My Favorite Games of 2018

My gaming backlog is something impressive, as I typically buy a few more than I can play in any given year, and then those extras build up. The result is that I rarely play any game in its year of release unless it's a part of a favorite series, and even then, depending on how busy I am, a much anticipated game might get postponed.

But I'm not adverse to playing older games. As long as the gameplay is still there I generally don't care.

These are the 9 games I liked enough to finish for the first time in 2018, in the order I played them. If the game is available on multiple platforms, the one I played on is listed first. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).

Valentines Otome (PC)

This is a cute indie project primarily done by two people, and it shows. But even though it's a bit rough around the edges it has a lot of heart and is definitely worth checking out. Rough edges aside, it's better than some professional stuff I've played. Valentines Otome is pay what you want, and the developer is adamant that it's fine if you just download for free, but any funds paid will go towards the development of future projects. So if you like their work, please throw them a few bucks to help them on their way.

Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (PS Vita, PS4, PC) *

Though the pacing is a bit off in this latest Danganronpa entry, it's a solid member of the series. It's difficult to talk about without giving away spoilers, so all I'll say is that if you liked the previous games, seriously, go play this one. While you supposedly can go in as a series newbie, the final twist at the end will have so much more impact for the series veteran. Definitely the most meta commentary of all the games thus far. It's probably my second favorite in the series, after the original.

PRICE (PC)

PRICE is a free to play gothic point and click mystery that will probably take one or two hours to finish depending on the player's speed at finding all the clues and putting them together. There isn't much to it beyond its moody atmosphere where the player is trying to get out of a locked room, but the mystery elements are quite good. While it's creepy, it is not outright scary (and I'm saying this as a person who hates jump scares).

Root Double: Before Crime * After Days (PC, PS Vita)

This was a cult hit in Japan, but barely made a splash stateside. It was particularly pitched to fans of the Zero Escape series, but only in the sense of its convoluted story. There aren't any puzzles to be found in this one, unless you're talking about figuring out the Sympathy Sensory System. (For your own sanity, use a spoiler free walkthrough.) There are definitely problems with this near future science fiction story, not the least of which is its patronizing view of women, but if you can get past that and the fact the narrative loves to remind you of previous events (before you have a chance to forget them), there's a surprisingly engaging story. Overall I liked it, but not without heavy caveats.

Code:Realize ~Future Blessings~ (PS Vita, also on PS4 as part of Bouquet of Rainbows compilation) *

This is a sequel/interquel to Code:Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~, which is my all time favorite otome game. If you liked the first game, chances are you'll like ~Future Blessings~ as well. However, I should note that despite the wedding themed opening movie, only one of the guys gets a wedding route in the sequel portion of the game. Sholmès gets his own romance route, running parallel to the original game and Finis gets a similar brother route, which clears up several unanswered questions from the first game. ~Future Blessings~ is rounded out by a Lupin's Gang side story (a missing chapter as it were) that takes place during the common route of the original game.

Lost Dimension (PS Vita, PS3, PC)

Though not promoted as such, given the difference in genres, Lost Dimension has a premise aimed at fans of series like Zero Escape or Danganronpa where you can expect to get stabbed in the back, and unless you erase the traitors first, they will betray you. There's a lot to like here with how the protagonist uses his precognition abilities to manipulate results and discover the traitors hiding within their the ranks. The mechanics of the strategy/combat segments are solid, but the story really falls on its face and is hampered by the fact it requires a minimum of two playthroughs to get to an underwhelming true ending. It's not a bad game, but it could have been great if more thought had been put into the plot.

7'scarlet (PS Vita, coming to Steam in the future) *

It's otome, but don't let that fool you. Unraveling the secrets of the rural town of Okunezato is every bit as much or more compelling than the romance aspects of the game. The romance options are also fairly linear since the game locks them roughly in order of who knows the most about what's really going on, which works for the mystery angle, but could be frustrating for those more interested in the dating aspect. The game gets a little spooky at times, and does a great job with tension (particularly on Sosuke's route). If it had just hammered out a few plot issues it probably would have become one of my all time favorite games of any genre, but it's still solid as is.

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (PS2, DS, PSP, PC, PS4, Switch)

This is an old one from my backlog that was mostly finished, but has been lingering for years. When Disgaea 1 Complete was released as the new definitive edition towards the end of 2018, my friend got it and that motivated me to dust off the PS2 and finish the original. The gameplay is a pretty hardcore tactical RPG and some level of grinding is necessarily to finish off the game, but it was still a fun ride in the end. The characters are endearing with their warped perspective of what it means to be a demon in a light-hearted version of the underworld. They also parody a lot of anime/tokusatsu tropes, so this works better if you have some grounding in Japanese pop culture.

Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight (PS4, PS Vita)

This was a total nostalgia trip, but I'm glad Atlus decided to take it. Persona 3 is still my favorite of the modern style of Persona games and was made before Persona 4 turned the series into the multi-genre franchise it is now. Because of that, any previous P3 spin-off material was done as a crossover with P4 (since they take place a few years apart in the same universe). Dancing in Moonlight is the first spin-off that is well and truly focused on the P3 cast. I'm not a great judge of rhythm games, but the gameplay is entertaining enough for a casual player and the nostalgia hits hard. My main complaint is that unlocking some of the social links is a little tedious.

Danganronpa V3: Kaede, Shuichi, and the First Major Plot Twist

I couldn't fit everything into the post I wrote last week about Danganronpa V3 since I was focusing on the main storyline, and there just wasn't room to talk about Kaede, Shuichi, and the first plot twist.

As before, there are spoilers beyond this point, including ending and post-game material.


When I first bought DRV3 I was really looking forward to playing as Kaede, who would be the series' first female protagonist. I was curious about how they were going to handle it since generally Japanese popular media tends to write their female protagonists differently from the male ones. (Look at Persona 3 and the sheer volume of content that was rewritten to accommodate the female protagonist.)

Male Dangaronpa protagonists tend to be a little bit wimpy. They're never the loudest voice in the room, which fits their role as one of the few sane people in a room full of eccentrics, but having an even more passive female protagonist was probably not going to be fun.

Though Kaede is a bit too "genki" for my tastes, always wanting to thinking positively and brute force any obstacle through optimism, she also takes zero crap from other students and she is wonderfully assertive through the first trial.

Which makes it a shame that she's not the real protagonist.

The game handles the transition well. Shuichi is constantly with her throughout the first chapter of the game, and I thought the two of them made an adorable pair. I had Kaede hang out with Shuichi at every opportunity and even the other students made comments about how they seemed to be a couple even though they had just met.

Unlike Kaede's talent as the Ultimate Pianist, Shuichi's talent as the Ultimate Detective is immediately relevant to their situation. We've had an Ultimate Detective in Danganronpa before in Kyoko, so I was curious how DRV3 would handle Shuichi differently.

Given his relatively passive personality (one character even refers to Shuichi as Kaede's "beta boy toy") I figured that in a different game he could have been the protagonist. Little did I know...

In a bid to help everyone escape the killing game, Kaede tries to kill the mastermind first, only she screws up, and the victim is someone else entirely. (That's not the entire truth, but that's all that matters for what I'm discussing here.) She enters the trial knowing the truth has to come out, though the player does not, and she warns Shuichi that he has to be ready to expose the truth no matter how terrible it may be.

Initially it looks like Shuichi just freezes up during the trial, even when it looks like people are ready to pin him as the culprit, but Kaede pushes him and once the player correctly concludes that Kaede is the killer, control is handed over to Shuichi, making him the new protagonist and he finishes the trial in revealing how Kaede committed the whole thing.

