predictable but the soundtrack is nice
This review contains spoilers
Full spoilers for Danganronpa 1 and 2.
After playing the original Danganronpa, I was very excited to play Danganronpa 2. However, my high hopes of an improved experience were betrayed, as I found there to be basically no improvements and the general quality of the game felt noticeably worse.
My single biggest problem with DR2 is how it handles its main plot. DR1 features an overarching mystery that regularly advances throughout the campaign, being the mystery of how and why the students were all locked in Hope’s Peak Academy and forced to kill each other. Clues left by Monokuma and discoveries from Kyoko keep the player interested in that narrative and eventually lead to some answers. I don’t really like DR1’s conclusion, but getting there was very interesting and kept me excited to continue playing. This sort of overarching mystery is largely absent from DR2.
In DR2, the students mysteriously awaken on a remote tropical island after entering Hope’s Peak Academy and discover that they will have to kill each other in order to return to the outside world, exactly like in the first game. This is all you are given for a while, which isn’t very compelling on its own since players are already familiar with this premise. It does beg the question of who is controlling Monokuma now, since the bear’s previous pilot died at the end of DR1, but this question is not given any attention beyond being raised, giving the player no clues with which to form their own theories. Other threads that are set up at the start of the game are Byakuya’s presence among the student body and a foreboding countdown. These threads also go essentially nowhere, and don't even have any sort of conclusion by the end of the game. Additional details that provoke the player to question the purpose of the killing school trip are very rare and similarly dissatisfying. This leaves the parts of the game between the investigations and trials feeling boring, as very little new information about Monokumas plan is ever discovered.
The pace of the game does not help on the front of engagement either. I like the investigations and trials in DR, but the trials in this game felt way too long. The new minigames added to the trials in DR2 disrupt the experience more than anything. The Logic Dive minigame is especially terrible, functionally serving as a series of multiple choice questions that require you to get through an unnecessarily long endless runner course (the gameplay is exactly like Run 3, if you are familiar with that game). The rarity of plot advancements also make the pace feel even slower, causing much more of the game to feel like filler. The whole game would benefit from being more streamlined, as it sometimes was difficult for me to work up the motivation to boot up the game when I knew that simply beating the next chapter would take me multiple hours.
Something I was disappointed to not see altered in this sequel is the immature humor that was a constant in DR1. I’m not asking for the game to change its tone to be exclusively serious or anything, but the running gag of Akane and Nekomaru doing “it”, the pervert character’s one dimensional personality where he views everything hypersexually, the reward for maxing out your affection with characters being their underwear, and so on, it all makes me embarrassed to be playing this game. Crass humor can be funny sometimes, but it is so overused in this game, even more so than it was in DR1.
DR2 includes a lot of strangely similar characters to those of DR1. There are 5 extremely similar pairs, being Aoi & Akane, Sakura & Nekomaru, Hifumi & Teruteru, Mondo & Fuyuhiko, and Toko & Mikan. In addition to that, there is also Impostor Byakuya, leaving about half of the cast feeling like copies of characters from the original game. In fact, these similarities are so apparent that when I was playing through the Prologue and Chapter 1, I thought that this game has some sort of meta element going on because the character parallels were so strong. There is no provided reason for why the DR2 characters are like this, and it comes off as lazy writing.
Later in the game, DR2 starts introducing a sci-fi environment and tone. I am not a fan of this, as I think it clashes very heavily with the premise of this game being a detective game. The player should be able to understand the world that the characters are in and what is and is not possible within it. The abilities of the Ultimate students are somewhat fantastical, but that is communicated to the player extremely clearly. With the introduction of a sci-fi environment, suddenly the rules of the world become much less clear. This was also somewhat of a problem in DR1, with the reveal of the apocalyptic state of the outside world and the unexplained mechanism used to erase all of the students’ memories, but as I said earlier, these last minute reveals didn’t stop me from enjoying everything that happened before then. The sci-fi stuff in DR2 however, gets pretty significant halfway through the game. I hated how Nekomaru was turned into a robot to bring him back to life because that sort of sci-fi event being fair-game opened the door to any sort of unintuitive bullshit being introduced later by the writers, to get themselves out of any sort of corner they might have written themselves into. While not nearly as sci-fi as a sentient robot, a detail that gave me a lot of grief was Nagito rigging the car full of bombs to explode after the car ran out of gas. The mechanisms with which he was able to do this are never explained, and even Kazuichi the Ultimate Mechanic was somehow unable to disarm the bombs before time ran out.
