Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
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Dev: Spike Chunsoft
Pub: NIS America Release Date: 01/09/2015 Format: PS Vita |
7/10
Ben Hughes @potatoes351 |
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The PS Vita has very little going for it these days, after not only having very few worthwhile games being released for it in its relatively short lifespan, but now Sony has confirmed that they will no longer be supporting the Vita and instead focus all their efforts towards the PS4 and beyond.
But don't despair (see what I did there), for one of the best reasons to own a Vita is back for its latest outing into a twisted world of hope, despair and murderous robotic bear dolls. A description like that can only mean one thing, Danganronpa is back...but it looks a little different this time round.
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair are two of the Vita's finest games. Part Japanese anime, part detective game, part high school sim; the Danganronpa series has so far been a reason to own a Vita standing alongside games such as Persona 4 Golden and Tearaway, proving that the neglected system still has some knockout titles.
This time though, Danganronpa is adopting a completely different look, a third person shooter. As a fan of the series I have to say I was a little surprised when I first saw the reveal trailer and wondered how on earth Danganronpa could ever be something other than a detective/high school sim. But once I started playing Ultra despair Girls I realised something crucial, Danganronpa is one of the few games I would say is not restricted to genre, instead it could probably tackle just about any genre it wanted due to the sheer insanity, unpredictability and outlandish style of it's story.
This time round we are thrust into the shoes of Komaru Naegi. Sound familiar right? No, she is not an ultimate, she does not attend Hope's Peak Academy, she was not on Jabberwock Island...so why so familiar for just an average, normal girl? Well she is the sister of the Ultimate Lucky Student/Ultimate Hope Makoto Naegi from Trigger Happy Havoc. Taking place shortly after the events of Trigger Happy Havoc, Komaru has been living in captivity for the last year and a half with no contact with any other human beings and no way to know what is going on in the outside world. That is until a Monokuma breaks into her room and she is saved by the Ultimate Affluent Progeny, Byakuya Togomi. After helping her escape and arming her with a hacking gun that can disable Monokuma's she runs into Ultimate Writing Prodigy, Toko Fukawa and her serial killer alter ego Genocide Jack.
Together the duo must regroup with Byakuya and escape the city, easier said than done however due to Monokuma's targeting and killing all adults, an army of children wearing Monokuma helmets who hinder your progress and a small band of children who call themselves the Warriors of Hope who claim to be behind the attacks on the city.
Will they find Byakuya, will Future Foundation step in to stop the attacks on the city, who are the Warriors of Hope, why are there Monokuma's everywhere and most importantly, will Komaru and Toko ever get along? Just a normal day in the world of Danganronpa.
But don't despair (see what I did there), for one of the best reasons to own a Vita is back for its latest outing into a twisted world of hope, despair and murderous robotic bear dolls. A description like that can only mean one thing, Danganronpa is back...but it looks a little different this time round.
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair are two of the Vita's finest games. Part Japanese anime, part detective game, part high school sim; the Danganronpa series has so far been a reason to own a Vita standing alongside games such as Persona 4 Golden and Tearaway, proving that the neglected system still has some knockout titles.
This time though, Danganronpa is adopting a completely different look, a third person shooter. As a fan of the series I have to say I was a little surprised when I first saw the reveal trailer and wondered how on earth Danganronpa could ever be something other than a detective/high school sim. But once I started playing Ultra despair Girls I realised something crucial, Danganronpa is one of the few games I would say is not restricted to genre, instead it could probably tackle just about any genre it wanted due to the sheer insanity, unpredictability and outlandish style of it's story.
This time round we are thrust into the shoes of Komaru Naegi. Sound familiar right? No, she is not an ultimate, she does not attend Hope's Peak Academy, she was not on Jabberwock Island...so why so familiar for just an average, normal girl? Well she is the sister of the Ultimate Lucky Student/Ultimate Hope Makoto Naegi from Trigger Happy Havoc. Taking place shortly after the events of Trigger Happy Havoc, Komaru has been living in captivity for the last year and a half with no contact with any other human beings and no way to know what is going on in the outside world. That is until a Monokuma breaks into her room and she is saved by the Ultimate Affluent Progeny, Byakuya Togomi. After helping her escape and arming her with a hacking gun that can disable Monokuma's she runs into Ultimate Writing Prodigy, Toko Fukawa and her serial killer alter ego Genocide Jack.
Together the duo must regroup with Byakuya and escape the city, easier said than done however due to Monokuma's targeting and killing all adults, an army of children wearing Monokuma helmets who hinder your progress and a small band of children who call themselves the Warriors of Hope who claim to be behind the attacks on the city.
