Danganronpa V3: Should you buy it? (Review)

I was planning on posting a review for this game and already wrote it, only to find out you can't post reviews if you played the game through Steam Family Share, ...even if you mark the review as having gotten the game for free. Because of that, I'm going to post my review here as a guide, and hope it's helpful to someone. Please be respectful in the replies, whether you agree with me or not.

Review

(This review will contain no unmarked spoilers outside of legitimate content warnings for those who have not played the game) Danganronpa V3 is a... complicated game. Going into it after the first two, I was approaching it with caution but optimism, hoping that a game released in 2017 could avoid the faults of its predecessors. In short, I was wrong. V3 is the worst Danganronpa story contained in the most appealing shell. The graphics are better, the side content is vast and appealing, the music remixes tunes from the previous games and is arguably the best part about the package. But as a visual novel, the core of the game, the story, must be strong for it to work as a complete package. And unfortunately, that core is extremely weak. First of all, entirely objective content warnings: If the way the first game in particular tackled the subjects of gender, sexuality, or treatment of women affected you or discouraged you from playing, I would exercise extreme caution going into V3. This game handles these elements with about the grace of a bull in a china shop, and for anyone particularly sensitive to them this game may have a negative impact on you. This is a problem not limited to this game, but yet even overlooking the fact of the first two games coming out much earlier and judging them on an equal playing field, it is my honest opinion that in most aspects of tacking sensitive subjects V3 is particularly flawed and shows a distinct lack of growth on Spike Chunsoft's part over time. Delving into the more subjective elements, this game still has many glaring issues that I think even fans of it would find hard to deny. First of all, the game has several moments in which it betrays its own genre and rules and retroactively changes text to fit the narrative. The first two games were admirable in their use of clever wording to create moments which resonate completely differently with the context of the game's later plot, and while V3 sometimes achieves this, there are several glaring cases of contradictions with the game's own narrative that are never addressed. For instance: (spoilers) In the very first case, Monokuma announces that all students participating in the killing game will be executed should the time limit expire. This is later changed in a flashback scene to "all students *forced to participate*" and the game operates as if this is what was always stated. For a game based around mystery and spotting contradictions, it baffles me how these mistakes were overlooked, especially since the first two games have no instances of such a thing, or at the very least none that are as noticeable and easily verifiable on a second playthrough. The game's characters themselves are also much more one-note, often seeming to perform actions completely out of character for them just to serve the plot, or simply for a gag. Keebo, for instance, extremely frequently repeats a joke about "robophobia", which while to some extent being in character for him and playing a role in his arc, could have been handled and conveyed in a much better way and comes off as the writers attempting to make some larger social commentary or parody but executing it in an extremely surface-level manner. However, even though I believe these issues to be stand-alone, many could point to my comparisons to the previous games as being unfair, even if this game does position itself as a sequel in many aspects. In that case, allow me to point out some standalone issues that do not rely on the previous games as comparisons: the controls. While I believe a visual novel's core on which all other aspects rely on to be its story, this is a game being sold for money that asks you to play it to complete its narrative, and as such I find it fair to judge the game's controls as a part of the package. The controls are in short, bizarre, simply speaking from the perspective of one using keyboard and mouse. Firstly, even when selecting keyboard and mouse as your preferred playstyle, many button prompts and actions in the game will be improperly labelled without further configuration, and the game will instruct you to press the wrong keys or sometimes even controller buttons without further clarification. As a PC port, this game is extremely sloppy, alternating between WASD and the arrow keys as the expected method of control and prompting you to complete quick-time events with keys your hand would not naturally be near based on the prior segment's controls. Class Trial segments, specifically, have confusing controls not only for those who have played other Danganronpa games on PC, but those who have played any game which tasks you with operating a weapon fireable with the mouse before. Right Click is always your primary fire, no matter what settings you toggle, and even with modding tools currently available this is not able to be altered to my knowledge. Why this is is entirely beyond me, especially considering the game includes a control setting labelled as "Shooter" targeted at those familiar with that style of control. Even worse, the game's "lie" function, (not a spoiler, included in the demo) is controlled by holding said fire button, making landing precise shots a nightmare as you have to not only go against your instincts on which button to press but also make sure to press it extremely briefly so as not to instead charge up a lie and have to release the button again. These may sound like minor nitpicks, but these issues are ones I encountered during the whole of my playtime, and ones I never fully adjusted to. If you have no experience with these types of controls, this may be easier to adjust to, but considering this is the third entry in the series and one that expects you to play the previous games lest you be spoiled, it's highly unlikely that you would be coming into this game with the background required to overlook these controls. Finally, as even though there are many other smaller issues I would be remiss if I were to not mention this, the ending. Spoiler warning ahead for the rest of the review, if you have read all this way through and do not own this game tdlr; don't buy it, but yeah ending time. Danganronpa V3's ending is, in my honest opinion, the worst ending of any game with a story I've ever yet played. I do not think the plot twist is inherently bad, in fact, I think it has serious potential, and the fact it destroys the player's preconceptions of this universe and these characters brings the player's emotions and Shuichi's closer together. However, in execution, I feel this to be extremely lacking and in a way something that I don't think any story should be, regardless of the plot relevance: insulting to the player. The mockeries of characters used to deliver this surface-level and basic plot twist of "the game you were playing is in fact a game and these characters are not real" feels almost patronizing, and reeks of a jaded team of writers with no remaining passion for the series, its characters, or its fans. The epilogue further worsens things, with this contradictory, asinine and vapid cop-out that the grand reveal, the thing you've just trudged through hours of, might be in itself a lie, opening the door for them to milk the franchise further without making themselves the villains of their own story. While the idea of the epilogue isn't half bad, the idea that it didn't matter what was fiction as long as you got something out of it, that still doesn't erase the feeling that these writers have no remaining care for their franchise and tried their damnedest to erase it and villainize its fans and creators, only to be forced to open the door for potential sequels and ruin the last remaining essence of a point or conclusion to this half-baked narrative. In all, I truly do not recommend this game, and suggest you to not support it financially or otherwise, for the sake of your time and everyone else's. Thank you for reading.

[unstable consumer]

fuck you on about kokichi on top

[-Kurisu]

Maki still on top

[King Sans]

e = mc^2

[andoumn]

I feel the same way, (literally crying on the bed and thinking about deleting the game)