Update One Hundred and Ten: 15 January 2017
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
107 hours, 34 of 41 achievements
9/10
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Wow. Where to begin.
So when I first started this game, I had a few questions (and was asked a few questions). Here they are, with my answers:
Is it worth the price? Yes. Compared to SDR2, this game has a much higher production value, does way more things, and has several additional game modes that justify the price, I THINK. It’s steep, but even getting it at 30% or 40% off is worthwhile. I did very little idling of this game so 107 is my accurate playtime.
Does it stand up to the other games? Yes.
Does it justify its own existence as the third installment of this series? Absolutely. It takes the tried-and-true ‘wacky unique teenagers are forced to murder each other’ bulk of the gameplay and couches it in something new, fresh, and unexpected. It’s not just ‘here’s danganronpa again’.
How did I like the ending? I loved it. This is a big contention among the fanbase, and a controversial opinion. I never saw it coming, and, echoing other gems like Virtue’s Last Reward, the ending was a solid two-hours of me holding my brain and going ‘WHAT!!!!!’ while grinning like an idiot. It was fresh, it was now, it was meta as fuck, and it played with the medium of gaming in ways that I greatly enjoyed.
It hit all my three asks - it updates the classic Danganronpa style but still is wholly itself, it subverts expectations at every turn in intelligent, interesting ways, and it was a joy to play - and, yes, you do play this visual novel. It barely qualifies as such anymore, with the number of minigames it has, and navigating around several 3D environments was fun. The voice acting is superb, and I even ended up really liking the resident troublemaker character this time (that’s rare for me!). Not everything works super well - I’m not a big fan of mascot characters, and they made the mistake of adding FIVE new ones here. It’s a chore to sit through all their kind of dumb banter at the beginning.
Most of the minigame and sidegame stuff is fun - the new things in the trial, the casino bits, stuff like that. There’s another post-game game mode where it’s just a happy nice dating sim which is as nice as always. There’s a huge chunk, though, that I’m not even going to TOUCH. There’s a big combo board game/slot machine/RPG dungeon crawler thing that I tried a little of and went ‘no thank you’ and shelved - that’s where all the missing achievements are from. I’m not even going to pretend I’ll ever go back and try it - I’m good.
This is a game predicated on your experience with the past two mainline Danganronpa games, so you really have to play those first before you sink your teeth into this one. If you enjoyed them, though, you’ll enjoy this one, too! (Unless you end up hating the ending, then you’ll just love 5/6ths of it).
Suffice it to say, this game has earned a spot on my Visual Novel Masterlist - I had a blast.
Next up: I continue to treat myself. Edith Finch for me, and Okami with the girlfriend!
See you soon!
Glad you loved it! It’s always great when sequels improve upon the previous installments. Sounds like you’re in for a real treat with your upcoming games as well.
I want to play Edith Finch so bad! Have heard great things, including from my friend who just played/raved about it to me. Okami looks so dang beautiful as well. You got me so excited though when you mentioned playing with your girlfriend…I was like “ooh wait what, it has local co-op!? That’s so fricken exciting!!” But after googling it appears not, I’m guessing you’re both gonna share controls playing? :P Hope you have fun!
It really is! I was nervous at first because I heard the ending was awful (and there was a big letdown at the end of Chapter 1 that was cool and interesting intellectually but a real cheap shot emotionally so I was apprehensive for a bit after that) but it really did pay off.
Yooooo I know! I’m cheating and moving that to the front of my list bc I need to see what it’s about. It’s gotten to the point where even the president of the professional organization I volunteer with has asked me about Edith Finch so now it’s like a professional imperative for me to play it, right?
JAFFA OKAMI IS AMAZING!!!! She and I played 6 hours of it today and it hasn’t aged a MINUTE it is incredible. I’ve written my review about it already, you get a sneak preview: ‘10/10 AN IMPECCABLE EXPERIENCE GOTY.’
I’m so sorry I faked you out like that - Okami co-op would be thrilling! I’m the pilot and she’s the navigator, in a sense - she has the guide open for 100% clearing the game and tells me when to stop to find a stray bead etc. etc. We switch off sometimes, too, you’re right. It’s definitely worth picking up
It’s funny how you hear recommendations all the time online and are like “I should check that out” but as soon as someone irl mentions a game it seems more special?? like holy moly video gamers exist in the real world and recommended something to me!? I’m always more likely to play it right away and talk about it haha.
