For personal reference more than anything else. Just in case though, I do spoil the first two games at various points.

Second time playing through this game after the first time last year. Did the main story on NG+ and alongside it completed all of the characters FTEs (except for the ones I completed in my first playthrough, Gonta, Miu & Maki) (also only the ones you get playing as Shuichi) in either the main game or the Love Across The Universe mode.

Gameplay in this entry is so good and feels like such an improvement over the first two, out of trials its mostly the same but the slapping mechanic is really fun and probably my favourite way to get monocoins. In trials there are a lot of changes, V-Spots are a great addition and help add a little more to the non-stop debates. Lying is one of the best additions as not only does it replace that kinda shit 'hold down one statement and shoot it at another one' thing from the first two games but its just a really interesting idea that seems almost unbelievable that its only just appearing in the third game. I do think that an option to cancel a lie bullet or see what each lie bullet would be without charging the shot should have been added though, I also wish that there were more back routes in the game as they're really fun and provide an extra challenge with the reward of unseen dialogue.

Mass panic debates, debate scrums and the reworking of the truth blade mini-game are all also really good additions, I love argument armaments and I wish that they had some kind of presence in the casino. Psyche taxi is fun enough but kind of long and easy, I will happily take it over the surfing mini-game from the second game though. Mind Mine is just boring and my least favourite mini-game in this game. I do think the game is the easiest one though and for me at least needs to be played on mean difficulty. Another thing about the trials I'm a fan of is the presentation, the trial grounds which just look so good and the UI which is so nice. The school overall looks really good as well and I'm so happy that they went back to a similar style of world from the first game where its just one big world with everything connected. I just think it really helps with the atmosphere and it feels so much easier to get used to.

The soundtrack just might be my favourite in any game I've played, it all sounds amazing. Darkness Time is such a haunting yet beautiful track that really evokes a nighttime feeling and during Chapter 3 really pairs well with the student council employing the curfew making it feel like you're really not supposed to be outside. Any time I hear Closing Argument V3 I just think of the more emotional cases and there's something about it that just feels so final (probably doesn't make sense but I don't have a better way of describing it). Finding Peace Party is an absolute banger. Even the bonus modes music is really good, the Hope of songs and the Ordeal remixes of other songs from the series are all great. There are literally so many songs in this game that the soundtrack had to be split over two volumes and I genuinely think I'm a fan of about 75% of it, which just feels wild.

Case 1:

Storywise I think the first case is one of my favourites in the series, I think I've come to the conclusion that the more emotional cases are the ones that I feel the most positively about and stick in my mind more. It has its problems though, there are a couple of small things that don't make too much sense to me and I think the writing could have been better when it came to Kaede's moments when she's setting up the murder as there are some parts that just don't feel like what gets said properly represents what actually happens. I think for the most part though its fine.

One of the main things I like about this chapter though is just how much is going on and alive it all feels, Kaede & Shuichi doing their thing, Rantaro carrying out his plan, the strategy meeting and the characters in the dining hall seemingly having accepted their deaths. And that's one of the things about this chapter, the threat of the time limit expiring creates such a tense atmosphere that still works even having played this before and knowing what happens.

But the best part for me are the moments between Kaede and Shuichi, I love their conversations together and it kind of hurts seeing Kaede go from the conversation where she mentions wanting to play 'Clair De Lune' for Shuichi because they're both worried but Kaede feels optimistic so she's just trying to make Shuichi feel better to the conversation in the lift where you can just tell she knows there's a good chance the mastermind won't get found out and she'll be executed, so she prepares Shuichi to not just be ready to look after everyone after she goes but to also be ready to call her out as the killer. But the section with the protagonist switch is genuinely fantastic to me, the UI powering down for Kaede and then powering up for Shuichi, the fact its not even a real conversation between the two of them but they just know what each other would be thinking from looking at each others' facial expressions and then just Kaede apologising to everyone even though she was trying to do the right thing. I think her voice actor does a incredibly good job. I really do love the friendship between Kaede and Shuichi because even though they haven't known each other for long, it still feels real. Its a strange circumstance they've found themselves in, but through it they managed to find each other and give each other strength.

