I haven't really read other reviews on this game, so I'm hoping this review isn't controversial.

Really enjoyed the story, and the different character arcs. I honestly, truly, enjoyed my time playing this game. Just finished it yesterday. I can't get into specifics because I don't want to spoil anything, but I enjoyed all the twist and turns. Yes. All of them. :)

I'm just in awe at how awful the game really is.
The writing is so different and terrible compared to the previous games, that I can only assume it was done on purpose just to piss the fans who like the series.

If you weren't a big fan of the cliche anime-ish cast in the second game then you'll most likely not like the cast in this game, as most of the characters are shallow anime tropes and with very little personalities in their way (examples including: Kirumi, Tenko, and Miu).

The terrible character writing becomes glaringly obvious once the game starts using its long 40 hour run time to focus on a small set of characters just so they can have strange and forced relationships —that I could only assume was done to appease certain fans—, while the rest of the cast have little screentime or get killed off immediately once their story starts to get interesting.

Still, this doesn't mean I hate the entire cast, as there some characters I really enjoyed such as Kokichi with his constant lies and questionable morality, and Kaito's attempts at turning Shuichi into a more confident person, but still, when I'm suddenly forced to listen to obnoxious characters like Miu make a sex joke or how Tenko hates men for the 50th time, I instantly get reminded on how much I despise the cast.

Also I really don't have much to talk about Monokuma other than him sometimes being used as a tool for the writer to rant about the series and the fans.



If the story was alright then I would have not been this negative in my review, but unfortunately it is so awful that I cannot recommend this game to anyone.

The story relies heavily on the use of flashback lights (a tool created by Monokuma that gives the characters some of their memories back) to move the story forward, and the problem with these flashlights is that they give too much information to the characters, to a point where you can solve most of the school's mysteries early on in the story.


Because of the flashback lights telling you everything, a lot of the plot twists in this game aren't really that captivating compared to the ones seen in the previous games, since the story never stops foreshadowing them with incredibly obvious hints.

One example of this is (slight spoilers) the truth of the outside world , which was constantly foreshadowed in the beginning of the game, to a point where I didn't really feel any surprise or excitement once it was actually revealed to you.

This is a complete disappointment for me, as I really enjoyed slowly solving the mysteries with the characters throughout the story in the previous games, instead of having all of the answers laid out for me in the beginning.



Gameplay wise, they're the best in the series.

The game introduces so many incredibly fun gameplay mechanics such as being able to lie your way to the truth, or partake in mass panic debates, where sometimes the class trials can get chaotic by having 3 characters talking at the same time and you must try to listen all of them individually to find the contradiction in their statements.

However, my favorite gameplay mechanic has to be the Debate Scrum, where The students in the class trial are split off into 2 different groups with differing sides of the story and it's up to you to convince the other group to believe your side of the story, while having some really great music to back this whole experience up.
I really, and I mean it, really like this class trial mechanic as its so innovative and elevates the class trial experience so much, that I truly wish it was in the previous games.

I also really like the animating text and effects in the nonstop debate as I feel like they add a lot of personality to the way the characters speak and act in these class trials.

Unfortunately the good parts end here and this is where I start complaining lol.

First off, the class trials just drag on for too long, like 3 hours long while the previous games ranged from 1 hour to 2:30 hours.
This is mostly due to the characters artificially increasing the time length of these trials by asking really dumb questions that should've been said in the beginning and make everyone rethink the case one more time.

Secondly, The way the murders were committed are so ridiculous that only a Looney Tunes character could possibly do it.

And finally, the motives for the killings are really hard to take seriously, like the motive for one of the murders was about a character needing to return to the outside world because they're somehow the prime minister of a country and was tasked to protect everyone????

Also while that motive was explained by Monokuma, a Donald Trump MAGA reference was made.

I could go on rambling about all the things I didn't like in the class trials, but I don't want this review to drag out longer than the class trials.




The Danganronpa games never really had the greatest writing in the first place and the third game exemplifies this even further.


I'll be going off on bit of a tangent here, but I always enjoyed the somewhat grounded and serious story/characters the first game had, and because of that I never really enjoyed the overall anime-ish and somewhat childish stories the sequels and spinoffs had.

Maybe I think this is mostly due to me not watching a lot of anime, and because of that I don't have that much tolerance for ridiculous anime crap I guess? But honestly the more I think about it, the more I believe that I'm just not the target audience for these games.¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Honestly the first class trial ending was so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that I stopped playing and just read the story online. And I do not regret it, it would have been a huge loss of time to continue playing.
Minigames and class trial system are stupid and tiresome, and the story that is actually quite bad.