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Danganronpa on Steam - V3 released

StaticSpine

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Anyone playing V3?
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Tried the V3 demo, liked it, wanted more. $60? You must be joking.

Will look for a good price on #1 & 2 in the Steam Halloween sale.
 

Nryn

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Divinity: Original Sin 2
Finished V3, and I'm left reeling from the insanity in the last case. Spoiler-free impressions of the game as a whole:

-This is going to end up being the most divisive entry in the series. There are a couple of twists that are the most ambitious of twists across all 3 games. I suspect there's going to be an equal measure of angst and admiration for these twists, and it calls to mind another game's narrative, in more ways than one.

-I strongly disliked the "outside world" stories of DR1 & 2, but I loved V3's take on it. V3 seems as if it were made for folks like me who couldn't take DR1's & 2's "outside world" stories of "ultimate despair" and "most tragic event in human history" seriously.

-The actual trials were solid, yet unspectacular. I suspect playing through all the Ace Attorney and prior Danganronpa titles prepared me too well for V3's cases. To the game's credit, there were still 3 or 4 crazy moments in trials that I never saw coming.

-The minigames still feel as silly and unnecessary as ever, and PC port issues add more fuel to this fire. The game constantly fails to register mouse clicks and key presses. The worst port issue occurs when the player needs to press the WASD keys in QTEs, yet the game expects an "A" key when an "S" is displayed on screen, and vice-versa. Inexplicably, there has been no patch to address this progress stalling issue. Count me in the camp who prefers the gimmick-less court trials of the earlier Ace Attorney games over the flashy and superfluous minigames of Danganronpa.

-The new and optional lie mechanic is the most interesting addition to the court trials, opening up hidden ways to progress through the class trials. I only wish that other characters in the trial reacted more extremely when a player was caught committing perjury through telling lies. Instead, whenever the player progresses through lying, the game just sweeps it under the rug to continue with the trial as if nothing out of the ordinary happened.

Overall, V3 is my favorite of the 3 games solely due to its ballsy twists that subvert so many expectations I had when it came to this series. Even though it doesn't have the novelty of the first game, and the cases themselves were more entertaining than surprising, V3's commitment to its crazy twists makes it the most memorable of the 3. I don't mean to belittle DR 1 and 2 when I say V3 is my favorite, because without DR1 and 2, the insanity of V3's crazier twists would be entirely lacking and ineffectual.
 

flyingjohn

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unknown.png


Is this going to be like Kojima's "mgs 2/3/4/5 are the last game" or more like "Ok,now we start with the soulless milking of the franchise"
 

StaticSpine

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Finished.

I really loved the twist in the first trial. And how it was deconstructed in the end. Wow!

Kokichi is awesome.

Can't say this is the best (or the worst) part. It's on par. Though it really feels like the most ambitious one.
 

StaticSpine

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I really loved the twist in the first trial. And how it was deconstructed in the end. Wow!

3-1 is IMO the coolest stunt kodaka has ever pulled. It reminds me of an old interview with Joss Whedon about Buffy, where they had planned to have the rando characters who died in the first episode as part of the opening title sequence, to make viewers who thought that being part of the OP gave you plot armor a slap in the face. Of course the show itself was the epitome of dumb plot armor idiot ball writing, but that's part of what makes Buffy Buffy.

Akamatsu Kaede, if you recall, was the protagonist in the v3 demo, where both protagonists of DR1 and SDR2 repeatedly explained that she was the protagonist now, not them, and she had to take charge. She's the first character to appear in the OP, and she's voiced by an A-lister. She does stereotypically DR protagonist things like stand up for hope and teamwork, and her death-game-useless talent is comparable to the DR1/SDR2 protagonists as well.

Playing 3-1 made me feel like Kodaka knew that he had to do outdo himself. It's just such a pity that 3-6 ruined it with its ultimate deus ex machina.
I didn't play the demo. My bad.
 

StaticSpine

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oasis789

There is one thing that disappointed me most about that metaplot twist. I swallowed that whole reality show thing. I disliked the fact that the most influential characters - Makoto, Kyoko and Byakuya, considering their triumphant appearance in D2, in the end turned up the same insignificant fictional characters as any other, though the newbies became the ones to break the system and to get a possibility to return to normal life.
 

