I wanna say a lot of things but I think I’m gonna save them for when I come back to 100% this game. Needless to say though this is the first single player game I have finished in lord knows how long now.


(UPDATED REVIEW FOR 100%. MAJOR SPOILERS FOR BASE GAME + HIDDEN MODE AFTER GAME COMPLETION AHEAD). I have since 100%’d this game on April 17th 2024. Needless to say this is one of my new favorite games. First playthrough I did was on the hardest difficulty going in 97% blind completely unaware of almost anything. All the characters were interesting in their own ways, some i started off hating, others I liked through out the whole game, and the outliers that I hated at the beginning but ended up NOT hating as I went on with the 100% (filling out the report cards). I’ll start off by listing off each character and if I liked them right off the bat.


Makoto: (liked) he was a very, interesting? main character. He seemed too oblivious to what was going on throughout the whole game. (given that we find out at the end of the game he’s considered “the ultimate hope” or whatever I guess it kinda makes sense he was delusional to the “despair” going on around him.)


Kyoko: (liked) kyoko tends to keep a very calm and reserved tone throughout the whole game. With her starting out as “the ultimate ???” It leaves what her skill is up in the air. (even though it’s kind of obvious and I even accidentally guessed it the very second I saw her help me, as a joke.) So there is a mystery behind what could she be the ultimate of… spoiler alert!!! It’s the “ultimate detective.” Her ultimate isn’t the only mystery, she’s also super insecure of the scars on her hands which is why she wears gloves. (I believe this is touched on when you do her report card.) Later on in the game during the last class trial she is backed into a corner and forced to show her scars to everyone. Ok now I’ll backtrack a bit and talk about her “cold demeanor”. She does open up to you as the game goes on and even shows a bit of romantic interest, showing that is the fact she doesn’t really cooperate with anyone except makoto. Her whole story and reason for even being there in the first place is to look for her father which is also the headmaster of hopes peak. I like how that despite her strong stone face during the early game, her will starts to break a bit and gets driven a bit by emotion in the later half of the game, (granted she does regain composure back quickly) showing that she does have some emotions/gets emotional like everyone else. A character that is both strong and has weaknesses always adds a lot to the story, even if it’s subtle. Which is pretty cool because I believe she has the most character development out of everyone there!


Monokuma: (liked) Who doesn’t love monokuma? If you don’t like monokuma you’ll probably hate the whole game it’s just that simple. From goofy ass dialogue, to sly comments about hard on’s + his witty nature and ability to break the forth wall, you almost CANT hate monokuma. Genuinely one of my favorite antagonists truly.


Chihiro: (ultimate programmer) (loved) One of the 2 favorite characters in this game. Despite always talking about being super weak and not able to help as much, “she” arguably did the most with the help of “alter ego” “her” computer AI system. Notice how I put quotation marks on the pronouns? That’s because chihiro is a boy just cross dressing and pretending to be a girl because of his insecurities involving weakness (he also touches on this at the end of one of the school mode endings. Where he makes you touch his chest to feel not a single trace of girlhood there). I love this character and the writing and dialogue he has. I wish he didn’t die the way he did but it was crucial to the continuation of the story so I can’t be mad.


Asahina: (liked) I really really like hina! She’s like this optimistic bubble that almost can’t ever be popped. Even in her report cards she’s overly optimistic (except one where she questions her girlhood cause she never dated someone?). She just brings nothing but joy whenever she’s on screen, it’s really hard to hate her as a character. My only issue with her is that despite her being “the ultimate swimming pro” they almost never touch on that at all. She obviously has brief dialogue options of that sort. But compared to the others she almost never mentions that at all, which is just so strange to me.


Sakura: (liked) The misunderstood women. Or you could call her “the ogre imposter”. Either one works but in this case I’ll keep referring to her as the misunderstood women because that’s what she is, misunderstood. Despite being gigantic and strong, doing her report card and the school mode dialogue options show she’s just like any other women. Being “the ultimate martial artist” must be rough for someone like her who just wants to be both strong and a women. During the chapter in which her death and trial takes place it’s unknown at the time that she had taken her own life due to being mistreated after coming out as the imposter and helping “monokuma”. This in turn once found out destroyed hina so much that she was willing to throw everyone off track by saying she killed her. Because of the way we treated sakura when we found out she was working with “monokuma”. I feel like Sakura as a character isn’t respected enough for her efforts to help out despite being “monokuma’s” buddy.


Sayaka: (ultimate pop sensation) (disliked) I’m not sure if I’m gonna get grilled for this one but…. I didn’t like Sayaka. Her “wannabe” psychic abilities and boring ultimate added on top of her using her girl charm to bum makoto down into a senseless nothing of just mindlessly agreeing with her makes her just not enjoyable in the slightest. It also doesn’t help at all that she LITERALLY dies at the very beginning. As for her report card it was just more of the same boring makoto mind games. Overall not the greatest character, arguably the weakest both writing and progression wise.