As for non story elements, the investigation is actually quite fun, it goes at a good pace and there's quite a lot of humour in it which is really nice. The trial was very fun gameplay wise but there were points in the trial where it did get a little boring I felt, this is a replay though so take that with a grain of salt. Also, during those duller moments, the soundtrack was usually going so at least I had something to enjoy.

As for the characters, Rantaro is a kind of interesting character but only because of what he brings to the plot, his personality is sort of boring, he’s a nice enough guy and a couple of his FTEs are good but the interesting part of him comes from his having been in a prior killing game and being able to remember things that other characters can’t. He could have really been anyone and I don’t think it would have mattered, as long as he was the ultimate survivor. I don’t think its a big issue to have a character like this but it does result in him being one of the weakest characters in this cast for me.

Kaede on the other hand is a character I love, she is such a breath of fresh air compared to Makoto and Hajime, she’s confident, persistent and just an overall great character. Her desire to get everyone out of the killing game no matter what and not allowing shit to get to her is amazing. I think one of the biggest things that draws me to her is just how kind and caring she is, whenever we’ve had a character like this in the first two games they’ve usually just ended up being boring because its all they have or went a bit too far and became annoying, but Kaede manages to not fall into this trap as there is more to her than this. I am admittedly kind of annoyed that she died in chapter 1 not only because she was such a good character and it would have been interesting seeing how she would have fared throughout the rest of the game but also because she’s the first proper female protagonist in one of these games and it just felt different. I really like Shuichi as a protagonist but I just wish Kaede got to last a whole game as well.

Case 2:

There's a lot of great stuff in this case, its kind of hit or miss for me when these games do a 'solve something else before you solve the murder' like in 2-2 and 2-4, but I really like the whole solving a magic trick thing here and I don't think it takes up too much time of the trial. Kirumi's response when she's about to get executed is one of my favourite moments of the series, its so weird that they hadn't done something like that before and having the little detail of her avatar running away with Monokuma chasing after her in the 'Game Over' screen is really nice. I also really like Kokichi's idea of having two potential suspects essentially argue for their innocence against each other and its a shame it didn't actually go anywhere.

I do like this case, which I don't think I could've said when I first played it but it has one massive problem, it is far too long. I genuinely got to a point about 3 quarters in where I had no idea how it was still going and it felt like the whole magic show stuff from the beginning was a different trial completely. I wasn't exactly bored but I also wasn't having a great time with it either. I can't fully explain it either, like it goes from the magic show to the alibis and then the next thing I can think of is discussing the ropeway. It all blends together and I was just waiting for it to end after a while.

Ryoma is a character who I like but I don't feel quite as strong on him as I do a lot of other characters. His FTEs are pretty good even if they feel weirdly serious and tragic compared to everyone else's, I also feel kind of weird about how the game treats his whole 'will to live' plotline. Its an interesting idea for this series but... I don't know.

Kirumi is quite good, she's one of the few characters who I didn't really get much of anything from when I first played the game but this time I felt that I noticed her more often. Her FTEs are great and I kind of love that a character as normal seeming as her gets some of the weirdest shit attached to her character, her being revealed as the secret Prime Minister of Japan is exactly the kind of shit I come to this series for. My biggest gripe with her is that she kind of sounds like the female text to speech voice at times, which sort of fits I guess but it did take me out of it a little bit. However she sounds great when she's just losing it after being found out as the culprit.

Case 3:

I quite like what a lot of this case is going for, the inclusion of a cult is a really good idea for this series, although I think I would have liked it a bit more if the storyline lasted a little longer as it just feels a bit rushed even with the build up to it from the last chapter. The idea that one character could have killed another and then that character gets killed by the spirit of the person they killed is pretty interesting as well. The stuff with the Necronomicon is good as well and while it doesn't interest me much as a motive, I do like that it shows how different characters think, like with a couple of them saying that they could bring someone back to life to then kill them if they need to later on as it makes the conversations more interesting as not everyone is saying the same thing. The Caged Child song is a whole bop and genuinely one of my favourites from the game. Kokichi's death fake out is iconic.

