I have a particular fondness for Dweller's Empty Path. I tend to be charmed by games that make no practice in complex story telling or gameplay mechanics, but serve as a vessel for a really specific emotion the dev is trying to portray.

For me - the music sounded just the way it should have, the characters said all the right things, the aesthetics were very pleasant, and the short playtime helped me absorb the content appropriately. It doesn't excel at anything other than the emotion it dedicates itself to, and it's better for it.

I love the melancholy and loneliness of DEP and I think Tuyoki's modesty as a creator elevates the game's sincerity.

and i thought ddlc was obnoxious. wonderful everyday is an abysmally written shock factor focused cheese-fest that thinks itself smarter than what its philosophical sludge mouthpieced through cartoonish characters genuinely is. wrap all that up with some irony poisoning, pretentious characters, too much self awareness, and pure honest-to-god ego-stroking... and you have this visual novel. sit through four hours of trope jokes and time wasting to sit through another four of chunibyo philosophy and contrivances. dialogue that could be said in three messages are spent on thirty. the game actually thinks you've invested in its characters. if it's supposed to get better, eight hours is a poor cost of admission and i won't spend another minute.

what a frustrating read.

To be honest with you, writing this review has been a particular challenge for me. Every writer, reviewer, or critic has their own unique hang-ups
when it comes to writing what they do. For me, it's always been hard to review a game I didn't like. I always feel like I'll end up too candid, whiney, or angry. I wanna be fair, yet opinionated. I want my words to be objective, but also personal. I strive for a balance. Somehow, though, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc completely counteracts my approach. Everything about it has me completely stumped on how to attempt talking about it non-candidly. I've considered doing something oddly meta and review my experience reviewing the game, I've considered being totally unprofessional and compromising my fairness in favor of bias, I've even considered just not reviewing it at all! But... much like my experience with the game itself, I'm gonna trudge through to the end, just for the sake of it. Just to fuckin' see it through.

With that all being said, Danganronpa is probably one of the worst games I've ever played. It isn't my least favorite game or even a game I TRULY hate. To speak about one of THOSE games would be really easy for me. There's usually not a lot of nice things to say, and when there is, it's really vapid. I liked some of Danganronpa. Hell, I even loved some of it. This isn't a game completely devoid of any positive attributes for me- it's partly why I'm so mixed and confused by my response to it. For what it's worth, Danganronpa is exactly the kind of game I might've really loved! A character driven visual novel with an intriguing premise that aims to mix together unique game mechanics to create a deep and engrossing experience sounds fantastic! However, despite the game's multiple egregious sins, its lack of cohesion and strange priorities for engagement is probably what dictates my attitude against it. Again, it's hard to say considering how stumped it's made me feel.

I won't be able to go over everything I disliked about the game, (since it would be the longest review ever posted on backloggd) so I think it would be a better idea to just describe what I did like- inversely to what I didn't. Apologies if that makes it seem like I'm not being thorough or honest, but I can only think about Danganronpa so much before I go crazy.

-Finding Monokuma coins gave me dopamine.

-The overall structure of the game.
Setting up the context for the murder, breaking with time to bond with characters, investigating the murder itself, and solving the case during a class trial allows the game to flow really well. It's linear, but the game, despite my expectations, isn't attempting something subversive or deep. It's presenting something predictable, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It's perfectly suitable for the game and can even lead to some good surprise breaks in the formula. I came to appreciate the structure once playing the games sequels, which do an equally good job maintaining flow.

-Full of Potential
Despite how I felt about Danganronpa, I can't deny it had its fits of innovative, interesting, and genuinely great moments. Whether it be certain story beats, aspects of its gameplay, or parts of its presentation, there were times were I was captured by its direction. Within these moments were ideas presented loaded with potential, but floundered execution. Oddly enough, I appreciated it nonetheless. I tend to see games as the parts to a sum, and I try to critique fairly based on that. You might think "good ideas done poorly" would be a negative point against the game, (and you'd usually be right) but in this specific instance, the untapped potential interested me. I'm not trying to hide the fact I disliked this game, but even so, I continued on to the sequels to see this potential through- and I think that says something.

