DanganRonpa: Trigger happy Havoc is without a doubt one of the strangest games I’ve played in a long, long time, I mean when I play some Japanese games, I expect a certain degree of crazy, like Disgaea crazy, but not this level of crazy. When added to a genre that I usually enjoy as well, well I guess the closest game would be phoenix wright, well slightly anyway, close in the fact that murder and solving the crime happens, not the rest, not at all.
Some people may notice this title and recognise it correctly as a lesser known PSP game that came out only in Japan, well those lovely guys have finally gave the English readers a taste of this game, though it’s a shame that we only got the first when the Japanese got a remake of both 1 and 2.
So DanganRonpa is, an interesting game, I’m still trying to understand the game from the first chapter, the best way to describe this game is probably one of those old murder mysteries, when there on a boat and someone is the culprit mixed with the insanity that is Lost, not season 1 Lost, more season 4 and 5 Lost. To prove this, we have a bear that is half black and half white who if you go near will explode in your face whilst being locked in a supposedly “Elite school” where you are locked for the rest of your life unless you commit a murder and no one guesses it was you, like I said Lost level of story writing.
The gameplay as you explore this madness is fairly simple, you can either adopt a touch based interface or a “Trigger” based interface, the touch based works in a very similar way to Phoenix wright, there are many things in the world you can interact with and touching them interacts. Trigger based is the same apart from instead of touching the areas on the screen you hold a button and then move the cursor using the analogue sticks which is usually much slower but when you hold down the button it flags on the screen everything that can be looked at which speeds up this process a little.
For actually exploring it’s a basic first person camera that you can rotate the view of the room around a small amount usually around 30degree’s, to see other parts of the room your currently in, once you have finished you can leave the room. When you’re in the corridors the movement usually switches to a free roam style, you can move around freely in your first person view and go where needed. The free roam is simple and I never found myself losing where I was, there is a handy map that helps this even more and can be brought up full screen when needed as well, but as this is how you will be traversing most of the game it’s easy to get used too.
One thing that may be a little unusual at first is the graphical style on play here, all of the game is rendered in an, more than likely expected, Anime stylised presentation, which is something that most gamers will be used to at this point. But what is strange is that when you see other characters in the world there is no illusion of them being a real person and not just 2D, they are quite clearly 2D, ever played Doom? How the sprites would always face the player to give the illusion of 3D? Well that exactly what is happening here. I did find this a little odd at first but it is something that is quickly gotten over, when you enter a new room it all pops up like from a popup book, similar to paper Mario, it’s a pleasing aesthetic that I enjoy.
One aspect of this game I really enjoyed though was the music, it was fantastic and really catchy, it’s not often I enjoy the music on portable games, usually opting in to turn it down to save more battery, but what was here was very enjoyable. None of the characters are fully voiced instead each has a few words they can say at the start when they do start speaking, usually something abstract but fitting to the current mood. This may be a turn off to some, but with such an obscure title I would not want to see the replacement for voice acting that is usually found especially in some translated Japanese games.
Now this game is not there to reinvent the crime genre of current hand held like Phoenix Wright managed too a long way back on the DS, but it does a great job of somehow making the genre thought of for novels your mother reads into something crazy. Of course if this game isn’t something you can get into, there are adaptations of the game as there usually are in Japan, ranging from an Anime series to a Novel so there are other ways to see the story of this game. It gave me a good laugh overall and many wtf moments whilst playing, so I give this game a 4/5 and look forward to the sequel being translated at some point hopefully.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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