While I like Shuichi, it was really rough giving up Kaede. Not only was she a fun character, but there are already so many female characters dying to motivate male ones, and make no mistake that Kaede's death fuels Shuichi throughout most of this game. He might have only known her for a few days, but I don't think a single chapter goes by without some reminder that he misses her.

As for the twist itself, I both loved and hated it.

Aside from the fact that Kaede was a decoy protagonist, she essentially commits the crime while the player is in control of her. Some of it you can see. When she rearranges the books in the library to form a ramp for her Rube Goldberg machine, the player gets to see that. We don't know the specifics of why she is doing that, other than the explanation she gives Shuichi, but we at least see it, so that's fair enough.

But we don't see her grabbing the shot put ball and wrapping it in her vest, nor do we see her roll the ball to start the whole deathtrap. Even if it was partially covered from the player, there should have been some indication that she had done something.

Instead, when she mentioned during the trial that she already knew who the culprit was, I stupidly went around pointing out every single member of the cast (and getting it wrong) until Kaede was the only one left. That part of the trial shouldn't have played out that uncomfortably, with me constantly restarting because I hadn't a clue what I was supposed to do.

Hiding things from the player aside, I liked the twist, because the game had built up the bond between Kaede and Shuichi so well in the opening portion of the game that it was easy to see how hard he struggled with outing her has the culprit, even though she had warned him he was about to face an unpleasant truth.

Shuichi as a protagonist differs a bit from what we're used to. Though he's similarly on the passive side, and prone to being run over by more vocal personalities, when he does choose to throw down, he has the most aggressive posture out of the three mainline protagonists. Shuichi is also more cynical than Makoto or Hajime. He's the protagonist who ends the game discarding the entire hope vs. despair conflict, expecting to die and for no one to escape alive. In fact, he essentially asks his friends to die with him, because only by refusing to play can they stop the killing game.

He's definitely my favorite Danganronpa protagonist. And while his personality is part of it, there's something else that I want to bring up. It's not core to the game, but that's also why I think it's important.

Shuichi is one of the few bisexual male characters I've seen in Japanese media, and it's even more surprising since he's the protagonist. He's a bit in the closet about it, since he tells himself that he really shouldn't be thinking about another boy like that, but it's pretty clear he's attracted to Kaito in the main game (he actually blushes when Kaito compliments him) and in the post-game alternate universe material he has additional scenes that show he's potentially open to relationships with Kokichi and K1-B0 (the latter being a male-presenting robot).

Kaede might be the closest thing to his official love interest, but it's nice to see other dimensions to him that just happen to be part of his character rather than front and center with the plot.

VN Talk: Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony

In which I talk (write) about visual novels from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: PS Vita (also on PS4 and PC)
Release: 2017

Danganronpa is one of my favorite series, which is funny because it's incredibly crass and vulgar, which is generally not what I prefer in my entertainment. But the plot twists... Oh the plot twists! It's not an easy series to predict as the mainline games are known for their 11th hour revelations that turn everything else on its head.

Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony just came out in fall of last year, so I'm going to put a fair warning that there are spoilers beyond this point! It's really a series that should be enjoyed blind.
Killing Harmony is no different and I'm going to discuss all the plot twists and how/why they work.

So...

Danganronpa V3 features the usual cast of sixteen "Ultimate" students who are known as the Ultimate Pianist, Ultimate Detective, etc. in recognition of their talents. They find themselves trapped inside a school and forced to play a killing game at the behest of a black and white robotic bear called Monokuma. Whenever someone is murdered, a class trial is held to find the culprit. If the guilty party is correctly voted on, they are executed. If the guilty party escapes discovery, everyone else is executed and the culprit is allowed to "graduate" and leave the school.

This is a standard Danganronpa scenario, though the game itself is billed as a break from the previous continuity (since the Hope's Peak storyline was wrapped up with Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School).

And there are clues that this is a different continuity. Though the students are dealing with memory loss at the start of the game, barely remembering how they were kidnapped, when they get their memories as Ultimates they mention how it is a nationwide program to cultivate talent. This is different from the first two games where Ultimates only attended Hope's Peak Academy.

Initially this seems straightforward enough to not be considered a clue at all. It's part of the worldbuilding. But it happens in the first chapter, so it's not surprising that the player would eventually forget it or place less importance on that information by the time they get to Chapter 5 and the "big revelation" happens.

Every mainline Danganronpa game has a surprise reveal about their situation. Danganronpa 1 revealed that the world outside had become a post-apocalyptic wasteland and the school was originally a sanctuary to preserve the best and brightest teenagers to emerge once the crisis was over. The kids were killing each other to escape to a world that no longer existed.

Danganronpa 2 had the kids stuck on an island and revealed that not only was the world destroyed, but they had been among the people who destroyed it. Their "school life" on the island was a virtual reality designed to rehabilitate them to who they had been prior to meeting Junko Enoshima, the mastermind of DR1.

So it was with some surprise that Danganronpa V3 chose Chapter 5 to reveal that the students were on a spaceship, an ark, that had been sent away from Earth to escape a rain of meteors that had rendered the planet uninhabitable. (Because if that's what's in Chapter 5, what's going to be the real reveal in Chapter 6?)

Realizing that they're the last hope of humanity and that they've been killing each other, the remaining students more or less fall into despair and it looks like the killing game has ended. Kokichi has told everyone the "truth" and revealed that he is the mastermind. Kaito, the group's ringleader and inspiration, is imprisoned, and everyone else is barely going through the motions.

But at this point a Flashback Light mysteriously appears in the dining room and Maki convinces the rest of the group to use it. The Flashback Lights are how everyone recovers selected portions of their memories, and this one is a doozy, especially following the whole ark scenario.

This memory brings the previous Danganronpa games into continuity. They remember how the modern world ended thanks to Junko Enoshima. They remember how Hope's Peak Academy was rebuilt in the aftermath. Then they remember attending Hope's Peak Academy themselves and that all of them had been students there even if they had been in different classes.

Astute players will have noticed that the existence of Hope's Peak Academy and the Ultimates being nurtured throughout the country should be incompatible with each other, but it completely flies by the characters (and with good reason). It's not the first mistake DRV3's mastermind make either. And to be fair, a lot of players will be happy to roll with the new "fact" because Hope's Peak Academy! That's what Danganronpa is all about.

The revelation kicks all the despairing students back into high gear so the story (and more ominously, the killing game) can continue for one more round. It brings the series' central theme of hope and despair to the forefront as the students conclude that Kokichi, as the mastermind behind the organization that hunted them down, must be a Remnant of Despair, a worshipper of Junko Enoshima.

Things don't quite go down as planned (for one thing, Kokichi turns out to not be the mastermind), but neither do they go the mastermind's way either, which results in the reveal of a different truth, and also a different theme.

After unmasking the mastermind and putting the evidence together, we learn that this reality is not part of the prior Danganronpa games at all. It's a reality show inspired by the video games, one where people really die, and the outside world is populated with tons of Danganronpa fans who are happy to watch.

Yeah, that took a moment to sink in.

All the students agreed to participate and had their memories wiped and replaced with fictional identities for the sake of the made-up story, which the mastermind had the freedom to adjust along the way, though she admits that she made a mistake tying their storyline to the one of Hope's Peak Academy. It was a desperation move on her part after Kokichi tried to end the game by making people stop wanting to leave (and thus no one would ever kill each other again).

Now that they know the truth, she offers them a choice very similar to the one at the end of DR1. They can vote for Hope, in which case two of their class can graduate, as per the rules (the game only allows for two survivors), or they can vote for Despair in which case they all remain trapped in the school.