Unfortunately I thought the class trial for this case just sucked, gameplay wise its fun but storywise it was just so uninteresting to me. I was more interested in it when I first played it so maybe it just doesn't work to be replayed but even then there are other cases that still work for me on a replay so this one not doing that is kind of a shame. I will say though, I think its less to do with the actual mystery as that part is pretty decent despite being on the simple side which really doesn't help with the longer trials the games have been doing since the second one. The main problem I have is the way the trial changes direction, it feels a conversation is going somewhere but then Kaito pipes up with some bullshit about believing in each other and the rest of the characters go along with it, unnaturally shifting where the conversation goes. The other games did this as well but it felt like it came at a point when they were using their belief to push through what could be a difficult situation (the characters having to question Mikan in 2-3) but in this game it feels like its instead used to rule something out without doing any real investigation. There's a point where the group is questioning whether or not Tenko killed herself and tried to disguise her death so the rest of the characters will vote for the wrong person and all die, its certainly on the outlandish side but rather than actually discuss it, they just instead decide that she couldn't do that because they believe in what she said before she died. Kokichi tries to say that she could have been lying but gets shot down because the other characters want to believe in her so much. I really like Tenko and I believe that what she said was genuine but it feels incredibly short-sighted to just dismiss a potential thing that could have happened without having the proper discussion beforehand. It feels like the game needed to bring up this possibility but didn't know how to prove it wasn't true so it just did this and to me just comes across as shoddy writing. There was something about this class trial as a whole that just felt like it was worse written than the prior two, I can't really explain it, its just weird.

Angie is such an interesting character to me, I think she's just generally likeable but the game makes her an antagonist of sorts and it works. I do think that the game could have done a much better job with her admittedly though, it seems a bit too focused on wringing comedy out of the 'isn't she and the culture of her home strange' which alongside the whole Atua being an actual God in the real world thing feels pretty bad and uncomfortable at points. Its a shame because I think her relationship with Atua is one of the more interesting things about her, I really like where the game went with it too, as it doesn't exactly confirm or deny whether she truly believes in Atua or not but at the same time, her just being a teenage girl who hasn't been told no before and that's why she constantly does as she pleases feels pretty grounded compared to a lot of things in this series. I feel like if the writing for her was just better she could have been one of my favourite characters but at the end of the day I think she's good and I do like her character.

Tenko is a character that I really like, when I first played the game I found her 'degenerate male' shtick to be quite funny but I wasn't sure how I felt about the rest of her personality, this time though, I thought she was great. She wants to help her friends get stronger and she doesn't exactly get it right every time, but you can tell she cares and she's trying her best in her own way. Its also easy to see how much love she has for Himiko, not just in a romantic way but as a friend, their last couple of interactions together are really good. As for how I felt about the 'degenerate male' stuff this time around, I still enjoyed it and there were some very funny lines that I hadn't noticed when I first played, but I do think the game relies on this joke a little too much to the point where it feels like every time she talks it will come up (this isn't only a her problem though, Tsumugi, Himiko, Korekiyo and Keebo are a few other characters who feel like they're repeating themselves a bit too much). Tenko's FTEs are quite good as well, they're not my favourite ones but they're all either entertaining or interesting. One more thing about her though is kind of to do with the game as a whole and its how much the game seems to acknowledge the player's expectations and either meet or subvert them in many different instances. Because of this though it results in a genuinely lovely if cliché as all fuck moment when the characters are about to do the séance and Tenko gets to say goodbye to Himiko, its cliché as I said and seems to be a bit of foreshadowing for the main twist of the game but I just really love this moment.