While I’m talking about bad writing, I’d like to mention two twists from the trials that I really hated. The fake out of Mahiru’s murderer was an extremely unsatisfying twist to read. The way that the story tries to make you believe that the woman who literally killed Mahiru with her own hands wasn't the murderer was not only out of nowhere, but it made me feel like the conclusions of the trial didn’t even matter. Of course, the narrative backtracks from this perspective in the end, but that didn’t change how stupid that was and how little the game cares about its own narrative rules for that option to even be a possibility. The other plot twist I really hated is the supposed true identity of Nagito’s killer. Nagito’s Rube Goldberg machine that he created to commit suicide ended up functioning perfectly, leading to his death. However, the conclusion that is eventually reached is that Nagito, who mutilated himself, intentionally placed the poisoned fire grenade so that another student would unwittingly throw it towards him, and died due to the giant spear which he intentionally impales himself with, did not commit suicide and that the person who threw the poisoned fire grenade towards him is the real killer. This is honestly just such obvious bullshit. The least that the writers could have done would be to try to paint this as Monokuma being an unreliable judge and dishonestly deeming Nagito’s death as not being a suicide, but that is not the case as the students agree with Monokuma’s perspective as well. This wrinkle in the case ruined the whole trial for me and made me further dissatisfied with the overall quality of this game.
I took issue with a couple of the trial solutions in DR1, but in DR2 I feel like many more solutions were unintuitive, or in this case, just incorrect. In Chapter 4 one of the non-stop debate sections includes the claims “We headed for Grape Tower before 7:00 a.m., I am certain” and “The killer did some tamperin’. They prolly messed with the clock inside Nekomaru’s chest.” Both of these claims are simply incorrect. Because the hallway clocks had been tampered with, the students actually headed for grape tower at 9:00 instead of 7:00. The second claim is also false because Nekomaru’s radio clock could not be manually adjusted. The player’s truth bullets contain “Wall Clock” and “Radio Clock”, which should be able to disprove both claims. You are also given the means to determine that the time on the clocks have been manually pushed backwards by this point in the trial. However, shooting “before 7:00 a.m.” with “Wall Clock” is not an accepted answer, even though it should be. This is a factual error made in the writing, and a pretty easy one to notice at that. This solution, as well as others that I was less than satisfied with, give the impression that the answers were not thought about all that hard.
The final chapter was the worst section of the game for me, it felt like the whole story was crumbling apart. The reveal that everything took place in a computer simulation, Monokuma was still being controlled by Junko (even though she died in the previous game), and the countdown that had been counting down for the whole game was entirely unrelated to anything at all, are all terrible twists. Even aside from these examples, the ending felt especially poorly written, as many things just don’t make sense. Like, why was Junko able to make an AI version of herself that was even more advanced than the AI “Alter Ego” that the Ultimate Programmer made? Why was the Ultimate Impostor disguised as Byakuya and what was he alluding to in the first chapter about his past? And something that really frustrated me was how the lack of physical growth in the students bodies was used as evidence supporting the idea that they were all inside of a computer simulation, since their simulated bodies could be based on their appearance when they first entered Hope’s Peak Academy, before the last couple years of their memory were wiped. The reason why I think using this as evidence is stupid is because if that is the case, why didn’t the students from DR1 notice physical changes in their bodies when they woke up with the last couple years of their memories erased? The writers are ignoring details when convenient, which can flippantly invalidate any observations you might make. Trying to solve things on your own and making theories is one of the most fun parts of Danganronpa, and it sucks that the player is being punished for doing so here due to a lack of consistency on the game’s end.
I am really sad that I didn’t like this game more. I was obsessed with DR1 while I was playing it, but I found it difficult to even finish DR2. The essence of the first game is still here, the characters are very colorful and I did end up liking a few of them a lot, and playing detective during the investigations is still a lot of fun, but it just feels like it wasn’t executed nearly as well as it was in DR1. DR2 also suffers from being a sequel, as it is expected to answer the unanswered mysteries leftover from DR1, which it was unable to give satisfying answers to. After the unsatisfying experience that is Danganronpa 2, I’m not even sure if I want to play the last game in the trilogy.
After playing the original Danganronpa, I was very excited to play Danganronpa 2. However, my high hopes of an improved experience were betrayed, as I found there to be basically no improvements and the general quality of the game felt noticeably worse.