The outside viewing audience pushes for Hope and at this point we only have four students left (not counting Tsumugi, the mastermind). Both Maki and Keebo agree to sacrifice themselves so Shuichi and Himiko can graduate, but Shuichi chooses to side with neither Hope nor Despair. In fact he rejects the central theme of the entire series and chooses not to vote, asking everyone else to abstain along with him. If they're going to end the killing games for good, they need to do it by refusing to give the audience what they want.

And they do.

Rather than having a face-off between hope and despair, Danganronpa V3 focuses on truth versus lies. Shuichi and his friends are all made-up, and nothing like their previous selves. Tsumugi even shows him a video clip from his audition, where he talks about how much he loves the series and how if he's chosen he would like to be an Ultimate Detective who kills someone.

But despite being fictional people, Shuichi recognizes that everything they felt over the course of the game was real, and for that reason the killing games have to end.

After everything is over, he, Maki, and Himiko are the only ones left standing in the shattered remains of the school, and Shuichi is still not entirely sure what is truth and is a lie. He has trouble believing that his previous self would have volunteered for a death game, no matter how big of a fan he was of it, and the prologue supports this (though it's unclear whether or not he remembers being kidnapped at the start of the game due to all the memory overwriting).

But happily, the three of them decide to find out the truth for themselves, and just like the first game, we see our survivors leave the school and head off into the unknown.

The climax of Danganronpa V3 feels very much like a critique of the Danganronpa player. Why do you like this series that does horrible things to the people in it? Why do you like seeing them killed?

The game knows its audience. All this happens for our entertainment. There are YouTube compilation videos of the series' over-the-top execution scenes. There are role-play groups where people play as new students in a killing game. I made a prediction list at the start of DRV3, placing odds on who I thought would make it to the end based on my first impressions of them and the types of characters who survived previous Dangaronpa games. I did it because it was fun.

Yes, we're always rooting for Hope to win over Despair. We like the Hope's Peak Academy storyline. We like seeing the students pushed to their limits and how the survivors make it through incredible odds. Sometimes we think about the cost, but mostly in the sense of how it propels the rest forward (unless a favorite of ours died).

The primary difference between our game and the outside world of Danganronpa V3 is that their characters are real people who really die. It is a important and humane difference, but the implication is that they lost that, as the previous Danganronpa games similarly exist in their universe.

Throughout the final trial, Tsumugi tells Shuichi that he has no power to change anything, because he himself is a work of fiction, and what I wanted Shuichi to tell her is that fiction matters. Of course I'm inclined to think that as a fiction writer, but one doesn't have to look far to see that stories inspire people. Kids want to grow up to be like their favorite characters all the time, even though they're not real. Even adults may reflect on what the hero of a book would do when taking an approach to their own lives. Fiction matters a lot, even if it's not reality.

Though Shuichi never gets to the point of shoving it in Tsumugi's face, he does get a feel for this by the end as he and his remaining friends head off into the unknown.

"I mean that... even if something is a lie, even if it's fiction... If it has the power to change the world, then it must contain some kind of truth." - Shuichi Saihara, Danganronpa V3: Killling Harmony

My Favorite Games of 2016

My gaming backlog is something impressive, as I typically buy a few more than I can play in any given year, and then those extras build up. The result is that I rarely play any game in its year of release unless it's a part of a favorite series, and even then, depending on how busy I am, a much anticipated game might get postponed.

But I'm not adverse to playing older games. As long as the gameplay is still there I generally don't care. Maybe that's the same for you?

These are the nine games I liked enough to finish for the first time in 2016, in the order I played them.

Virtue's Last Reward *

I enjoyed 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors for the Nintendo DS, so I intended to pick up the sequel, but took a while due to a bugged 3DS version (now patched) and not having a Vita at the time.

Virtue's Last Reward is quite simply the strongest entry in the Zero Escape series. Science, pseudo-science, multiple universes, time travel, non-linear gameplay, and an incredible cast of characters made this a joy to play. I was up at 3am with tears in my eyes (on a work night!) because I had to see a particularly bittersweet sequence through. Fair warning there is a lot of reading, and the gameplay is all making choices and escape room mechanics, but if that's even remotely your bag it's worth playing.

It'll mean more if you play 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors first, but the good news is that both games are coming to Steam in a remastered edition.

Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest

I was looking forward to Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest, and despite the child problems I blogged about, I enjoyed it. It was refreshing to have a game so focused on family and divided loyalties. I really liked the moral gray area that Corrin and her siblings occupied and as mentioned in my RPG Talk entry, I like that the final confrontation features Corrin standing together with her siblings rather than Corrin plus love interest and motley band of heroes. Familial relationships are usually set behind the romantic ones in games, so having family placed before everything else makes this unique.

Zero Time Dilemma

Zero Time Dilemma had a hell of a lot of hype to live up to, and at the end of the day I don't think it's going to be anyone's favorite out of the Zero Escape series, but it's still an enjoyable game. It keeps a lot of the same mechanics from Virtue's Last Reward, but suffers from a less satisfying mastermind than the other two. There's also a plot twist that people tend to either love or hate. But that said, it does a decent job of wrapping up the series, the escape rooms are still fun, and offers a lot of emotional rewards for fans of the previous two.

Code Realize: Guardian of Rebirth

This is the best otome game I've played to date. I would have liked to include it in my top three games of the year, and it was a narrow miss. Otome games are usually given lackluster, passive protagonists to serve as the female player insert, but not Cardia. That girl is amazing, whether she's piloting an airship, busting herself out of confinement, or being a supportive girlfriend, because why can't one person do all of that. The boyfriends are more interesting than average, with only one route that really bored me. If there's any fault to this game I'd say it's locking Lupin's route behind everyone else's and making it so clearly the "real" route.

Danganronpa: Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls

Ultra Despair Girls is a little strange in that I don't think it's a particular good game, though I still finished it. It's a third person shooter, which is a strange genre jump for what had been a visual novel series. I only played it when I did because the Danganronpa 3 anime had Monaca, who originated in this game. The story isn't bad, it asks good questions and even clears up some others (like where did Junko Enoshima get all those crazy robots), but I'm not a shooter fan and I can't imagine the overlap between visual novels, shooters, and Danganronpa is enough to justify this game's existence. If you suck at shooters though, there's no story penalty for playing on easy. You can still see the whole thing.

Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice

I still haven't posted my VN Talk for this, but the sixth entry in the Ace Attorney series was a bumpy ride. It was good, but it wasn't great, and I think this is mostly due to character bloat. Dual Destinies had three lawyer protagonists so by golly Spirit of Justice has to too, even when the game can't quite figure out what to do with them. Unlike Dual Destinies, where the story honestly belongs to all of them, when it comes down to it, Spirit of Justice is really about Apollo, but the writing tries to showcase everyone, including several supporting characters, which results in a lack of focus. But if you like Apollo, this is the game to play as he has his best moments.

This War of Mine *

I waffled a lot on whether to buy This War of Mine because the vertical cut-away view of the buildings made me think of old platformers I was terrible at, but This War of Mine needs very little in the way of reflexes. I bought it for the for miserable experience of surviving as a civilian in an urban warzone and I was not disappointed. There's no tutorial, but the basics can be picked up by point and click, which feels oddly immersive, as the characters you're tasked with caring for have no idea how they're going to make ends meet either.

Chances are, a first playthrough is going to be unsuccessful. People will die along the way, and you'll feel awful, which is the point. You get to put down the game and go home whereas the people who really lived this life could not. It was a sobering realization. (This War of Mine was inspired by the real world Siege of Sarajevo.)