Korekiyo is a character I somewhat like but he has the same problem that Angie does where the idea of the character is a lot better than the actual character. The 'finding beauty in everything' and him connecting everything to his interest in anthropology gets a little old, although he does have some interesting thoughts and lines throughout though. I quite like his motivation and him saying that he was pleased when Tenko (without knowing) basically sacrificed herself out of love for Himiko as it meant that his sister was getting a very good friend, really took me off guard and made me feel a way I can't comprehend or describe, but it certainly wasn't a positive feeling. I think my biggest problem with him though is the fact that once he gets found out as the killer of Angie and his Tulpa begins to show, the game almost doesn't know what to do with him and relies on the Tulpa and his relationship with his sister rather than go anywhere interesting with him. There's a couple of points where it seems like he wasn't either aware that he killed Angie, he seems genuinely freaked out in these moments and his sister has to calm him down, this seems kind of interesting but it doesn't really go further than this (which makes a level of sense considering the next case does the whole culprit not knowing they killed someone thing). I think the game using the Tulpa isn't the best idea as it feels like it needs more of an explanation of what is happening which the game just doesn't do outside of possibly pointing to how he developed it in his FTEs. It may just be because I'm really unfamiliar with what a Tulpa is though as I only learnt about it from reading what other people were saying about this game after I played it the first time around. His relationship with his sister is weird and I wish the game didn't show that one image, but at the same time its kind of interesting and a bit tragic after hearing his FTEs and hearing how much he loves her (not in a romantic way though) and knowing that she took advantage of that.

Case 4:

This case is so good and I really love a lot of things about it. First is the virtual world, the setting is already great and evokes a lot of detective fiction vibes, I also think the art style is great too and the characters look cute while still being reminiscent of their normal designs. I'm also a big fan of how much the game itself and how it works ties into the mystery. One of my favourite types of horror is where the horror comes from the idea of what it would be like to be in a horrific situation. My best example is 'The Long Dream' by Junji Ito, something about having to live through an incredibly long amount of time, anytime you go to sleep and not being able to do anything about is horrifying. So, for me the idea of realising that you killed someone and being assured a painful death with no way out is fucking scary. The fact that it happens to Gonta of all characters as well makes it so much worse, watching him struggling to accept what he's done and not even understanding it by the end but having to put his faith in the hands of his friends was just upsetting.

The tension in this case is another highlight as you can really feel just how much everyone is at their breaking point which ends up causing people to act out. I do think that some things come out of nowhere though, there didn't really feel like a steady rise with Miu's desire to leave or Gonta's frustration with not being able to help everyone to the extent that he wants. They had mentioned this things before but it felt like a constant that stayed at the same level and then all of a sudden these issues are really impacting them.

I really like the class trial here as well, the main reason being the turning point shortly after Kokichi announced Gonta was the culprit and Shuichi is beginning to question Gonta himself. This kind of goes into my issues with Kaito (who I'll eventually get to) but it should really be brought up here, Kaito dominated a lot of the second and third trials which resulted in too many instances of him destroying any hope of an interesting discussion to just endlessly go into one about how he wants to believe in his friends and how he's going to, which for some reason the game takes seriously. The point where Shuichi actually goes 'no we really need to think about this' is genuinely great and makes the rest of the class trial even better than it was before because not only is it less repetitive, having the 'difficult' conversations is so much more interesting as it gives the player more to chew on and think about but also gives the characters more character development or at the very least more to do. Also Shuichi essentially telling Kokichi to fuck off and then treating Gonta with kindness and love just before the closing argument might just be my favourite moment from the game.