Will they find Byakuya, will Future Foundation step in to stop the attacks on the city, who are the Warriors of Hope, why are there Monokuma's everywhere and most importantly, will Komaru and Toko ever get along? Just a normal day in the world of Danganronpa.
Ultra Despair Girls' story is devilishly clever, as expected from a Danganronpa game. The most important thing to realise is that it gives us an idea of what is happening outside of Hope's Peak, outside of the killing games conducted by Junko Enoshima and the Remnants of Despair and an insight into a world being torn apart by despair, set into motion by the events of Trigger Happy Havoc. We have previously only heard about what's happening outside through small snippets of dialogue in the late stages of Trigger Happy Havoc and Goodbye Despair, but now we are able to see for ourselves exactly what is happening to the world that is killing itself.
It also presents the player with a unique concept involving a war between adults and children. Producing interesting and incredibly disturbing truths about what each would to to defend themselves against the other. Ultra Despair Girls has the most unsettling and mature narrative in a Danagnronpa game to date, dealing with topics such as child abuse, genocide, attitudes towards sex and relationships between both adults and children as well as the innocence of war through the eyes of a child. Regularly I found myself questioning PEGI's 16+ rating due to the maturity and taboo nature of some of the subjects Ultra Despair Girls. But we aren't exactly talking about the next Last of Us here, the maturity is often spoiled by some extremely out of place and awkward humour; after all Danganronpa is a light hearted approach to the total annihilation of the human race is it not?
Not to say that all the humour it out of place, but it does feel like they drop in a mood killer sex joke or deal with a topic in an insensitive way on several occasions.
So how dopes Ultra Despair Girls play as a shooter? Well, I'm not even going to sugar coat it, it's pretty below average. But at the same time it's rather unique. Komaru only has access to one gun, a megaphone looking device that fires condensed data waves that can affect mechanical objects in various ways. One gun with eight different kinds of ammo, one for any occasion. Break, Knockback, Dance, Paralyze, Move, Burn, Reveal and Link. For the majority of the game you'll only need to work with Break and Move, but certain enemies require particular ammo types to be destroyed and some puzzles require certain ammo to be used.
You'll encounter various kinds of Monokuma, all of which have different amounts of health and require different tactics to be fought. Though unfortunately it's not until the very late stages of the game that various different types are all present in one skirmish, meaning that for the majority of the game it's just about identifying the best ammo type (usually Break) and mowing down the opposition.
You can also control Genocide Jack for brief period of time, turning the game into a simple hack and slash, best used to whittle down large crowds of powerful Monokuma. Both the hacking gun and Genocide Jack can be upgraded at shops using Monokuma coins, however these shops are so few and far between that it almost feels nonexistant.
You'll regularly encounter puzzle rooms where all Monokuma's must be eliminated without being detected and with particular ammo types. I often find myself questioning the purpose of these rooms besides to teach you how to effectively use the ammo types, though no situations ever arise in the game similar to the ones in these rooms. They are fun additions to the game, but seeing as failure to complete these rooms in the desired fashion has no repercussion on you, it does leave you wondering why on earth they exist in the first place. Some of the riddles and puzzles the game gives to you are also equally pointless. Some of the riddles can still be completed even after getting it wrong several times (such as having a series of boxes with only one of them being the correct one to open) and some of them are too difficult to even know where to begin (such as finding the code to disable the lasers in Towa Tower).
Beyond this third person gameplay however is reading, a hell of a lot of reading. Much like previous Danganronpa games you'll more than likely spend more time reading conversations between characters than you will doing anything else. If you're a returning fan then these sequences should be no issue for you, but newcomers may feel put off by extended conversation sequences, some even reaching to over half an hour in length.
It also presents the player with a unique concept involving a war between adults and children. Producing interesting and incredibly disturbing truths about what each would to to defend themselves against the other. Ultra Despair Girls has the most unsettling and mature narrative in a Danagnronpa game to date, dealing with topics such as child abuse, genocide, attitudes towards sex and relationships between both adults and children as well as the innocence of war through the eyes of a child. Regularly I found myself questioning PEGI's 16+ rating due to the maturity and taboo nature of some of the subjects Ultra Despair Girls. But we aren't exactly talking about the next Last of Us here, the maturity is often spoiled by some extremely out of place and awkward humour; after all Danganronpa is a light hearted approach to the total annihilation of the human race is it not?
Not to say that all the humour it out of place, but it does feel like they drop in a mood killer sex joke or deal with a topic in an insensitive way on several occasions.