The Room

This was a purchase based on a friend's recommendation because we both like escape rooms. While you're not escaping anything in The Room, the type of puzzle solving is familiar to anyone who has done escape rooms, and it's a affordable fix that can be done in an afternoon or two. The story is minimal and the atmosphere creepy, though it's manageable for those who scare easily (with one possible exception during the ending, but you've solved everything by then). I'm skipping the sequel because I react poorly to jump scares, even the ones that are so mild that most people wouldn't even consider them jump scares.

Civilization V *

When Civilization VI came out, I realized I wanted to play a Civ game again, but rather than getting the latest and greatest at full price, I decided to pick up Civilization V during a Steam sale, which netted me the base game and all the expansions and DLC for under $14. This turned out to be $14 well spent as I've now logged an embarrassing amount of hours on it. It's a lot of strategy and management to bring my chosen civilization to victory, but fun since the AI leaders of other civilizations have their own personalities. I had a really good tussle with Caesar in my Carthage campaign, which felt appropriate.

My only complaint is that Europe feels over-represented in the number of civilizations available. There are multiple options for a continent like Africa, with Carthage, Morocco, Ethiopia, Egypt, Songhai, and Zulu available, which show that the game designers did put effort into avoiding a Eurocentric world, but it feels like it's not enough when 15 of the 43 civilizations are European (17 if one counts Byzantium and Ottoman, which I'm not since they're partially in the mideast), making them slightly more than a third of what's available.

As I did with my book roundup, the three games I tagged with an asterisk (*) were my favorites of the year and definitely worth playing.

I'd also like to mention the four games I replayed this year since it's rare that I replay anything, and four is unprecedented.

Fire Emblem: Awakening (second time)
Dragon Age II (third time)
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (third time)
Danganronpa 2: Good-bye Despair (second time)

The Danganronpa games were mostly because of the anime and wanting to relive the experience, but Fire Emblem: Awakening and Dragon Age II were purely unprompted, with the former having happened before the release of Fire Emblem Fates.

Anime Talk: Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School

My non-spoilery review of Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy, both Future Arc and Despair Arc will be up at Diabolical Plots later this month with the rest of my anime reviews, so if you don't want to be spoiled, check out my thoughts over there. What this post is about is all the things I couldn't discuss due to being spoilers that came up midway through the series, or even at the finale.

Mostly, I figured this was the best way to wrap-up the Danganronpa series that I've been doing on my blog, seeing as this is the conclusion to the Hope's Peak Academy storyline. (Annoyingly, Funimation and Aksys differ in their translations, so you'll often see me revert to the game translations; i.e. "academy" instead of "high school.")

How does Danganronpa 3 serve as a capstone for the games and does it work?

Obviously, spoilers for all games and the anime from here on out!

Danganronpa 3 had three things that the series needed to address. 1) It had to deal with Makoto facing the Future Foundation's ire after having saved the Remnants of Despair in Danganronpa 2. 2) It had to deal with Monaca and her grooming to become the next Junko Enoshima. 3) Though not a plot issue, it also had to deal with the retirement of veteran voice actor Nobuyo Ōyama, who was the voice of series antagonist Monokuma, whose sadistic brand of creepy cute is what defines much of Danganronpa.

I'll tackle the last point first, in that the series deals with Ōyama's retirement by drastically cutting back on Monokuma's involvement, such that Junko Enoshima actually has nothing to do with the third killing game at all. Monokuma only shows up to make the characters believe that Junko is involved.

I don't know if this decision was made to accommodate the change in VA, but I did have difficulty adjusting to the new Monokuma (now voiced by Tarako) and the series did hurt for lack of Monokuma's involvement. The new killing game honestly felt like it was left on autopilot (and truthfully it was) since Monokuma did not show up to regularly taunt and tease the unwilling players.

Going back to the first point, the series does deliver on the promise of following the story of what happened to Makoto after he reported back. He gets thrown into another killing game, but he does report in and we see the friction between him and the various heads of the Future Foundation.

I think it's a testament to the writing that even with different translation teams, it's quite clear that Kyosuke Munakata, the vice-chairman of the Future Foundation, is the unnamed writer of an e-mail chewing out Makoto in Danganronpa 2.

As far as the second point goes, I think that series writer/director Kazutaka Kodaka was kicking himself for leaving that loose plot thread and teasing Monaca as the second coming of Junko Enoshima.

For one thing, she appeared in a side game, which means that a fair portion of the fan base never played it. (I did not until the anime came out and I wanted to get her backstory.) And for another, her existence makes it harder to plan a surprise revelation as to who the mastermind is, because the players who have played Ultra Despair Girls will be expecting her.

Danganronpa 3 has no choice but to include her if it's going to close off all the storylines, but having a villain come out of nowhere (for most viewers, since she is definitely not part of the Future Foundation) is a bad idea.

The TV series chooses to handle it by introducing an android version of Future Foundation member Miaya Gekkogahara, who was killed off camera before the series start. Fairly early on, Monaca is revealed to the audience as the controller behind Gekkogahara, and because of the early reveal, we know she can't be the mastermind. It's very rare that the audience finds out information before the protagonists, and something as critical as the mastermind's identity isn't going to come out in the first half of the series.

Eventually at the mid-point is there is a strange and mildly nonsensical side episode that is full of nothing but Ultra Despair Girls fanservice, which reveals that Monaca is not the mastermind and that she's actually done with the whole Despair crap.

It's played off as funny, with Monaca being a slacker in a trailer rather than a megalomaniac's base, and her dismissal of Nagito, who was going to train her to be Ultimate Despair, is likely to elicit a laugh from those who know what he's like.

But Monaca then exits the series and we don't know find any greater significance to her meddling. She does leave a couple clues behind for Makoto to puzzle over, but they don't really feel like they had to come from Monaca. We find out that she was an unrelated interloper, which makes her abrupt departure is unsatisfying. The game had built her up to be something, and Danganronpa 3 (prior to the trailer reveal) had done the same.

So when she finally leaves, it feels like all that time spent on her for little to no payoff was a waste.

I'm honestly not sure how it could have been handled better, but I think she should have been used for a second half reveal that could have counted for more, and it would have helped if she had participated in the game in person (like the previous masterminds). Having her depart in a side episode and relaying her clues by proxy was what really ruined her appearance.

Danganronpa 3 also had two sides to it, in order to make a whole. The Future Arc followed Makoto's story and the Despair Arc covered the lead-up to Danganronpa 1 and had the messy task of showing the backstories of the eventual Future Foundation members as well as how Junko Enoshima corrupted Class 77 (the main characters of Danganronpa 2).

While the two sides were good for building out the characters of the Future Foundation, the Despair Arc had far too much on its plate and unfortunately it needed to be a giant retcon mess in order to work.

Granted, we know Junko Enoshima can lie as it suits her, but there is no reason for her to lie at the end of Danganronpa 2 about what she did to Class 77. At that point in the story, she wants them to know the truth, because the truth is so horrible, that knowing it will bring them to the point of despair. If the survivors in Class 77 don't believe her, if they have reason to doubt, then her words won't have impact.

Junko and the assorted documents she reveals to them, tell the story of individuals who were corrupted and fell into despair. Even Izuru Kamukura, was described as simply being broken by her. It builds Junko up to be this horrifying human being, with the both the charisma and the capacity to cause hundreds of students to commit suicide in her name.

Lifting the curtain to see exactly how she did all that turns out to have been a poor decision as it comes down to brainwashing, and suddenly she's not really much of a boogeyman anymore. She's still a ruthless individual, but she's much more human and less a force of nature.