Miu is easily my favourite character from this series and one of my favourite characters in gaming. She makes me think of characters like Chanel Oberlin, Eric Cartman and Byakuya Togami, just incredibly unlikeable pieces of shit but are just so entertaining to watch. There are so many quotes of hers that just stay in my mind and are really funny to me. I don't even really think she does much in the game, sure she helps out in a few trials either with her inventions or observations and her growing desire to leave the killing game is what sets off the events of the fourth case but she mostly just seems to be there for comedic purposes and to cause some friction in the group. One of my biggest issues with Goodbye Despair was how many characters could fit in to the box of just not really offering much outside of entertainment and maybe an incredibly small amount of character development or story, but where that problem was present with the majority of characters in that game, in this one she's really only one of a few who do this and it creates a nice change of pace from the more serious stuff with the other characters. I do quite like how in chapter 4 though, Miu seems to be doing the dirty jokes more and more frequently as she's clearly getting more and more desperate to leave and stressing over her plan succeeding, its a neat thing and really shows off how freaked out she is. I used to be quite unsure on her not being able to handle any criticism herself and having moments of weakness, but I've sort of come around on it because its pretty funny and I think its good that her character isn't literally just one thing the entire time.

Gonta is another one of my favourite characters from this game, I love how sweet he is and how important helping his friends is to him. His backstory is definitely weird but I do quite like it, especially him wanting to become a gentleman so that his forest family can be proud of him, it doesn't make the most sense in the world but it is really nice. I think he can be kinda one note in the same way that Miu can and I don't think it works as well as it does with her as what she is actually saying varies a bit, whereas Gonta can very much just be 'I want to be a gentleman' and 'I want to protect my friends' without going as in depth as it could. His response to finding out he killed Miu is heartbreaking but it is such a strong moment when he accepts it.

Case 5:

I really like this case, the section where everyone learns the "truth" behind the outside world and then Shuichi in a state of depression just doesn't do anything in his room while days pass with only the Monokuma Theaters playing really leaves an impact. The unsolvable crime is really good for a case idea and I think it mostly works quite well. I think there are some parts that just lose me though and it does make this case confuse me to an extent. Another issue I have is that I think the emotional aspect of this case doesn't really work for me, a lot of it seems to be hinged on the player caring about Kaito and his relationships with Maki & Shuichi but I don't really like Kaito and those relationships slightly piss me off so, eh? Its a really good case for both Shuichi and Kokichi though. Also, the characters bringing up shit like Junko, the Remnants of Despair and hope & despair while Kaito & Kokichi have no clue what they're even talking about is so funny to me, especially that scene where Maki brings that stuff up to Kokichi and he is just confused as fuck.

Something this case does pretty often that the game does a lot of is implement or reference things from the first game. The case feels a fair bit like 1-5, Maki attempting to get everyone killed by calling herself the culprit is a lot like Aoi in 1-4 (even if their reasons for doing so are different). The big moment where the characters are standing at the vault door as it opens is a clear reference to the end of the first game. Kaito's execution is literally just the very first execution again (if changed up a bit). I think that sometimes it does go a bit too far and could do with being a little more original, but at the same time I really like it as its the final game (for now at least) and I do enjoy the callbacks and it also kind of works with the whole 'this is the 53rd of these and we're kind of running out of ideas' thing.

Kokichi was easily my most hated character of the series when I first played this game, I despised him and all the shit he would pull just fucked me off. But this time, he has become one of my favourite characters, a little shit who keeps creating drama and pissing everyone off is exactly the kind of character I want in this game. I think I've come to look at him more as an antagonist rather than someone who I was trying to like and he excels at being an incredibly fun villain. I also noticed how much he was saying things I agreed with this time as well, he says the things that the other characters would be too afraid to say and is willing to put forth ideas even if they get him flack. His honesty and dishonesty is something I kind of struggle with though, I do enjoy this part of him but I can't fully tell when he's telling the truth or not, which I understand is the point and it makes him an interesting character to think about and try to decipher.