Berekän

A life wasted
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I'm sick of all these fourth wall meta-ending, might have been clever the first time it was done but right now it's overused and it just feels unsatisfying
 

Raghar

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I kinda found the story in first trial cheap. You know some authors have decent writing, they spend time to write proper stories, and when they wanna try something just because, they would make it as short unrelated story to avoid polluting the world they developed. They might even make it as a book inside of a book.

Then it was somehow decent, even somehow interesting. Then I'm bit split over that case before last. It would be far better when Monokuma would say in middle of trial "You are pissing me of. I wanna check something." Followed by loud sound few minutes later. Then Monokuma returning cowering his frontlegs. "Now I know facts you fuckers, we can continue the trial."
And when they would return to the room with press, they would see room exploded, top of press thrown into the wall, shards of metal from press slammed to the walls.
Why ending trial feels bonkers, and why end game feels weird. You'd know it when you finish it.
Not sure about ending, frankly these multiple episodes and theirs names, when they made more than 10, they should say all theirs names.

In fact logical ending would be:
K1B0 awaking in lab of his profesor who is talking it's last time he allows K1B0 to act in a show, because TV producers have no dignity. Then turning to other part of room, and greeting Monokuma who is helping a girl with burn marks, pieces of concrete, an shredded clothes. Perhaps followed by using that book Monokuma had with figurine of professor on profesor.

Then followed by slides.
All four walking on street.
Slide with survivors meeting them.
Slide with Monokuma waving bye on professor and leaving group. (happy he seen the shock his appearance did to the second group)
Happy reunion.
Slides with each character happily lives.

Followed by a small text "This story didn't ended according to my script, but the result was more interesting. Real live sometimes make better stories." (perhaps with explanation why Monokuma wanted to accompany them, and then separated from theirs group. And perhaps with some info about each characters.)

Then ending slide would be with a pile of soldiers/policemen pierced by a large sign with text "plushies have rights too." And with Monokuma sitting alone near a beautiful red ocean watching sunset. [/spoilers]Well, that assumes he's at least as quality writer as me. But DRv3 looked like it was composed from multiple unrelated ideas that didn't went well together. All placed into one pot without something that would glue them together. What I wrote was decent closure for DRv3, not sure why DRv3 didn't get proper long ending.
 

Terra

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896
Jesus christ, I really enjoyed the first two games but V3's freakin' monokubs are killing the game for me. Why couldn't they have stuck with just Monokuma instead on these 5 little shits failing to be funny with every line they utter and popping up all the goddamn time. Haven't even made it to the first case due to these guys; is it worth persevering?
 

StaticSpine

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Jesus christ, I really enjoyed the first two games but V3's freakin' monokubs are killing the game for me. Why couldn't they have stuck with just Monokuma instead on these 5 little shits failing to be funny with every line they utter and popping up all the goddamn time. Haven't even made it to the first case due to these guys; is it worth persevering?
Dude the ending of the first case will blow your mind.
 

Abu Antar

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I'm on the second game. Enjoying it a lot. Solved the case. Shit's just getting weirder and weirder. The Vita is perfect for these kinds of games.
 

Nifft Batuff

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I'm on the second game. Enjoying it a lot. Solved the case. Shit's just getting weirder and weirder. The Vita is perfect for these kinds of games.
The first two games are fantastic and somewhat autoconclusive. The third game... is still good, but maybe it lacks the novelty of the first two...
 

Terra

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Jesus christ, I really enjoyed the first two games but V3's freakin' monokubs are killing the game for me. Why couldn't they have stuck with just Monokuma instead on these 5 little shits failing to be funny with every line they utter and popping up all the goddamn time. Haven't even made it to the first case due to these guys; is it worth persevering?
Dude the ending of the first case will blow your mind.
Finally went back to it last night and made it to the end of the first case. Fuck, wasn't expecting that.

Kinda strange really as I wasn't quite sure how I felt having Kaede as protagonist with the previous two games having male protags. Then just as I was warming up to her character the class trial hit and it all happened. Totally unexpected, figured they were setting up for a long-game relationship between her and Shuichi so really took me by surprise. Kinda deflated now she's dead, lol, but we'll see how things progress.

I'll keep playing soon, noticed that the endless monokub chatter died down a lot when the first murder occurred and it became a lot more bearable from there. Silver lining being one of the monokubs died in the class trial too, which I was very pleased about.
 

Terra

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Alright, finally finished V3. Spoilers obviously.