Izuru is not even that involved with her, so much as trying to decide whether he's more invested in Hope (which Junko says is boring and predictable) or Despair (which is chaos). But I will say that the Despair Arc does gift the series with the best reason for Izuru to have starting the second killing game. He says he can't decide between Hope and Despair, so he wants to see for himself which is stronger, and that provides the best reason, from his perspective, to upload the AI to the virtual world in Danganronpa 2.

Moving on to the ending, there are a few points I want to touch.

The Danganronpa series is known for its high body count, and while Danganronpa 3 is no different (seriously, so many Future Foundation members die), who dies bothers me. There are a couple of faked deaths in the series, and I'm fine with that. Juzo Sakakura surviving what had looked like a kill was freaking amazing! But what I had a problem with was plot immunity.

If this had been a conventional killing game by Monokuma, everyone would have had specific buttons pressed to make them go off the deep end, and Kyoko's forbidden action in the third killing game is making it past the fourth round if Makoto is still alive. She dies and it was the moment I'd been waiting for, because Makoto relies on her so heavily and he's closer to her than any of their other fellow survivors.

But the series seems to have trouble killing anyone who was not canonically dead at the end of their respective games. It chooses to err on the side of hope. If there was any way possible for someone to live and they came from Danganronpa 1 or 2, then they survived.

Kyoko was revived in an off-camera moment, so she could show up as a surprise to Makoto, and everyone from Danganronpa 2 has been restored from their brain dead/coma predicaments.

I was also a bit disappointed that the Danganronpa 2 cast looks perfectly healthy and in peak physical condition considering that they were supposed to have been maimed and abusing themselves while in Junko's service. The only nod to that is Fuyuhiko's eyepatch, which he sports in-game even in the virtual world.

The Danganronpa 2 cast also takes out specially trained military units which is kind of fun to watch, even though it's eye-rolling at the same time. Even though they're Ultimate students, that doesn't make them an elite combat unit.

The final bit that I wish to address is the main story itself. Danganronpa 3 is not a game related in Junko Enoshima, but rather the entire thing was engineered to produce the opposite effect. Instead of enforcing a world of despair, Kazuo Tengan wants to create a world of hope, and he intends to do it by showing Ryota Mitarai so much despair under the pretense that the Junko's followers are making a comeback, that Mitarai concludes the best thing to do is to brainwash the world into becoming a world of hope.

This is why brainwashing had to be used so much in the Despair Arc because Mitarai was the unwilling key to providing Junko the power she needed.

At the time Mitarai is finally set off, there are hardly any Future Foundation members left standing (only four remain in the killing game, including himself), so it's not surprising that he gets pushed off the deep end. He gets talked down from it by the Danganronpa 2 cast, who by rights should have been his classmates if fate hadn't intervened, and that was all right, but let's circle back to the game.

The third killing game, like the others, had another purpose besides causing despair to those immediately involved. But the execution of that purpose, was flawed. And while I might set lower expectations for Tengan than I would Junko, he does make a number of mistakes.

Tengan needs Mitarai alive at the end of the killing game in order for his plan to succeed. Mitarai gets involved on accident because he wasn't supposed to be at the meeting when everyone gets trapped and gassed unconscious. At this point, Tengan should have removed Mitarai from the game, and let it continue without him.

Sure, there would have been some comments about that, but his plan would have automatically failed if Mitarai had gotten killed, because the game is run on autopilot. Whoever is closest to a Monokuma monitor at the end of a round, gets brainwashed into killing themselves (which, by the way, was one of the ingenuous twists--that there was no secret traitor).

Even if he had built in a failsafe to avoid brainwashing Mitarai, the Monokuma-encouraged witch hunt to find the traitor results in other people dying. Mitarai is pretty non-aggressive, so he doesn't top anyone's list as a suspect, but if he had just gotten unlucky, being at the wrong place at the wrong time, he easily could have died.

And then some of the forbidden actions were just senseless. Since this was Tengan and not Junko, one would think the forbidden actions would balance the playing field. And to some degree they do. Sakakura, the former Ultimate Boxer, can't punch anyone. Munakata, being unable to open doors, is incredibly crippled.

But then other people have limitations that are downright bonkers. Kizakura can't open his left hand. Great Gozu can't be pinned for a three count (incredibly unlikely considering he's the Ultimate Wrestler). Kimura can't let anyone step on her shadow.

Bandai's would be the worst, since he can't witness acts of violence, but I assume that was given out to make him a sacrificial lamb, so everyone else would take the forbidden actions seriously.

Danganronpa 3 doesn't quite come together, but as a series capstone? It could do worse. It's clear from the ending that Hope has won. Makoto is now the principal to the newly reopened Hope's Peak Academy, with the implication that everything is going to be good again.

The Danganronpa 2 cast sails off into the sunset (almost literally since they're on a boat) taking Mitarai with them.

And even Munakata, the only Danganronpa 3 cast member aside from Mitarai to survive, has found a reason to keep going.

Watching the Future Arc felt pretty good while the mysteries were still unknown, and I did like the ending despite being fluffier than I expected. The anime may have been incredibly messy at times, but there are no questions left. And I'm okay with that.

Danganronpa: Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls

Danganronpa: Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls is not a game I would have ordinarily picked up if not for the Danganronpa name, largely because it's a third person shooter, and most people who've played shooters with me know, I'm terrible at them. My tactics are very much along the lines of "spray and pray."

But playing was the only way to see the story, so I set the game mechanics to the easiest difficulty, held my nose, and took the plunge.

Ultra Despair Girls is an interquel, taking place between Danganronpa 1 and 2, specifically, three months after the death of Junko Enoshima. The Remnants of Despair are still on the loose, and if anything are even more fanatical now that she's gone.

Most of this is background noise for Komaru Naegi, who is the first series protagonist not to have gone to Hope's Peak Academy, instead being the younger sister to Danganronpa 1's Makoto. After being held captive in an apartment with no human contact for a year and a half, Komaru escapes to find the surrounding Towa City is full of Monokuma robots that are killing all the adults in town.

She finds herself in a middle of a child revolution, where the children are using Monokuma robots to slay all the adults and establish a child-only paradise, and they're led by five children in particular who call themselves the Warriors of Hope.

Aside from how the children managed to get a hold of such technology (tech that must have originated from Junko and the Ultimate Despairs), I found the Warriors hard to empathize with since they initially come off as a bunch of delusional brats. Even if they are supposed to be geniuses (having come from Hope's Peak Elementary, the elementary school associated with Hope's Peak Academy), I had trouble imagining them finding life better without adults.

Though parent-child conflicts happen all the time, I think most children understand that the adults are the providers, and without adults, there won't be anything for them to eat, wear, or use. There is a power difference, and sometimes an unfair one, but one they have to live with until they're old enough to become independent.

Danganronpa is well aware of that power difference, and so are these kids. The Monokumas finally put them in a position where they can have power over the adults. As the game progresses, it becomes clear that the reason the Warriors of Hope are so angry and trying to kill all the adults is because they're all abused children. Kotoko's story is particularly triggery, with sexual abuse and a side of victim blaming. When Komaru tries to tell her that not all adults are bad, Kotoko asks "Then why didn't anyone help me?" and there's no good answer for that.

The Warriors' vengeance is very much along the lines of "They hurt me so I'm going to hurt them back," which is childish, but perfectly in line with their ages.

This also puts the player in the uncomfortable position of fighting against abused children, and the game takes advantage of the fact that Komaru and her reluctant partner, Toko, are both teenagers, making them straddle the divide between being an adult and being a child. At the start of the game the Warriors almost spare Komaru because she isn't quite an adult yet, but ultimately turn her into their prey for their hunting game when she spends too much time trying to rationalize with them, which is a very grown-up thing to do.