Aw I’m so glad you’re loving Okami! I never had a playstation so missed out, but it’s on my WL now looks gorgeous!! And that sounds like a great gameplan with the guide. :) My family and I used to do that with those official Nintendo guide books. We’d all backseat game until getting stuck and then would whip out the guide, helping each other out. Made using a guide way more fun/interactive and allow the game to flow more.
Seriously! Yeah, it’s like, ‘I can’t miss out on Real Life Conversations like this’. Now that I’ve beaten it now it’s back to chipping away at the older games in my backlog, though.
That sounds really sweet! c: I’m glad you have those memories with your family.
I was gonna ask if you can play Danganronpa games independently, but then I read through to the end, and well - sucks. I don’t particularly like the sequels being very dependant on the previous games in the series. What if 2nd one sucked, even if 3rd one was considered to be great, it wouldn’t make me trudge through the 2nd one just to play the 3rd. What if 1st one sucks? Even if 3rd one was the greatest thing ever, I wouldn’t get into the series in the first place.
This series looks vaguely interesting for VNs for me, but eeh, not in the mood for investing hundreds of hours into a genre I can sometimes barely click through for an hour at a time without getting bored. And lots of minigames don’t make it not-a-VN ;) Witcher 3 has minigames, Final Fantasy games have minigames. If you take them out you’re still left with a proper game. Here everything is build around VN formula (or at least looks like it).
Congrats on your progress :) It’s nice to play games you really enjoy :)
The bulk of the game (the murder part of the games) doesn’t need you to play any of the others, but the overarching story does. You’ll lose a lot of context and that will lessen the impact of the story. If you want to just play it for the murdergame, you can. For this series in particular, all three mainline games I liked a great deal, and it was rewarding playing them all and seeing them influence each other.
RE: VN: Let me further clarify: the way the minigames are set in and influence the flow of the game makes it hard for me to just say ‘it’s a VN!’ because you don’t just click through and do little else. The way the trials are set up, the way you navigate the world - it’s not isolated minigames like, I don’t know, the fucking jumprope minigame in FF9. They’re core parts of the gameplay, and they’re fun and interesting.
You’ve said multiple times, though, that you’re not very interested in VNs of any stripe - so you don’t have to like make yourself be interested, u feel me? I hope you play games enjoy!
I’m always for the lookout on interesting games, period, regardless of genre. The fact that 99% VNs contain stuff I don’t like doesn’t automatically make me disregard every single one that comes out. :) I don’t like FPS games probably almost as much as VNs, but I greatly enjoyed Bioshock, Doom, Wolfenstein OB, and a handful of others. Danganronpa V3 looked like something that might be the 1% for me, because of the additional stuff, and not the usual romance setting, so the fact that’s dependant on the previous ones was disappointing, not that it’s a VN. Btw, you can play basically any game out of context, but I don’t like doing that - lessens the experience.
And I don’t have to enjoy something myself to appreciate others enjoying it :)
100+ hours of vn O_O
Is it feels like dragging or there’s so much content..?
Nope! There was just that much content. There are five chapters and a prologue, and each chapter has several phases - a ‘school life’ phase, an investigation phase, and a trial phase. In general, when I dedicated time to it, each chapter took me one day to do the school life and investigation phase, and one day to do the trial phase.
This game is longer than the previous ones, but it justifies the price tag.
Thank you, I’ll add this to backlog on next sale 🤣
It’s great to see the third is a such a good game as well! I still have to beat the second one first though haha.
And I see you’re already tackling that backlog ferociously! Because 107 hours! Is that real play time? That’s real hardcore!
There have been some minor (few hours) idling, mostly to just get the Level 99 achievement (‘Here, walk in place while I do something else…’). Otherwise, yeah, it’s a very long game. It took up a good deal of those 15 or so days since my last non-VN entry.
Thank you for your compliment, though! I never would imagine I’d get called hardcore ever but my god I’ll take it!
I liked it slightly less than I liked Danganronpa 2, but I think I liked Danganronpa 2 as much as I did because of kuzuryuu and peko c: You’re in for a wild ride!