Dang Rope

I have not made any posts about video games at all because... I have been playing video games. And to think I went to all that effort in class to convince Leeper that I don't have a problem. Oh, well. I probably do have a problem, but I'm not ashamed of it.

The two games that have consumed my time basically since the school year began are Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Super Dangan Ronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. I'm currently working on a replay of the first game so that I can complete all of the students' report cards.

I've explained the premise of Dangan Ronpa on the blogs before, so I won't go into it in detail again. It is not an action-based game by any means. It is more story-driven with lots of unique characters to interact with. The real action happens during a class trial, but between class trials, you get to leisurely walk around the school and hang out with your classmates. You can up the difficulty level so that class trials are more exciting, but I always play it on gentle because I suck at video games and I do just play them for the story, really...

Anyway, Dangan Ronpa is very interesting in that it almost REQUIRES you to replay the game. That is, if you're aiming to fill up everybody's report cards like I am. Some report cards require you to give people presents, which can only be purchased with Mono-coins. Mono-coins are a limited resource in the game, but you get about 70 or so of them with every class trial you complete. Still, this is sometimes not enough to get of the required presents since some of the presents can be quite rare, and you have to spend a HUGE amount of Mono-coins in order to acquire them.

Also, time becomes a very limited resource in the game. With how often students die, you have to be careful about who you chose to spend time with. For example, I could not get to Leon's report card before he died (spoilers, oops).

And some characters are unavailable at certain times. Byakuya, whose report card I desperately wanted to complete, is unavailable for interaction for the entirety of Chapter 2, as he spends his entire time in the library and will snap at you if you interrupt his reading. So, I had to play through all of Chapter 2 and some of Chapter 3 for the second time just to complete his report card.

I hope me talking about how I've had to replay the game doesn't sound like complaining because it's not. At all. I love this game, and it does have incredible replay value. There is an interesting twist at the end of the game, which I will not spoil, but knowing the twist doesn't make the game less exciting the second time around. In fact, it makes it really fun because you get to see all of the hints they drop, all the foreshadowing that leads up to that twist. The foreshadowing is done in such a way that it leaves players confused during the first playthrough because it would be boring if everyone just figured the twist out right away. But it's fun to see these vague hints and think, "Oh, that's what he's referring to."

Also, the characters are phenomenal. I think everyone can find at least one character to whom they can relate in this game. I've found myself falling in love with characters I used to hate and growing skeptical of those I used to think were decent.

And the second one is even better than the first, and I can't wait to replay that one because the characters and the ending twist are both way better but I'll shut up now because this is long.

But yes, Dangan Ronpa is a great game series, I would recommend it, and I can't wait until the third one is released in English. Until that happens, I'll just replay each of the other two games 30,000 times.