The player never actually fights any of the children directly, instead facing them in proxy boss battles with robots, but what happens to the Warriors when they lose looks fairly horrific. Despite the stylization, it's heavily implied that all but one of them are killed (though there is an ending credits image that shows them alive post-game).

Being a Danganronpa game, the conflict between the adults and the children isn't truly about the war we see on the surface, but something more sinister. It's clear early on that the real leader of the Warriors of Hope is the girl Monica, who is very interested in despair, much like Junko Enoshima, and Monica has been manipulating the rest of the Warriors of Hope. The child-only paradise isn't her end goal, but having the other Warriors think that has been useful for her.

Her end game culminates in an attempt to turn Komaru into the second coming of Junko Enoshima. All the trials Komaru suffers throughout the game are designed to bring her to the peaks of hope and then crashing down into despair so deep she can never emerge. Naturally, Komaru was chosen because her brother Makoto had become known as the Ultimate Hope in his face-off with Junko, the Ultimate Despair.

Unlike Danganronpa 2, where I complained that the choices were too heavily weighted towards the emergency shutdown being the only good decision, the ending choices for Ultra Despair Girls are both bad. One more bad than the other, but there is no ending that results in a happy ending for the people of Towa City.

Komaru is given the controller that is operating all the Monokuma robots in the city, robots that are busy killing any adults they can find, and she is told to destroy it. But if she does, the helmets controlling all the brainwashed children (all the children aside from the Warriors of Hope) will explode.

The moment of that reveal was a pitch perfect moment of despair, or would have been if gameplay hadn't been so annoying about repeatedly hammering in the "break it/don't break it" decision. People will die if the robots are not stopped, and another set of people will die if the robots are left alone. The fact there was no easy end to the fighting is not the end game that anyone except Monica was looking for.

Komaru is pressured into pushing the button by Monica, who knows this will destroy her, and also by the leader of the surviving adults, who argues that the exploding helmets could be a bluff.

Interestingly, the adults who still survive in the city are incredibly likely to be single and without children, since the brainwashed children turned on the nearest adults first, which were likely to be their parents. This puts a divide between the adults and the children, since the adults who remain are those who are least likely to be sympathetic towards them.

While not pushing the button is clearly the "right" thing to do, so much as anything can be, the game unfortunately spends an hour (not kidding!) of yanking the player back and forth and forcing them to confirm that they do not want to press the button with other people yelling at them to do it. It got really annoying and it's not a good sign that my greatest fear on facing the last boss was that I'd die and have to sit through that all over again.

Nothing in Ultra Despair Girls directly feeds into the other games, so it's fairly skippable with the exception that the Danganronpa 3 anime makes use of it for the majority of one episode, and that's likely because there is a plot thread left hanging.

The game ends with Monica having survived her confrontation with Komaru and being carried away by Nagito, who promises to help groom her into the next Junko Enoshima, so she won't have to worry about having a proxy. The ending credits bolster the idea that she intends to follow his instructions, which clearly sets her up to be a villain the future, and the anime could not leave that unaddressed.

Ultra Despair Girls does have some worth on its own though, as it's one of the few girl "buddy" games I've seen. The player is in control of either Komaru or Toko at all times, and while there are some conversations about Toko's one-sided crush on Byakuya, most of the dialogue is refreshingly about either their objectives or trying to get along with each other. Komaru doesn't have a love interest and the strongest relationship in the game, the one that gets its moment to shine, is the friendship between her and Toko (both of her personalities, even the psychotic one).

Toko can be a bitter pill and she's so prickly and delusional that I found it hard to sympathize with her in the first Danganronpa, but she makes an excellent partner for Komaru who tends to make fun of how generic she is. And indeed, considering how colorful the rest of the cast is in all three games, Komaru is frightfully normal. As ironic as it sounds, Toko humanizes Komaru, so she's not just a generic everygirl. She gives Komaru such difficult material to work with that they're entertaining to watch, as Komaru tries to normalize that which can never be normal.

Finally, as a gamer who generally sucks at shooters, Ultra Despair Girls is fairly forgiving on the lowest difficulty. There are moments I died, but it's a sort of game where slow and steady (rather than twitch reflexes) can help a lot. Many times it's possible to hear the Monokumas before seeing them, so it's possible to creep out and lure them one at a time, and the worst places tend to have reasonably placed checkpoints. Bosses actually throw out healing items, so if a fight is going poorly due to a mistakes, it's usually possible to play defensively for a minute or two and get back to full strength before going on the offense again.

I wouldn't entirely recommend the game, but as a novelty it's interesting, and manageable for Danganronpa fans who wouldn't ordinarily play shooters. It is currently only on PS Vita, but there are PS4 and Steam ports on the way.

Now, having covered all the games in the Hope's Peak continuity, there's just one more Danganronpa post in me, and I'll use that to cover the Danganronpa 3 anime.

VN Talk: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

Continuing my Danganronpa replays, today we move on to Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, which is also available in English on Steam and PS Vita.

I originally played this right after I finished the first game (for the second time), which made going into Danganronpa 2 hard. In retrospect it might have been better not to have played them so close together because I may have unfairly judged the new cast against the old without giving them adequate space to grow on me.

Having played through DR1 twice and finished all endings in the optional School Mode, the cast of the first game had become quite dear to me, and it was hard getting thrown into a new game with sixteen new strangers and expecting to get to know them all as well.

Once again there is a group of Hope's Peak Academy "Ultimate" students who are forced to play a killing game, where the winner gets to "graduate" and escape confinement (in this case, the abandoned tropical resort island they're stranded on) as long as they are not found out in the subsequent class trial. Discovery equals execution. If the culprit succeeds, then all other students will be executed, giving a huge incentive for the culprit hide their tracks (better yet, pin the deed on someone else) and for the innocent students to find out who the murderer is.

But why is there another game? How is Monokuma back? Why are there more students when the first game said that the members of Class 78 were supposed to be the only ones from Hope's Peak Academy who survived the worst tragedy in human history? And how did they get unwittingly transported all the way from their school in Japan to some tropical island?

It's kind of amazing how much about the early portion of DR2 doesn't make sense, but the player is willing to overlook it as just a stretch beyond expectations for an already exaggerated set of circumstances.

The opening scene with Hajime Hinata heading to school for his very first day at Hope's Peak Academy is an easy parallel to Makoto Naegi's from the first game, but instead of passing out, the player's screen glitches with a graphics bug we call "tearing" in the industry. Shortly thereafter Hajime finds himself in a classroom with his new classmates who are also having a bizarre first day, which is capped off with the reveal of their new teacher, a robotic plush rabbit called Usami, and the classroom walls falling down to reveal that they're actually on a tropical island.

Usami lets the group know that they are on a school trip and their goal is to become friends with each other to collect Hope Fragments, and after they've gotten them all, they will be free to leave the island.

Everyone is naturally suspicious. How did they end up on a school trip, and to a tropical island no less, without being aware of it? But just as some of the students are starting to think this might be okay, Monokuma, the sadistic teddy bear of the first game, usurps Usami's position, remodeling her as Monomi so she looks more like him, and then declares the rules of the killing game in order to leave.

As before, it's impossible to talk about the full story without giving away the ending, so spoilers from here on out!

Danganronpa 2 plays with and subverts the expectations of the audience from the first game, which is one of the humorous highlights of the game. For instance, Monokuma reveals that an organization called World Ender ruined the world outside (the destroyed world being a major reveal towards the end of the first game) and they're the organization that trapped the students on the island as well as removing memories of their previous years at school. Players of the first game will immediately connect World Ender to Ultimate Despair, the group that included Junko Enoshima, the mastermind behind Monokuma and the first killing game. The memory removal was a similar late reveal in the first game to the survivors who made it to the end.

