Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc Anniversary Edition

Genre: Graphic Adventure / Visual Novel

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the physical-only bundle Danganronpa Decadence, along with Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair Anniversary Edition, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony Anniversary Edition, and Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp.)

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (from here on for the sake of simplicity simply referred to as Danganronpa 1) is the first game in the Danganronpa franchise, having originally been released on PlayStation Portable in 2010, though the game’s first Western release seems to have been on the PlayStation Vita in 2014. In the time since that release, the game has appeared on numerous platforms, and in multiple bundles, though its release on Nintendo Switch in 2021 as a Definitive Edition marks the first time the game has been brought to a Nintendo platform.

This game combines elements of Graphic Adventure and Visual Novel games, with the player taking the role of one of a group of students starting their school year at an ultra-elite high school, only to find they have apparently been kidnapped and brought to a nightmarish version of that school where they are held prisoner, taunted by a sadistic animatronic bear named Monokuma who claims to be their new “headmaster”, and tortured with the prospect of never leaving, as well as with images of loved ones in the outside world seemingly killed. There appears to be only one way out – Monokuma tells the students that any of them who kills one of their peers without getting caught by the group will “graduate” back to the outside world.

With this plot setup, you can see multiple influences at work here. A story focused on a group of schoolkids forced to murder each other to win their freedom harkens to the beloved cult film Battle Royale, and more modern derivatives like The Hunger Games. The group dynamics and atmosphere of suspicion seems inspired by the classic game Werewolf AKA Mafia, or its popular recent successor, Among Us. And the game’s detective work and courtroom scenes to determine who’s guilty of murder frequently resembles the Ace Attorney franchise. Suffice it to say, I believe that all of these comparisons are apt, yet they don’t quite capture a lot of the unique elements and crazy plot twists present in Danganronpa 1.

One of the unique elements setting this game apart is its tonally dissonant presentation. Despite this game’s themes of death and despair, its presentation is frequently jovial and whimsical, with Monokuma himself being cartoonish both in mannerisms and in his over-the-top voice. When this character isn’t present, the game’s tone and style tends to resemble something more akin to the trendy anime-style sound and visuals of something like the Persona franchise. This is all… definitely a choice… and it’s a choice that some players will love and others will hate.

On a technical level, this game combines 3D and 2D elements in a way that seems odd, but which can perhaps be dismissed as stylistically intentional. Characters all have highly-detailed anime-style portraits, and this is how they’re represented when you see them in the game’s simple but colorful 3D locales… which is to say that they all have the appearance of cardboard standees. Again, it’s visually-interesting, but it’s not going to be for everyone.

The gameplay itself has long stretches of story where players are listening to discussions between the game’s characters, as you’d expect from a Visual Novel. Despite the lack of interaction here, these elements are well-done, with interesting story and characters full of fun and often unexpected plot twists. There’s also a “dating game”-style relationship system here, though the game doesn’t really indicate why this is important outside of gaining skills to use in its courtroom sections.

These story bits are interspersed with freely wandering around the game’s enclosed bizarro-world school environment, and often this is what you’ll be doing after a murder has been committed and you’re searching for clues. This part of the game has its positive and negative elements – it’s great to get the feeling like you’re tracking down all the pieces to a puzzle you need to solve, but it can be frustrating when the game clearly expects you to go somewhere or do something, but doesn’t make it clear exactly what that is. Also, the movement controls for navigating the environment are just terrible.

At one point, I was particularly frustrated when the game refused to continue until I talked to a character a second time, despite giving no indication that they had more to tell me, and with every other character simply repeating their lines when I spoke to them again, forcing me to sit through whatever long diatribe they had just splurged out to me.

Finally, you have the aforementioned courtroom sections, when the game feels you’ve gathered enough evidence and must use it to piece together how the latest murder happened and who the culprit is. Mostly this plays out like an Ace Attorney-style search for contradictions in the statements characters make, but Danganronpa 1 piles on multiple tedious minigames on top of this, literally making players shoot away contradicting statements with “truth bullets” or steamrolling over a liar’s objections in a simple music-rhythm game (which is frustratingly not in time with the actual music). If they just stuck with the “find the contradiction” stuff, this would be great, but all these additional elements seem unnecessary and junk up the gameplay to make it far more complicated and tedious than it needs to be.

Quite simply, Danganronpa 1 is a mess of various elements, some that work extremely well, some that work poorly, and some that seem to clash with others. The presentation is all over the place in a way that seems bizarre, the story and characters are fantastic but undermined by some odd moments of tonal dissonance, and the Visual Novel and Graphic Adventure gameplay are superb but pile on a bunch of other gameplay mechanics that are not only unnecessary, they’re tedious and overly-complicated. In the end, I still think this game’s better qualities shine through, but the bizarre mix of elements here will not be for everyone.

tl;dr – Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is a game with Visual Novel and Graphic Adventure elements where players find themselves among a group of high school students who have apparently been kidnapped and told their only way to escape is to kill each other. The game’s story and characters are mostly excellent, with lots of unexpected plot twists, and the core Visual Novel and mystery-solving gameplay is great. However, these great qualities are overloaded with lots of other odd mechanics and weird tonally-dissonant elements that, while distinct, are often to the game’s detriment. Overall I think the good still far outweighs the bad, but it all results in a package that won’t be for everyone.

Grade: B

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