So how dopes Ultra Despair Girls play as a shooter? Well, I'm not even going to sugar coat it, it's pretty below average. But at the same time it's rather unique. Komaru only has access to one gun, a megaphone looking device that fires condensed data waves that can affect mechanical objects in various ways. One gun with eight different kinds of ammo, one for any occasion. Break, Knockback, Dance, Paralyze, Move, Burn, Reveal and Link. For the majority of the game you'll only need to work with Break and Move, but certain enemies require particular ammo types to be destroyed and some puzzles require certain ammo to be used.
You'll encounter various kinds of Monokuma, all of which have different amounts of health and require different tactics to be fought. Though unfortunately it's not until the very late stages of the game that various different types are all present in one skirmish, meaning that for the majority of the game it's just about identifying the best ammo type (usually Break) and mowing down the opposition.
You can also control Genocide Jack for brief period of time, turning the game into a simple hack and slash, best used to whittle down large crowds of powerful Monokuma. Both the hacking gun and Genocide Jack can be upgraded at shops using Monokuma coins, however these shops are so few and far between that it almost feels nonexistant.
You'll regularly encounter puzzle rooms where all Monokuma's must be eliminated without being detected and with particular ammo types. I often find myself questioning the purpose of these rooms besides to teach you how to effectively use the ammo types, though no situations ever arise in the game similar to the ones in these rooms. They are fun additions to the game, but seeing as failure to complete these rooms in the desired fashion has no repercussion on you, it does leave you wondering why on earth they exist in the first place. Some of the riddles and puzzles the game gives to you are also equally pointless. Some of the riddles can still be completed even after getting it wrong several times (such as having a series of boxes with only one of them being the correct one to open) and some of them are too difficult to even know where to begin (such as finding the code to disable the lasers in Towa Tower).
Beyond this third person gameplay however is reading, a hell of a lot of reading. Much like previous Danganronpa games you'll more than likely spend more time reading conversations between characters than you will doing anything else. If you're a returning fan then these sequences should be no issue for you, but newcomers may feel put off by extended conversation sequences, some even reaching to over half an hour in length.
I do feel like Ultra Despair Girls needed some more work in terms of the graphics too. Unlike previous Danganronpa games, you now have a fully 3D world to explore that is much larger than the 3D sequences in Trigger Happy Havoc. The art style for Ultra Despair Girls does continue the Danganronpa anime trend, but it also brings forward it's lack of detail. Some buildings have no ground beneath them, the skybox is just a simple silhouette of a generic city skyline, everything has similar texture work to it. It feels extremely unpolished.
But the 2D anime cutscenes and the 3D CG cinematics are gorgeously animated and well directed, which makes me question as to why so much effort was put into the cutscenes and so little effort was put into the environments.
Character animation is very robotic, very reminiscent of Kingdom Hearts in many ways. The mouth of characters also continue to move when there is no dialogue being spoken.
But the audio work on Ultra Despair Girls is simply superb. With amazing voice talent filling our cast as well as reprisals from returning characters. The soundtrack is equally delicious and will make your time in the extremely bland looking Towa City must more bearable.
So after all these negative points, is Danganronpa Another Episode actually worth playing at all? For existing Danganronpa fans it is essential playing for the story alone, but for newcomers I would avoid it until you have played the other two Danganronpa games (or at least Trigger Happy Havoc). Despite it's glaring flaws, Ultra Despair Girls is still fun to play and I would love to see another entry in the Danganronpa series like it. But various issues must be addressed for it to be a truly worthy spin off to the excellent main games.
But the 2D anime cutscenes and the 3D CG cinematics are gorgeously animated and well directed, which makes me question as to why so much effort was put into the cutscenes and so little effort was put into the environments.
Character animation is very robotic, very reminiscent of Kingdom Hearts in many ways. The mouth of characters also continue to move when there is no dialogue being spoken.
But the audio work on Ultra Despair Girls is simply superb. With amazing voice talent filling our cast as well as reprisals from returning characters. The soundtrack is equally delicious and will make your time in the extremely bland looking Towa City must more bearable.
So after all these negative points, is Danganronpa Another Episode actually worth playing at all? For existing Danganronpa fans it is essential playing for the story alone, but for newcomers I would avoid it until you have played the other two Danganronpa games (or at least Trigger Happy Havoc). Despite it's glaring flaws, Ultra Despair Girls is still fun to play and I would love to see another entry in the Danganronpa series like it. But various issues must be addressed for it to be a truly worthy spin off to the excellent main games.
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+A Darker, More Disturbing and Bolder Danganronpa Story
+Excellent Narrative With Great Voice Acting +Beautiful Anime & CG Cutscenes +Great Length -Misplaced or Insensitive Humour -Some Questionable Dialogue Translation -Meaningless Gameplay Mechanics -Bland Gameplay Environments |
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