But because of when in the story this gets revealed, it's so early that the students have no proof that anything Monokuma says is true, whereas in the first game the reveal was the only thing that made all the weird clues make sense. It's a nice reversal that plays with player expectations while still using the same foundation of the characters not knowing what happened before.

As the player goes through Danganronpa 2, the students begin to uncover proof of their missing memories. One of them even recovers her memories entirely and murders two of her fellow students because she now remembers who she is, and that the Future Foundation (aka World Ender) was the one who put them in this situation. The other students are horrified by the glee with which she goes to her execution, particularly because she now behaves like a completely different person.

The truth behind Danganronpa 2 hits like a truck, much like the surprise reveal at the end of the first game, though it's not quite as cleanly executed as Monokuma essentially provides everyone with a gigantic infodump of assorted clues that he swears are all real, and the clues lead to the discovery that were other survivors of Hope's Peak Academy besides Class 78 and that they were subsequently taken in by the Future Foundation

Seeing as the newly acquired fifteen were similar in age to the participants of the first game, the Future Foundation placed the newcomers under the supervision of the survivors from the Hope's Peak Academy killing game.

But it turned out the fifteen students were a part of Ultimate Despair (explaining why they survived when no one else did), and followers of Junko Enoshima. Together, they were responsible for setting off the spark that resulted in civilization's fall.

The members of Ultimate Despair had originally been Hope's Peak Academy students who had become corrupted by Junko Enoshima to the point that they were functionally considered limbs of hers, doing whatever she required. Most of Ultimate Despair committed suicide when they discovered Junko had executed herself at the end of the first game, but that was not true of the fifteen who became known as the Remnants of Despair.

They were a psychotic bunch, trying to get close to despair, and committed all kinds of atrocities to themselves, to their friends and families, and to complete strangers. It's heavily implied that the fifteen have no one left to go back to, and that several of them are disfigured in the real world (whereas their virtual bodies have been rewound to 2-3 years prior to the game so they appear normal).

Makoto Naegi, the protagonist of the first game, objected to their destruction and with assistance from his fellow first game survivors, placed the fifteen Remnants of Despair in a VR machine that removed their memories prior to their stay at Hope's Peak Academy, prior to them meeting Junko, and prior to becoming corrupted by her.

In the virtual world they would have a chance to make new, happier memories, so they could go back to being the more joyful people they had been before they ever met her, and then this new version of them would be uploaded into their bodies, replacing the ones who had become Ultimate Despair.

But there was a complication, leading directly to the conflict in the second game.

Unlike Makoto, Hajime is a more complex protagonist, and his past is all kinds of jacked up to the point I'm not sure it's useful to discuss it for what I want to get at here. In a nutshell, Hajime is both the lead protagonist and the mastermind behind the second killing game, but he's unaware of it due to his memory loss.

It's clear that the Remnants of Despair knew what was in store for them when Makoto and company took them into their custody, and past-version Hajime uploaded an AI clone of Junko Enoshima as a virus into the virtual reality system, kicking off the second killing game in a bid to resurrect the real Ultimate Despair.

This explains the return of Monokuma, the strange graphics glitches at the start of the game, and other nonsensical things that shouldn't be possible but the audience could handwave as Danganronpa-style silliness taken to the next level.

The plan behind the second killing game was to kill off the majority of the Remnants of Despair (which is why the one who got her memory back was thrilled to accelerate things) and then get the remainder to graduate, which would cause their memories from the virtual world to be uploaded into the real one. But the AI Junko would be uploaded into the bodies of everyone who had died in the virtual world, essentially resurrecting the villain of the first game.

It's the kind of horrible plan that a bunch of devoted and psychotic followers would voluntarily come up with, but the problem is, the surviving characters at this point in the game are no longer crazy. They don't want to be manipulated by their former selves, but now they're trapped between graduating and bringing a monster back into the real world with them, or remaining forever in the virtual world.

Hope arrives in the form of the timely arrival of three of the first game's survivors, which together give them the eight votes needed for a majority to activate the emergency shutdown sequence. (And it was a lovely moment seeing Makoto, Kyoko, and Byakuya charge into the virtual world to save their former schoolmates.) But in another twist, the Junko AI was prepared for that too, and if she's to be believed, getting them to jump in like that was her primary reason for the killing game.

What the survivors of the first game reluctantly reveal is that while the emergency shutdown will allow everyone to escape the Junko AI as well as preventing her resurrection, it will also erase everything else that happened in the virtual world, which means that all the memories the second cast had built up would be deleted, including all the friends and sacrifices they made along the way, and they would revert to the former Despair versions of themselves on awakening.

It's a Catch 22, and the AI Junko capitalizes on the fact the five surviving Remnants of Despair do not want to forget what happened to them on the island, or, in Hajime's case, to simply cease to exist, since Hajime's 2-3 years' ago personality was so damaged that what he is in the virtual world is simply the best reconstruction the system can come up with.

The choices are self-destruction, to graduate (which will also doom Makoto, Kyoko and Byakuya since AI Junko will not allow them to graduate and graduation is subject to instructor approval), or to remain in the virtual world (trapping Makoto, Kyoko, and Byakuya along with them).

And this is the part where I think AI Junko falls down a bit. While the five remaining Remnants of Despair are justified in asking why they should sacrifice themselves when it means losing the people they've become, their alternatives are really not all that great.

The first game's final vote against hope or despair worked because everything they had been fighting to return to no longer existed. Both staying where they were and going outside into a post-apocalyptic world were equally despairing options, but the latter involved clearly seeing the truth with their own eyes, no matter how bad it would be.

In the second game, the options are again to maintain the unpleasant status quo or to leave via two different unpleasant methods. It's easy to rule out graduation, because that brings back Junko, who wants to destroy the world, and could the surviving Remnants of Despair (who are good people again) really condemn the three members of the Future Foundation who came into the virtual world to save them?

While the plot does spend a good bit bringing the five Remnants to the brink of Despair, using the emergency shutdown seems like a foregone conclusion. Even allowing for a continued existence in the virtual world, it doesn't seem like a happy way to survive and they would still be stuck with AI Junko (trapped on a island with their worst enemy!).

The problem with presenting this choice as the final dilemma is that only one of the two options favorable for Junko is the best one. If the Remnants graduate, the Future Foundation members are trapped, and if the Remnants choose to stay, then the Foundation members are still trapped. But even though AI Junko says her real purpose was to draw in the Future Foundation members who escaped her real self, the best choice is for everyone to graduate because that's the only option that sends her back into the world and she completely fails at selling it as a viable choice.

In the first game, her reveal of the truth of the outside world and that the students had voluntarily incarcerated themselves, made it clear that staying inside could be right thing to do (with the downside of being stuck with a psychopath).

She really needed to be telling the Remnants of Despair that graduating and bringing her back was what they want just as much as her, and she doesn't. Instead she tells them how their fallen companions will be inhabited by AI copies of her and how she'll continue the worst tragedy in the history of humanity, which all of them find completely revolting. If she managed to take a step beyond that, and show them why it would still be worth it other than "you guys won't wake up in the real world as Ultimate Despairs anymore" it would have been amazing.

After some soul searching about whether or not to stay inside the virtual world, the five Remnants choose to activate the emergency shutdown and vow to remember as much as they can when they wake up (even though it should be nigh impossible).

The epilogue sequence, much like the first game, chooses not to show the details. We see Makoto, Kyoko, and Byakuya leaving the real island that the virtual one was based off of and going to report back to the Future Foundation where Makoto's going to take the heat for his unorthodox plan to redeem the Remnants of Despair. He thinks the Remnants are going to be okay. They've woken up and have decided to stay on the island and try to help revive their friends who didn't make it out of the game.