My single biggest problem with DR2 is how it handles its main plot. DR1 features an overarching mystery that regularly advances throughout the campaign, being the mystery of how and why the students were all locked in Hope’s Peak Academy and forced to kill each other. Clues left by Monokuma and discoveries from Kyoko keep the player interested in that narrative and eventually lead to some answers. I don’t really like DR1’s conclusion, but getting there was very interesting and kept me excited to continue playing. This sort of overarching mystery is largely absent from DR2.
In DR2, the students mysteriously awaken on a remote tropical island after entering Hope’s Peak Academy and discover that they will have to kill each other in order to return to the outside world, exactly like in the first game. This is all you are given for a while, which isn’t very compelling on its own since players are already familiar with this premise. It does beg the question of who is controlling Monokuma now, since the bear’s previous pilot died at the end of DR1, but this question is not given any attention beyond being raised, giving the player no clues with which to form their own theories. Other threads that are set up at the start of the game are Byakuya’s presence among the student body and a foreboding countdown. These threads also go essentially nowhere, and don't even have any sort of conclusion by the end of the game. Additional details that provoke the player to question the purpose of the killing school trip are very rare and similarly dissatisfying. This leaves the parts of the game between the investigations and trials feeling boring, as very little new information about Monokumas plan is ever discovered.
The pace of the game does not help on the front of engagement either. I like the investigations and trials in DR, but the trials in this game felt way too long. The new minigames added to the trials in DR2 disrupt the experience more than anything. The Logic Dive minigame is especially terrible, functionally serving as a series of multiple choice questions that require you to get through an unnecessarily long endless runner course (the gameplay is exactly like Run 3, if you are familiar with that game). The rarity of plot advancements also make the pace feel even slower, causing much more of the game to feel like filler. The whole game would benefit from being more streamlined, as it sometimes was difficult for me to work up the motivation to boot up the game when I knew that simply beating the next chapter would take me multiple hours.
Something I was disappointed to not see altered in this sequel is the immature humor that was a constant in DR1. I’m not asking for the game to change its tone to be exclusively serious or anything, but the running gag of Akane and Nekomaru doing “it”, the pervert character’s one dimensional personality where he views everything hypersexually, the reward for maxing out your affection with characters being their underwear, and so on, it all makes me embarrassed to be playing this game. Crass humor can be funny sometimes, but it is so overused in this game, even more so than it was in DR1.
DR2 includes a lot of strangely similar characters to those of DR1. There are 5 extremely similar pairs, being Aoi & Akane, Sakura & Nekomaru, Hifumi & Teruteru, Mondo & Fuyuhiko, and Toko & Mikan. In addition to that, there is also Impostor Byakuya, leaving about half of the cast feeling like copies of characters from the original game. In fact, these similarities are so apparent that when I was playing through the Prologue and Chapter 1, I thought that this game has some sort of meta element going on because the character parallels were so strong. There is no provided reason for why the DR2 characters are like this, and it comes off as lazy writing.
Later in the game, DR2 starts introducing a sci-fi environment and tone. I am not a fan of this, as I think it clashes very heavily with the premise of this game being a detective game. The player should be able to understand the world that the characters are in and what is and is not possible within it. The abilities of the Ultimate students are somewhat fantastical, but that is communicated to the player extremely clearly. With the introduction of a sci-fi environment, suddenly the rules of the world become much less clear. This was also somewhat of a problem in DR1, with the reveal of the apocalyptic state of the outside world and the unexplained mechanism used to erase all of the students’ memories, but as I said earlier, these last minute reveals didn’t stop me from enjoying everything that happened before then. The sci-fi stuff in DR2 however, gets pretty significant halfway through the game. I hated how Nekomaru was turned into a robot to bring him back to life because that sort of sci-fi event being fair-game opened the door to any sort of unintuitive bullshit being introduced later by the writers, to get themselves out of any sort of corner they might have written themselves into. While not nearly as sci-fi as a sentient robot, a detail that gave me a lot of grief was Nagito rigging the car full of bombs to explode after the car ran out of gas. The mechanisms with which he was able to do this are never explained, and even Kazuichi the Ultimate Mechanic was somehow unable to disarm the bombs before time ran out.