By the time I hit Case 3 - what with the Necronomicon and the graffiti being partially revealed, as well as Rantaro, I was starting to suspect this was a virtual world or simulation, given D2 had a similar thing going on. At this point I was starting to doubt if anyone who had died either via execution or regular killing was actually dead or not. If Monokuma really had some trick to bring dead people back, I started to suspect the endgame reveal was that everything was faked and nobody was really dead.

Felt that this case would have had a more interesting outcome if the culprit for murder #1 + #2 were different. Would have been better to have a known killer, Kiyo, still in play in the Academy. Instead things just resolved themselves a bit too neatly for my liking when it turned out Kiyo murdered both people.

The Monokub bullshit is extremely front loaded, those fuckers take up so much screentime early on and it's mostly utter garbage that they spew when onscreen. HOWEVER, once you hit that first case, they have a far more subdued presence and of course, start to die off. Once these guys quietened down I started to enjoy the game as much as prior entries, but man, the opening section can be really off-putting for new V3 players I think.

I still think the game would have been better with a more focused antagonist, Monokuma worked fine for the first two games. I didn't really think the kubs added much to the story, even putting aside their early-game annoyances.

Case #4 - Miu's Virtual World was neat, I liked all the chibi avatars, decent amount of work went into the whole setup.

Case #5 - Lots of cool twists in this case. Kokichi's goal to "trick" Monokuma... kinda wasn't as fleshed out or well explained as I'd have liked. What was to stop Monokuma just shrugging and just saying "eh, you guys get a pass this time" even if he'd been tricked. The endgame of the plan failing due to both Kaito's early appearance and Shuichi not catching on to what was actually happening until the very end (and then trying to pull off a fairly obvious "hurr, I'm totally not lying here you guys" gambit at the end.) I felt they coulda done something clever here if they'd leaned into the perjury mechanic a bit more, I dunno, came across like the writers weren't exactly sure what the end goal was themselves here.

Kaito/Maki scenes were nice, was more interesting to have them as a romance subplot than the main character in this instance. Maki had some good development, it was looking like she was gonna be Case #2s killer early on too, so, pretty unexpected where they took her character.

Case # 6- The big Case #6 Twist and revelation though. I'm still processing it somewhat but I'm mostly leaning toward apathy if I'm honest.

While I don't think Danganronpa 1 or 2 did a particularly great job of explaining just exactly what was happening/had happened in the world outside of Hope's Peak (greatest tragedy of blah blah blah is mentioned a bazillion times, yet I always found the game got super vague really fast whenever the topic of the world outside Hope's Peak was brought up.) As such, even going into V3 having finished the prior 2 games, I'd say I only had a vague recollection / understanding of the world of Danganronpa as pertained to V1/V2. I knew of some shenanigans between the Future Foundation and Remnants of Despair, but it always seemed to be deliberately vague in-game to me.

That being said, while I did find the execution of that aspect lacking, I can't say I particularly care for the Truman Show esque - "oh, it was all a fake guys" - explanation V3 offers. Depending on how you read it, V3 potentially reduces 1 + 2 to literal videogames within the V3 universe. I can't say I've ever seen this type of twist pulled off effectively without enraging at least parts of a given fanbase, and with good reason.

Certainly as we see more IPs remain within the ownership of a company and the core creative staff who made an IP what it is move on, the opportunity exists for the IP holder to do whatever they like with an IP. And certainly in more recent times this entails fucking it up - see Star Wars for a big, recent example. So I almost think whether these types of late-game plot twists are an effort to suicide the IP before the original creatives move onto other things. Granted, such an approach taints an IP, but it simultaneously protects it from further indignities moving forwards. I dunno...

I can sorta see what V3 might have been trying to say, and I wasn't throwing my computer away in a fit of rage or anything when playing through the finale, but there was a definite sense of "eh, this is it, really?" as I played through it. I was pleased they steered away from a twin sister angle for Kaede, but I just ended up finding the ending unsatisfying really. I'd play through 1 or 2 again, easily, but V3's ending is a sour taste. But apathy is about where I'm at with regards to it, which is a real shame because I thought the game up to that point was pretty damn good, kubs aside.
Anything else comparable to this series out there, already played Ace Attorney, but this series seems like a pretty unique blend. I'll miss it.
 