Celeste: (loved) here’s number 2/2 of my favorite characters. “The queen of liars”, “the ultimate gambler”, or her real identity, “taeko yasuhiro”. She was a very fun character and she was the mastermind behind hifumis demise (yippeee). Not only do I really like her design I also love how she was written and portrayed. She was willing to give up anything and everything for her goal, nothing but 10 million dollars and a grand dream of a European castle where she will dress up male servants as vampires… can’t help but respect it?!


Mondo: (liked) I actually really liked his character. He was portrayed as a tough guy, but in reality he was scared just like everyone else. Constantly swearing to keep up a “strong” demeanor. Given the title “ultimate biker gang leader”, he made reference during school mode of being afraid to leave the school because he felt like his life was halted due to dedicating so much of it to the biker gang. As sad as I am for him killing poor chihiro, I can’t actually hate him as a character because he was written so well.


Kiyotaka: (ultimate moral compass) (???) mondo’s best buddy there after the sauna incident. I didn’t really pay too much attention to him as a character because he came off as uninteresting and didn’t add much to the game even following his death. I feel like they could’ve done more with him and did a better job with the representation of his ultimate.


Leon (ultimate baseball star) (???) I’m not even gonna lie he died so fast and I really don’t remember much from his report card nor school ending so I really can’t say too too much about him as a character. Do I hate him? No. Do I like him? I don’t know. He’s very up in the air for me. I will say he had the most boring class trial in the game.


Hifumi: (ultimate fanfic creator) (disliked) if you played the game you’ll know why. Thank you Celeste.


Byakuya: (ultimate affluent progeny) (liked) I feel like I both liked and disliked him but I respect him so much I can’t actually dislike him. Both his school mode ending and report card make you lean towards disliking him. As for how I see him, he adds a lot to the class trials same as kyoko. Despite being an ass sometimes he has a point a lot of the time and it can also end up just being funny. Despite feeling like he adds a lot to the game I can’t find too much to talk about him. Just know he’s a good character if you put aside personal bias.


Toko: (disliked/liked) I started off the game severely disliking her. She was pressed heavily into that corner for a reason though. But, both her report card and her school mode ending both added so much to her character that I actually ended up feeling bad for her and ended up seeing her in a whole new light. Being the “ultimate writing prodigy”, she didn’t write her stories from her personal experiences. Instead she wrote them based on her own delusions. She makes this very clear as you’re doing her report card and school mode ending where she constantly mentions you disrupting her delusions. Alongside her first ultimate, she is also the “ultimate murderous fiend”. Meaning she has a split personality disorder that only activates when she either passes out, or sneezes?! I found it pretty cool how her murderous side fell enough in love with byakuya to the point that she would end up no longer be a murderer. Other than that I don’t have much to say about her.


Yasuhiro: (???) Dumb luck does exist and this guy is living proof of it. The fact he managed to make it to the end of the game is an absolute miracle to me. Being the “ultimate clairvoyant”, he added like nothing except for some funny dialogue and some of the dumbest questions ever in the class trials. I don’t hate him though I just don’t prefer him to everyone else there. He’s just ok and funny. I do like the ultimate representation though, it was very much a big part of his personality!


Junko/Mukuro: (???) I’m gonna put these 2 together but split my opinions on them.

Mukuro: (???) being the older twin of the despair sisters + being the “ultimate soldier” she isn’t touched on at all on a personal level. Playing through the school mode and doing junko’s report card during that, her personality bleeds through a lot and is unlike what junko is perceived as junko. even touches on this at the end of the game saying something around the lines of “she couldn’t even play the role of me right” when justifying murdering her sister. I can’t say I like or dislike mukuro because I would probably like her if she was touched on more.

Junko: (???) being the younger twin sister of the despair sisters + being the “ultimate fashionista”. She ended up being the monokuma of the game which in turn means Sakura was working for junko (maybe unintentionally). During the final class trial she showed multiple personalities, which is another instance of a split personality disorder. She was super obsessed with despair to the point where she willingly sacrificed her sister without any shred of guilt. Another character that wasn’t touched on personally so I can’t form a good personal opinion on them. I assume I wouldn’t like her that much though even if they did touch up on her more.


Closing notes: this game was one of the most fun I’ve had playing a single player/story game in a good while. This would probably be a 5/5 if it had replayability but given the nature of the game it’s just not possible to replay it and achieve the same enjoyment you get on your first playthrough. I do highly recommend this game even if it’s one of those games where the fanbase might scare you off, I went into it with 0 knowledge of it and what goes on in the fanbase and had a good time.

(Another thing I’d like to mention. If any point of this seems rushed or there might be missing information or just not flushed out, thats because this was all written in a couple days at like 3 to 4am so apologies lol).