-Great Music (with a catch)
This game was composed by Masafumi Takada, a talented and legendary composer who did work for No More Heroes, Killer7, and Kid Icarus: Uprising. His fantastic work on those games can't be understated- his compositions had an enormous hand in making those games some of my most memorable experiences of all time. Here's the thing though, he can only be as great as he can be... under the right direction. NMH, K7, and KI:U are directorial masterpieces- extending to its utilization of its composers. Takada continues to offer some great music here, specifically for the main theme and all the class trial tracks, but other than that... the music can come off as quite unmemorable. I believe this to be a sad result of the game's direction and cohesion issues. Every aspect of a Visual Novel like this needs to be communicated not only to the player, but to the staff as well. If the written mystery scenario calls for blood on the ground, the drawn scenario should absolutely have blood on the ground (just an example). Danganronpa is a game in which every piece of evidence is extremely pertinent- no stone can be unturned. This extends to the games aesthetic tone, which has huge ramifications on the writing and impression given to the player. Because this game takes the form of a Visual Novel, music implementation and sound design play also play an important role in player feedback. When, where, how, and why songs appear in the game is extremely important to the overall experience and can't go underthought in a game like this. Unfortunately, the game forgoes this necessity and somewhat brainlessly throws its tracks around. This is quite a shame, frankly. Even if I would describe most of the tracks as unmemorable, they're still well made and convey specific moods and tones exceptionally well. I genuinely think my distaste for the soundtrack is half a musical issue and half an implementation issue. I'm definitely picky on game music, though, and this is all subjective anyway, so perhaps this could be viewed as a nitpick- you be the judge.

-Moments of Good Character Writing
This game is strange. I'm giving it 1.5 stars, yet here I am refusing to discuss spoilers in order to preserve the experience for anyone. You'd think my reaction to it would illicit a disregard for any integrity the game could be presenting- but here's the thing. I think there're things in here that are worth experiencing for yourself, and they all relate to the characters. Danganronpa, while being completely character driven, is NOT the kind of game where you're meant to find all of them interesting. They are NOT all well written; some are meant to offer interesting dynamics for the protag, some are meant to exclusively service the story or mystery- some are just meant to be used for gags. When discussing this game, the conversation will always loop around to the characters. What you enjoy is what you choose take out of them. It's different for everyone. Some people like the ambiguity of the MC's purpose, some like the progression of Kyoko's storyline, some just like the dynamics presented from different character pairings- and it's hard to say that's all "bad" just because I didn't like it. In a way, I think giving the game points based on the progression of your favorite character is a bit unfair, and in the same way, docking off points based on character moments you didn't care for is equally as unfair. I could talk about how much I love Chihiro's story, how compelling I found the 2nd case, how appealing I found characters like Mondo or Byakuya, how I thought the MC made me disconnect with the overall experience due to his personality and rationalizations, how I didn't care for the overall moral or themes due it being told through the conduit of characters I didn't care for- but it all wouldn't really matter. It isn't fair to detail MY favorite parts of the game as what's making it "good", because in the end, that's absolute bias. Even if I do think there are moments of compelling character writing, you might completely disagree, and that's really where Danganronpa starts to crumble.

As a game, Danganronpa has a lot going on, inside and out. If you noticed, every compliment I handed to it was mitigated by an unavoidable insult. They were almost all backhanded compliments, and really, I didn't do that on purpose. I could take the time to rip apart its useless genre mixing game design. I could complain about the lack of reason for its gameplay existing in the state it does. I could talk about the mixed quality of voice acting, the strange art direction issues, the blatant Atlus copy-pasting, the specifics in the lack of communication between all roles on the team, the horrible pacing, the juxtapositions in tone, it's strange treatment of dark themes- the list goes on and on. Unfortunately, all of that would be fruitless. Discussion of this game is and forever will be tied exclusively to your preferences. The way a game treats you is usually how you should treat it... but this game treated me like shit, and it somehow doesn't feel right to treat the game the same way back. It doesn't help a format like this doesn't support the kind of review I'd LOVE to give the game, of course, so maybe one day I'll consider writing an entire script for it. As of now, though, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc has positioned itself in my brain as the Ultimate Mixed Bag. As of right now, there's no way I could describe how it makes me feel properly, and perhaps that frustrates me, but I'm comfortable pinning that on the games mitigating circumstances.

writing on the 2 of 4 eps that are out so far: i like this a whole lot! direction is just excellent throughout, often frightening and depressing but uniquely sly at times too. a v specific kind of ex-cult christian (or just christian, you COULD take the church in this as a christian church if you wanted) menhera in this; the way religious indoctrination psychologically constricts children, whose trauma then gets internally contextualized through the mythology. also the early 2000s visual influences--drawing from more than just games obviously but love the lines that can be drawn btwn the 3d in this and stuff like sengoku turb or okage or stretch panic--just makes me feel like this is a spiritual successor to hypnospace outlaw in a certain kind of sense that im not gonna elaborate on. cannot wait to see how the next 2 episodes are handled.