While I’m talking about bad writing, I’d like to mention two twists from the trials that I really hated. The fake out of Mahiru’s murderer was an extremely unsatisfying twist to read. The way that the story tries to make you believe that the woman who literally killed Mahiru with her own hands wasn't the murderer was not only out of nowhere, but it made me feel like the conclusions of the trial didn’t even matter. Of course, the narrative backtracks from this perspective in the end, but that didn’t change how stupid that was and how little the game cares about its own narrative rules for that option to even be a possibility. The other plot twist I really hated is the supposed true identity of Nagito’s killer. Nagito’s Rube Goldberg machine that he created to commit suicide ended up functioning perfectly, leading to his death. However, the conclusion that is eventually reached is that Nagito, who mutilated himself, intentionally placed the poisoned fire grenade so that another student would unwittingly throw it towards him, and died due to the giant spear which he intentionally impales himself with, did not commit suicide and that the person who threw the poisoned fire grenade towards him is the real killer. This is honestly just such obvious bullshit. The least that the writers could have done would be to try to paint this as Monokuma being an unreliable judge and dishonestly deeming Nagito’s death as not being a suicide, but that is not the case as the students agree with Monokuma’s perspective as well. This wrinkle in the case ruined the whole trial for me and made me further dissatisfied with the overall quality of this game.
I took issue with a couple of the trial solutions in DR1, but in DR2 I feel like many more solutions were unintuitive, or in this case, just incorrect. In Chapter 4 one of the non-stop debate sections includes the claims “We headed for Grape Tower before 7:00 a.m., I am certain” and “The killer did some tamperin’. They prolly messed with the clock inside Nekomaru’s chest.” Both of these claims are simply incorrect. Because the hallway clocks had been tampered with, the students actually headed for grape tower at 9:00 instead of 7:00. The second claim is also false because Nekomaru’s radio clock could not be manually adjusted. The player’s truth bullets contain “Wall Clock” and “Radio Clock”, which should be able to disprove both claims. You are also given the means to determine that the time on the clocks have been manually pushed backwards by this point in the trial. However, shooting “before 7:00 a.m.” with “Wall Clock” is not an accepted answer, even though it should be. This is a factual error made in the writing, and a pretty easy one to notice at that. This solution, as well as others that I was less than satisfied with, give the impression that the answers were not thought about all that hard.
The final chapter was the worst section of the game for me, it felt like the whole story was crumbling apart. The reveal that everything took place in a computer simulation, Monokuma was still being controlled by Junko (even though she died in the previous game), and the countdown that had been counting down for the whole game was entirely unrelated to anything at all, are all terrible twists. Even aside from these examples, the ending felt especially poorly written, as many things just don’t make sense. Like, why was Junko able to make an AI version of herself that was even more advanced than the AI “Alter Ego” that the Ultimate Programmer made? Why was the Ultimate Impostor disguised as Byakuya and what was he alluding to in the first chapter about his past? And something that really frustrated me was how the lack of physical growth in the students bodies was used as evidence supporting the idea that they were all inside of a computer simulation, since their simulated bodies could be based on their appearance when they first entered Hope’s Peak Academy, before the last couple years of their memory were wiped. The reason why I think using this as evidence is stupid is because if that is the case, why didn’t the students from DR1 notice physical changes in their bodies when they woke up with the last couple years of their memories erased? The writers are ignoring details when convenient, which can flippantly invalidate any observations you might make. Trying to solve things on your own and making theories is one of the most fun parts of Danganronpa, and it sucks that the player is being punished for doing so here due to a lack of consistency on the game’s end.
I am really sad that I didn’t like this game more. I was obsessed with DR1 while I was playing it, but I found it difficult to even finish DR2. The essence of the first game is still here, the characters are very colorful and I did end up liking a few of them a lot, and playing detective during the investigations is still a lot of fun, but it just feels like it wasn’t executed nearly as well as it was in DR1. DR2 also suffers from being a sequel, as it is expected to answer the unanswered mysteries leftover from DR1, which it was unable to give satisfying answers to. After the unsatisfying experience that is Danganronpa 2, I’m not even sure if I want to play the last game in the trilogy.
Aunque me acuerdo poco ya del giro argumental del final, si me gustó el hecho de que fuera realmente una continuación en el mundo post-apocaliptico despues del 1 y que lo hayan integrado y discimulado durante el juego para hacerlo mejor. También me gusta como desde el principio simplemente botan lo de la amnesia, para asegurarse de que el giro no es el mismo otra vez. Lo que mas me gusta es como mejoraron la experiencia de la exploracion en las islas, lo de caminar para ganar niveles y la parte de hacerse amigo de los personajes en general. Aunque creo que igual me fue bien mas que todo a que aprendi a como manejarlo en el Danganronpa 1.
the weakest in the franchise, first half is mid as fuck and outside of nagito, chiaki, ibuki and fuyuhiko the cast is either really boring or really bad (mikan and teruteru both fighting to be the worst characters in the franchise)