Danganronpa v3 spoiler talk

Danganronpa V3 mini talk
I played on the hardest difficulty for everything since the game doesn’t have much replay value. This is a week or so after I played, I might have forgotten minor stuff that I thought of while playing.

Spoiler Free Mechanics
Scrum Debates are amazing. They’re not particularly hard and I think the animation lead in is too long but the concept is really cool. It’s really fun to see who sides on everything and it gives characters so much more personality. It creates less of a feeling of “Smart protagonist vs the World” and more of a “These are desperate people looking to save their lives and thinking on their own”. The amazing music helps.
Psyche Taxi is okay. It’s overly easy and just not as much fun as what it replaced (Logic Dive), but it’s not horrible. It also takes way too long and the questions rarely have the same kind of in depth thinking that Logic Dive does.
New Hangmans Gambit is okay. It’s by far the hardest game still since guessing the exact wording usually means guessing at the first letter and losing a few hearts. It definitely is the game that most suffers from “I get what they want me to say but I don’t know how they want me to say it” and will probably lead to a few game overs.
Mass Panic Debates are fine. The lockout is occasionally annoying, particularly in late game where they don’t give you much time to clear it and move the cursor. They also tend to give away where the correct flaw is, which is unfortunate. There were only two fakes.
I never found a lie backdoor and the forced lies I thought were a shitty concept. I get the idea – the truth isn’t as important as directing the conversation but they felt super forced and telegraphed every time. I feel like it’s a mechanic that will always either be too hard to spot or too telegraphed. It’s an okay theory but I don’t think it added much.
The mining game was okay. Super easy but made for a really fun external minigame.
_
_
_
_
SPOILERS ABOUND. I WILL NOT DISCUSS FUTURE CHAPTERS UNTIL I GET TO THEM
Chapter 1:
Kinda predictable victim. The case itself was really cool though, and they did a great job of not spoiling the twist anywhere. I do think they would have been better off making that happen in like… chapter 3 to make you care more about Kaede and in retrospect, they foreshadow it a lot by preventing more than rank 2 on any individual. Like… what a terrible idea that is. It’s like persona, people are going to spend all their time with someone. They needed enough writing for everyone or it’s going to feel like something is up. Or they needed to give less free time.
Monokuma’s motivation here is kinda shit honestly. I don’t know why they needed the idea of the first blood perk because the second motivation does enough by itself to force the killer’s hand. It just creates a huge logic flaw that’s readily apparent. Does the game outright end on first kill if the killer wanted? Why bother having the game then?
All in all though, really cool case. The protagonist transition was well handled, I just wished it happened later. This chapter’s also going to be super controversial (and caused a lot of Shuichi hate in Japan on initial release). That said, I overall liked the direction taken here > being able to play as a killer. And the way they subtly hid the logic and the way things happened was A+.
Also, the execution here is fucking brutal. I’m surprised they crushed her at the end, but I guess they didn’t just want to have a hanging body there at the end, even they show her there all the time regardless.
_
_
_
_
Chapter 2
The victim here is super sad. They did a great job of making Ryoma super vulnerable and the idea of someone struggling so heavily with depression being forced into the situation he was in… It’s really sad and tragic but incredibly well executed – you can’t help but feel for him struggling to find a reason to live.
The lead in was… okay. It’s pretty obvious when the death was drowning that the death happened elsewhere. The fact that it didn’t really come up until over halfway through the case was kinda annoying. It took me a while to actually recognize the killer at the end since the implication kinda only shows once or twice and disappears. I think it was overly circumstansial as to why she was found out, and her motivation feels like it came from out of nowhere.
Still though, definitely felt like vintage DR, which is not a bad thing and had to happen after the craziness of the first chapter.
The execution here was honestly basically torture porn… It really feels like they’ve been trending that way, especially after watching what I’ve seen of the anime. I’m not really a fan of the direction there to be quite honest.
Also, Insect Meet and Greet was fucking hilarious. Gonta is amazingly lovable.
_
_
_
_

Chapter 3
Fun chapter. Tons of missed potential. Like… How good would it have been if Tenko actually *had* killed Angie and you now have a killer that you have to trust and/or work with for the future? On top of that, why is Chapter 3 always a double murder by someone that’s actually just crazy. There are so many cool things that can happen in this series with this concept. Surely they can think of something new.
Angie was almost certainly going to die from the start of the chapter which was… okay. She was kinda funny in her bubbly way but she was also very capable of being obnoxious. It was about time for her gimmick to go. Tenko was a less necessary death, although the method was really cool, especially with the DR2 callbacks thrown in.
The killer here is less interesting. The duality thing was interesting, as was the reason for the face mask. They threw away a ton of potential by killing him off immediately though, since the rules mandated that killing Tenko did not make him a blackened.

_
_

_
 Chapter 4
Chibi sprites were actually adorable, especially with how they were used in the case recap. Definite A+ there. Forcing players to think in terms of the game world was super cool as well, as was the idea of a killer not remembering being the killer (Gonta being left handed was a super well done way to reveal why he made the mistake). It sucked to lose Miu, since I thought her vulgarity was funny if a bit over the top and Gonta immediately becomes the most (okay fine, second most…. Thanks Chiaki) heartwrenching blackened. Major props to his (English) VA – he’s come a long way at voicing relatable characters since Hiro was probably one of the least interesting and successful characters in DR1. Miu’s plan was actually pretty interesting and finding a way to turn that on it’s head was pretty fun.
That said, this was another case that was too slow to develop. It didn’t take long for me to figure out what happened and where but the characters were very slow to adjust. That said, of the 3 “normal” DR chapters, this was probably the best one. Also it was really nice that they killed two monokids – both subverted expectations and got the annoying bastards out of the way.
_
_
_
_