The final shot of the epilogue is a back view of Hajime. As he watches their boat leave he narrates how he's now going to live as Hajime Hinata, rather than the version of himself who had become Ultimate Despair.

The implication is that the Remnants now have both sets of memories, both the horrible ones and the new ones they made on the island, leaving them changed people.

I was satisfied with the ending, and didn't feel that there really needed to be more for this particular cast of characters. If anything, thanks to the world building and the introduction of the Future Foundation, I wanted to follow the continuing adventures of Makoto and company. Fortunately, there's the opportunity to do both in Danganronpa 3.

But first, we'll take a side trip to to the spin-off game, Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls.

VN Talk: Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

This past summer Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy aired as two parallel anime series, one that was a prequel to the Danganronpa games, and one that was a sequel and the chronological conclusion to the story of the students at Hope's Peak Academy.

It was a must-watch show for me, having fallen in love with the series a year ago, so I decided now would be a good time to replay (or play for the first time, in the case of Another Episode) the original games.

The first one, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, is one of my favorite visual novels ever (and it's now available on Steam as well as PS Vita). Unusually, I played it a second time immediately after completing it. I only run into a game that drives me to do that maybe once every ten years. It's not uncommon for me to replay highlights, but the whole thing?

Outwardly it looks like a cross between the Ace Attorney series and 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors. On the one hand, the player searches for clues they can later use in a courtroom situation to suss out a murderer. On the other, the player is trapped in a sadistic game where people can die in a horrific manner.

Fifteen students who are the "Ultimate" at what they do (the Ultimate Martial Artist, the Ultimate Fashionista, the Ultimate Programmer, etc.) have the most bizarre first day of school at Hope's Peak Academy when they pass out and wake up to find themselves trapped inside. The windows and doors leading out have been completely bolted over with metal plates that cannot be removed. A plush mechanical bear called Monokuma declares itself the headmaster and informs them that they are to spend the rest of their lives enjoying a peaceful communal existence inside the school... unless they want to graduate, which is done by killing one of their classmates and getting away without being discovered in the ensuing class trial.

Outwardly no one wants to kill anyone else, and accepting a peaceful life without escape is certainly an option, but Monokuma stirs the pot by providing additional motivation for people wanting to leave the school; for instance, providing video footage that heavily implies that friends and family are in danger.

The students are completely cut off from the outside world with Monokuma holding the only key to escape. They have very little choice but to follow his rules, as he makes it clear early on that breaking them will result in a swift death.

This sets up the stakes pretty early, and it's not terribly long before someone makes the first kill, but what I find most remarkable about the story is something that I rarely find discussed, and it's what made the most lasting impression in my mind. To talk about it, I'm going to have to spoil the end of the game.

So beware of spoilers from here on out!

As the player goes through the story they find clues that there is something going on besides killing each other for Monokuma's entertainment, and it has to deal with the school itself, which turns out to have closed a year before the start of the game. Monokuma never hides this, and allows the students to explore at leisure, but he's cagey about providing too much information that would explain any of the school's mysteries.

As the game progresses, the students discover a TV that shows the killing game is being broadcast on every station they can receive, and we're not sure why.

Then there are these strange photographs of a time when the new students were hanging out together like friends when they had never met each other before. There's even a collection of video interviews with each of the students saying that they understand that once they enter the school it was possible they would spend the rest of their lives inside.

None of them remembers any of this, and Monokuma teases more than once that if they knew the real secret behind the school they would never want to leave.

The secret comes out in the final class trial, when the mastermind behind Monokuma reveals the real reason behind the students' imprisonment and that their memories were tampered with. They thought they had only been at Hope's Peak for the few weeks the killing game was going on, but their first day of class was actually two years ago.

Their first year was relatively normal, which was when the happier photos were taken.

But then one year ago civilization effectively ended in a tragic disaster and most of the student body was killed, except for the sixteen students in Class 78. The real headmaster had the school transformed into a shelter for these "ultimate" students, humanity's best hope for a better tomorrow, so that they would be safe and could emerge at a future time to help rebuild the world.

All of the students consented and assisted in sealing themselves inside the sanctuary they might never leave.

But the mastermind, Junko, was one of the sixteen students and she erased everyone's memories so they forgot why they were trapped in the school, to give them incentive to leave the place they otherwise had no reason to escape. Then she turned it into a murder game consisting of fifteen students and broadcast it to the world to further drown the remaining pockets of hope in despair, because nothing would be worse than seeing the teenagers who are supposed to be the hope for a better future killing each other.

Junko's reveal is powerful, because all this time the characters have been fighting to get back to the world they left behind, only to find out that it doesn't exist anymore. They were fighting over nothing. The ones who murdered their classmates and were in turn executed themselves, did it in vain.

For someone whose real title is the Ultimate Despair, having the protagonists discover that escape is hopeless as well, is an excellent twist. The world outside is polluted and the only reason they are safe inside the barred school is due to the air purifier, which Junko has rigged to disable if she is killed.

Junko gives the surviving six students a choice, to vote to punish either Hope or Despair. If everyone votes to punish Despair, she will allow them to leave, but she will execute herself, so they will no longer have an option of staying in their sanctuary since the purifier will be broken. But anyone who votes to punish Hope, will get to live out the rest of their lives safely inside the school as originally intended and Junko will not kill herself.

Additionally, if any one person votes to punish Hope, everyone who voted to punish Despair will be executed, creating a Prisoner's Dilemma, where all six remaining survivors must vote identically for the best outcome.

Since Danganronpa is a game, it's unsurprising that after some wrangling everyone agrees to punish Despair, but knowing the characters and what they've gone through (especially just how much backstabbing they've endured up to this point), it's very easy to view in character through the protagonist that getting everyone to agree for the benefit of all is a dicey proposition and one they have been failing at the entire game.

Some players expressed dissatisfaction with the end of the game, after the survivors successfully vote against Despair and Junko executes herself. The air purifier stops working, but the six of them now have the controls to the vault-like door that opens the school's front entrance. They talk about what they may or may not find out there (since they never get their memories back) and express hope about their future, no matter how bad the outside might be.

Then they open the door, and the game cuts to credits.

Personally, I was hoping that was exactly what the game would do, because seeing the outside would have opened new questions or changed the mood. If it was happy outside, it would thematically undercut the desperation felt throughout the game. If it was as bleak as Junko told them, it would end the game on a sour note. But by cutting off there, we see the survivors at their best in the face of uncertainty. It ended perfectly.

(And if you really want to see their reaction to the outside world, you can now watch it in a flashback in Danganronpa 3.)

Danganronpa's story discussion usually focuses on the killing game, but people miss the post-apocalyptic side of it, why the killing game was broadcast, and the complete futility of the students trying to return to a life that has since ceased to exist. Even the broadcast version of the anime neglects it, in favor of the easy ending of bringing down the villain. (Though the extended home video release puts the reason for the game back into play.)

Junko doesn't start up the killing game just to get the students at each other's throats. She is a sick and twisted individual who wants to bring despair to everyone including those outside the school by attacking their symbol of hope, and the students are just chess pieces.

I didn't think Danganronpa could get more messed up than the student murders and subsequent executions, but the truth behind the school and their imprisonment, and that they were trying to escape a place they had voluntarily sequestered themselves inside, exceeded my wildest expectations.

When I finished the game, I wasn't sure how Danganronpa 2 could play out, given that the killing game feels like a unique situation and by then the sequel was already out. While I felt there are more stories to tell with these characters, it didn't seem like it could possibly follow the same format. Next week I'll cover Danganronpa 2!