater mystery of the situation set up a sequence of crazy crimes that must be solved by learning how to lie with the game structuring it so it doesn’t completely derail things into an absolute free-for-all. If you can look past the few one-note characters, the cast is solidly designed to keep you suspicious but also get you invested in the plights of individual people, leading to some potentially gut-wrenching reveals. Reveals can be amazing, shocking, and heart-breaking all because the game expertly builds up to them and knows when to swerve so that you never get too comfortable or identify tropes that could have given away the game before it’s ended. The class trials manage to transform debates into an interactive gaming experience with only a few hiccups, but it’s hard to get too caught up on any of them when the mysteries you’re solving are as compelling as they are.

Some balls certainly do take time to get rolling and others are stopped before they really got going, but the payoffs you do get make for a marvelous take on the killing game. Dangaronpa V3 pushes the series to new heights despite the sacrifices it makes to get there, and the end ride makes for an intense and involved experience. Dangaronpa V3 deserves to be called fantastic, and that’s no lie.