Last edited:

Abu Antar

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Alright, finally finished V3. Spoilers obviously.

By the time I hit Case 3 - what with the Necronomicon and the graffiti being partially revealed, as well as Rantaro, I was starting to suspect this was a virtual world or simulation, given D2 had a similar thing going on. At this point I was starting to doubt if anyone who had died either via execution or regular killing was actually dead or not. If Monokuma really had some trick to bring dead people back, I started to suspect the endgame reveal was that everything was faked and nobody was really dead.

Felt that this case would have had a more interesting outcome if the culprit for murder #1 + #2 were different. Would have been better to have a known killer, Kiyo, still in play in the Academy. Instead things just resolved themselves a bit too neatly for my liking when it turned out Kiyo murdered both people.

The Monokub bullshit is extremely front loaded, those fuckers take up so much screentime early on and it's mostly utter garbage that they spew when onscreen. HOWEVER, once you hit that first case, they have a far more subdued presence and of course, start to die off. Once these guys quietened down I started to enjoy the game as much as prior entries, but man, the opening section can be really off-putting for new V3 players I think.

I still think the game would have been better with a more focused antagonist, Monokuma worked fine for the first two games. I didn't really think the kubs added much to the story, even putting aside their early-game annoyances.

Case #4 - Miu's Virtual World was neat, I liked all the chibi avatars, decent amount of work went into the whole setup.

Case #5 - Lots of cool twists in this case. Kokichi's goal to "trick" Monokuma... kinda wasn't as fleshed out or well explained as I'd have liked. What was to stop Monokuma just shrugging and just saying "eh, you guys get a pass this time" even if he'd been tricked. The endgame of the plan failing due to both Kaito's early appearance and Shuichi not catching on to what was actually happening until the very end (and then trying to pull off a fairly obvious "hurr, I'm totally not lying here you guys" gambit at the end.) I felt they coulda done something clever here if they'd leaned into the perjury mechanic a bit more, I dunno, came across like the writers weren't exactly sure what the end goal was themselves here.

Kaito/Maki scenes were nice, was more interesting to have them as a romance subplot than the main character in this instance. Maki had some good development, it was looking like she was gonna be Case #2s killer early on too, so, pretty unexpected where they took her character.

Case # 6- The big Case #6 Twist and revelation though. I'm still processing it somewhat but I'm mostly leaning toward apathy if I'm honest.

While I don't think Danganronpa 1 or 2 did a particularly great job of explaining just exactly what was happening/had happened in the world outside of Hope's Peak (greatest tragedy of blah blah blah is mentioned a bazillion times, yet I always found the game got super vague really fast whenever the topic of the world outside Hope's Peak was brought up.) As such, even going into V3 having finished the prior 2 games, I'd say I only had a vague recollection / understanding of the world of Danganronpa as pertained to V1/V2. I knew of some shenanigans between the Future Foundation and Remnants of Despair, but it always seemed to be deliberately vague in-game to me.

That being said, while I did find the execution of that aspect lacking, I can't say I particularly care for the Truman Show esque - oh, it was all a fake guys. Depending on how you read it, V3 potentially reduces 1 + 2 to literal videogames within the V3 universe. I can't say I've ever seen this type of twist pulled off effectively without enraged at least parts of a given fanbase, and with good reason.

Certainly as we see more IPs remain within the ownership of a company and the core creative staff who made an IP what it is move on, the opportunity exists for the IP holder to do whatever they like with an IP. And certainly in more recent times this entails fucking it up - see Star Wars for a big, recent example. So I almost think whether these types of late-game plot twists are an effort to suicide the IP before the original creatives move onto other things. Granted, such an approach taints an IP, but it simultaneously protects it from further indignities moving forwards. I dunno...

I can sorta see what V3 might have been trying to say, and I wasn't throwing my computer away in a fit of rage or anything when playing through the finale, but there was a definite sense of "eh, this is it, really?" as I played through it. I was pleased they steered away from a twin sister angle for Kaede, but I just ended up finding the ending unsatisfying really. I'd play through 1 or 2 again, easily, but V3's ending is a sour taste. But apathy is about where I'm at with regards to it, which is a real shame because I thought the game up to that point was pretty damn good, kubs aside.
Anything else comparable to this series out there, already played Ace Attorney, but this series seems like a pretty unique blend. I'll miss it.
I highly recommend the Zero Escape trilogy.
 

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