Chapter 5
By far the best chapter in the game and probably the second best DR chapter of all time. From beginning to end, was amazingly well done, and Kokichi fucking delivers. The murder was less ridiculously awesome than his obvious counterpart but this case was a fucking rollercoaster. Maki and Kaito have a pretty interesting and well defined relationship (and it works beautifully as a foil to Shuichi and Kaede), and the way the whole chapter played out where they even used DR2 expectations, only to subvert them… Glorious. I had so many crazy “aha!” moments, between Kokichi being a total shit, to the mystery defining the case… This was DR at its absolute best > where the case feels solvable despite also being a complete shitshow.
_
_
_
_
_
_
_

Chapter 6 and end

FUCK THIS CHAPTER. Oh my lord. It’s almost ironic in a way that I’m complaining exactly about this as the “viewers” did… but fuck off with all of this shit. Tsumugi being the mastermind was pretty obvious given that she did fuck all the entire game and there was no reason for her to be alive otherwise. Seriously, she had no character development, nothing interesting about her and then this.
The investigation was a shit take on a cool concept > What if they only had so much time to investigate. But they took away the map. I had no fucking clue where to go in the school since I just fast traveled everywhere so I spent half the time getting lost. Thank god I found an exploit that let me move faster than the game anticipated (DR Controls, hold R and forward, move diagonally) or I probably would have taken longer.
There were some really cool revelations early. Ultimate Survivor was a really cool Ultimate ability. Kokichi being the leader of an evil group of… pacifists? Again, good job subverting expectations, and making him being the best type of little shit.
And then you get to the big reveal the full meta revelation. And… it devalues EVERYTHING. It fucks with DR1. It fucks with DR2. It fucks with the spinoffs and DR3. Literally the only part of this I liked was V = 5 so V3=53. I had to be careful on twitter to not stylize the name differently because of the spoiler > V doesn’t mean Version, it’s 50. The fake memories was fine and expected but everything else was horrible
It pisses me off even more because apparently this was the twist that Kodaka wanted the most. It inspired everything else in the game etc. He’s said vocally that it’s the reason he made the game; otherwise he would have moved on. And it fucking ruins everything, even with the seeds of cop out they leave. Sure, three characters survive (thank fuck). Sure, there are hints that Tsumugi was lying or not telling the whole truth. But… This chapter was boring. It fucked the entire game up. It fucked other games up. You ever finish a game and wish that the ending didn’t happen? That the game just had an unsatisfying end on a part before because LITERALLY FUCKING ANYTHING would have been better than what actually happened? I played this chapter tired and sick and was falling asleep in the middle of it because the revelation was actually boring. Just…. Fuck off. I had a blast with the entire game. I was like “dude, I love this series. I don’t care if they don’t change much or improve, I could happily play one every year and enjoy it”. And then they drop this meta fucking horseshit on me and it sours my opinion of the entire game. It fucks the entire series and sours my opinion on them. Is this how other people felt about Zero Time Dillemma? About Metroid Other M? Are they actually this bad? Oh and revive the monokids only to explode them one by one. They contributed fuck all other than being annoying. The idea is okay (trying to give a foil or a reason to argue properly) but… They knew nothing. They clearly knew nothing. There was no positive contribution from them.
I think the only other part of the chapter was funny was when it was trying to force you to play minigames with really obvious solutions and you were supposed to decline. Fucking hilarious and well played, despite sucking and being boring.
Until this chapter the game was a solid 9/10. A few missed opportunities here and there but overall really fun and really well done. After this chapter, I’m so pissed I want to knock it lower but the journey was legitimately fun. And it’s hard because I think the game is great and worth a play but I also want to be able to tell people that “trust me, it ends in chapter 5. I know there’s a chapter 6 but it doesn’t exits, it’s bad don’t bother”.
I think the only other positive to come out of the trial was that it answered the only complaint I had on the first case. It was really circumstantial that the shotput actually hit and there was a 90% chance that would miss.
As for the final character reviews that might not be covered elsewhere:
Shuichi: Really cool to have a DR character with a more defined personality. He feels less like a character insert thanks to how Chapter 1 plays out, much more so than Makoto and Hajime.

Maki: Again, well done character. The changed ultimate was well handled, she was likable as the Chiaki/Kyoko replacement, and I thought the mini love arc with her and Kaito was well enough handled, if a bit cliché.
Kaito: Solid character, fun to have around. Knew he would die but fit his role perfectly and made a great “true” protagonist for the game.
Himiko: I guess she had a character arc, which was nice but she was a bit… bland? She’s a character archetype that would probably go over much better with Japan, so I’m okay with it overall. And the obvious lack of magic did lead to some funny conversations.
K1-B0: Surprisingly well thought out character. Probably the only other benefactor from the final chapter; before that he was okay but mostly comic relief. Some of the ideas for him in the final chapter weren’t something I hated.
Tsugumi: The only interesting thing about her was that they got old VAs back for other characters at the end. She was bland, uninteresting and had nothing to say, basically intentionally. Heck, give her a personality so that when she betrays you, it stings. Just a mishandled character from start to finish.
Kokichi: Inject him directly into my veins. I could not get enough of this little shit. He was sooooooooooo good. Just hit every note that you’d want from his character and more.

Overall, I think I have to objectively call it a good game. But I wish I could forget that final chapter and pretend it doesn’t exist because it soured my opinion to an extreme degree and makes it much weaker than 2  (still the best game in the series) and 1 (overly safe due to the new concept but very solid as a first play). I guess they ran out of good twists for the final chapter but I wish they’d have just played it straight out then because even if my mind hadn’t been blown, I’d have said I enjoyed it as much as DR2 to that point. Oh well.