In Spike Chunsoft's visual novel-like Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, you assume the role of a new student at Hope's Peak Academy, where along with your fellow new classmates, you are forced into a game where the only way to win and leave the school that has become your prison is to kill one of your peers and get away with it. There are so many books, movies and other video games that this elevator pitch could allude to that it's not even worth it to try and write them all down, but what should be taken away from this incredibly over-simplified synopsis is that Danganronpa manages to borrow enough elements from enough places - and put it's own touch on them - to create a worthwhile experience, even if it stumbles more often than it should.
To further expand on the setting and scenario, you play as Makoto Naegi, a seemingly normal and all-around unremarkable teenager who has been invited to an incredibly prestigious school made specifically for the spectacular and gifted. Here, every student enrolled is the best - or "ultimate" - at something, from baseball, swimming and martial arts, to programming, writing and gambling. Makoto has himself won a raffle, and become the "Ultimate Lucky Student", but on his first day, he loses consciousnesses shortly after arriving and wakes up with his other confused classmates as they are told - by a talking robotic teddy bear named Monokuma, no less - that they will live out the rest of their lives trapped inside the school with no hope of rescue. However, if one of them were to murder another, and subsequently get away with it, they would get to escape, while the rest of the class who had been fooled will be put to death.
From here, the gameplay can be broken down into three groups, with the first two playing very differently than the third. When not involved in any important plot points or dialogue, you have the option of wandering the school in first person and spending "Free Time" with Makoto's classmates in a system that is akin to the Social Links of the Persona series, although unfortunately thin. When the inevitable happens, however, and a murder occurs, you are tasked with inspecting the crime scene, taking testimonies from your peers and accruing evidence in the form of "Truth Bullets" in the "Investigation" phase for use in the third section, the "Class Trials". It is here that the most fun aspects of the game are found, as well as the most frustrating.
Class Trials are long-form discussions and debates over the particulars of the case at hand through a variety of mini-games and multiple choice questions. The most common of these are the Non-Stop Debates, where characters converse over a particular topic and it is up to you to use your previously collected bullets to find contradictions in what is being said and expose them. Unfortunately, there are other games involved in the trials, including Hangman's Gambit, a bad, albeit mercifully short game of Hangman where you are tasked with spelling out a word that is pertinent to the case. As well, there is also a clunky rhythm game played "against" other students when they don't want to listen to what you're saying that is never fun any time you are forced to partake in it. Even the Non-Stop Debates aren't without their flaws, the mechanics of actually engaging in the game are so archaic and unnecessarily convoluted that it's not hard to find yourself not doing what you wanted to, and having to cycle all the way back around again, as there is seemingly no way to go backwards through a series of statements.
And finally, there is the most heart breaking disappointment of them all, the comic book "Closing Argument" finales. In these, Makoto gives a run-down of the sequence of events that makes up the murder, and this is presented as panels in a comic book (done manga style, right to left) where you must fill in the blanks from a collection of images at the bottom of the screen. However, there are multiple problems to be had here, starting with the lack of dialogue or context in the comic book, making it hard to tell what is precisely happening in each panel. This is compounded by the images you have to choose from to fill in the blanks being very small and hard to make out what they will look like when they are blown up to their proper size. Finally, the most annoying thing about these images is that there are often answers that look like the same thing, yet each represent two similar but different actions. One example involves having to demonstrate that someone hid in a locker, witnessed an attack, and then exited the locker at a later time, and to show this you are given two basically identical images of that character next to an open locker. Nothing about either clearly states one is entering and one is exiting, however there is only one solution, and if the images are mixed up, you will be penalized. As a huge fan of comics books as a storytelling medium, I was so prepared to like these sections, and was so, so disappointed in the end result.
The Closing Argument parts - as well as some of the Non-Stop Debates - exhibit what is more or less the biggest potential sticking point of Danganronpa, learning the language of the game. When you're trying to say something in a language that is not your first, you kind of have to pre-load the sentence in your head before you say it (at least if you are not totally fluent in said language). With Danganronpa, similar to the Ace Attorney games that are one of the more obvious inspirations, there is a feeling of trying to figure out what the game wants of you to prove in terms of it's logic. Sometimes, what you think proves a point is not what the game thinks proves a point, and this can really take the wind out you if you've already been slogging through the other less than satisfactory elements of the trials. Ultimately, however, the Class Trials end up being more fun then they are not, which is good considering they are the meat of the actual interactive content.
One other major criticism of the game is it's closure in a writing sense, both in terms of it's character arcs, as well as it's overall narrative. As I mentioned before, the free time spent with characters is a way to get to know them better (as well as learn new skills to be used in the trials), but they rarely end up giving you a much better insight into the person outside of what you'll already get over the course of the story. For all of the quirky and unique characters of the cast, it's a shame that more is not made of getting to know about them and their lives before coming to the school. As well, the game has an ambiguous, seemingly unfinished ending that some are sure to admire which I just didn't find satisfactory. It becomes clear throughout the game that all is not as it seems, and that something has happened to cause this game to take place, but you really don't get much of an idea of what that is, or why any of this is going on. After the game cuts to black and follows with credits, I kept waiting for some Marvel movie-esque mid-credits or post-credits explanation, but was rewarded only with more questions.
Regarding the audio, the game's voice acting ranges from okay to downright awful, including the reveal of a major antagonist late in the game who loses a lot of credibility as far as being threatening by having the worst voice performance in the game. As well, only the trials are fully voiced, with the rest of the game getting one word answers or clipped sentences spoken aloud, where the written dialogue must cover most of the burden of telling the story. The music, however, is pretty much excellent from top to bottom, but a lack of total tracks can cause one song to play for ten, fifteen, even as long as twenty minutes straight, which can become a little grating.
There are a lot of problems with Danganronpa, and how it goes about telling the story that it does, but at the end of the day, these gripes are worth it to see where this crazy ride goes next. There really is something to be said for a game that is just so bonkers in almost every way that you can't stop going forward, just to see what happens next. Even though you can see where a lot of the ideas and influences come from, ranging from Ace Attorney to Zero Escape, enough of a new spin is put on these concepts to let it stand on it's own and not be defined by them.