Kaito is my least favourite character in the game, I can see what the developers were trying to do with him and there are things about him I do like but I think the way he is and the way he acts just doesn't work for me. A character who is always looking on the bright side and wants to help their friends grow as people is a commendable thought (although this playthrough made me realise that they kinda did the same thing with Tenko but I think they made it work a lot better with her) but the game also wants him to be the idiot who is quite brash and goes too far down that end. Kaito has a habit of opening his mouth and coming out with the dumbest shit far too often, I genuinely think he may be the dumbest character in the mainline games, like sure characters like Yasuhiro, Ibuki, Kazuichi and Akane are all dumb as shit but at least they have some semblance of self-preservation. There's a scene in the first Scary Movie where a character comes across two signs, one marked safety, the other marked death, looks at them for a second and then goes for the one marked death in a joke about how dumb characters in horror films are, this is the best way I have of describing how Kaito acts throughout the game. He will hear something like Maki telling him she is an assassin who has killed many people and then proceed to poke and prod at her, drag her to places she doesn't want to be in and insult her multiple times, all because he believes in her, with literally no valid reason for this other than him being into her. Characters who've proven to repeatedly fuck the other characters over will come up with a plan and Kaito is the first to go 'hey guys let's do what they say because they're our friend and we need to believe in them'. The worst thing is that the other characters do listen to him and I think the way his actions are framed and how the game treats him, the player is meant to find this endearing (if a little stupid), unfortunately, I just was constantly bewildered and at times kind of annoyed because it makes no sense and it gets so repetitive because he repeats the same shit over and over again.

Then there's the issue of him being brash, he quite often acts like an arsehole in the hopes that it will help his friends get stronger and inspire them. In the first chapter after Kaede has just died, he attacks Shuichi because Shuichi didn't stand up to Monokuma because he was trying to deal with the fact that the person he got closest to in the game and had helped him a lot, not only killed someone under his nose but would be killed for it herself. I get wanting Shuichi to fight back against Monokuma and to honour Kaede's wish but at the same time, he's in the middle of grieving. Kaito does apologise for this but continues to act in a similar manner throughout the rest of the game. Maki makes it abundantly clear that she wants to be left alone but Kaito doesn't really give a shit, so he pushes her boundaries and pulls some weird shit like in the third case where he forcibly embraces her because he's scared. The fact that all of this works and she is grateful by the end of it isn't the point when he didn't know that it would work and to anyone it would just seem like he's not taking no for an answer and doesn't care what she wants as its what he only thinks she wants.

I don't think he's an awful character or anything and I've definitely come across worse (even in this series, I think Mikan and Kazuichi are a lot worse than this). As I said, I do like that his intentions are good even if his actions aren't, there's also a few scenes with him (like the one between him and Shuichi in the hangar in Chapter 5) that I think are really nice as well and I quite like his FTEs too. His FTEs felt like a bit of a mess to me for a while, the last one is really good and he comes across as so reasonable and caring in a way that he just doesn't throughout most of his screen time, but the other events just felt kind of out there. However, for one or two of them he talks with Shuichi about all of the people that he has had as sidekicks, he lists all of these amazing people and states that it was because of him that they got to where they are now. To begin with it just seemed like bragging, but afterwards I thought about it and I came to a different conclusion. I think its not a stretch to say that these people probably weren't his sidekicks and I felt like the reason he said they were, was because he probably thought that if Shuichi believed him, then Shuichi would feel more confident in the fact that Kaito could help him as well, as Shuichi can be kinda pessimistic at times. Even if Kaito doesn't think that Shuichi will believe him then instead its probably just that he hopes that if his statements get too out there then it might amuse Shuichi and at least relieve him of some stress or something. I don't know for sure at the end of the day and it could just be bragging, but this feels kind of in line with Kaito and I think its pretty nice, so I like thinking that this is why he's doing this.

Case 6:

Its kinda difficult for me to view this as just one whole thing considering how different it feels from before the big reveal and after it. The first half is quite good though, if the game had ended with the 16 characters being the last of humanity and forced to kill each other in the killing game being the actual main plot, I think I would have really liked it as I do enjoy endings that are quite dark and ironic sometimes. It also got to me in this case how freaky the flashback lights are and how they're used, having random fake memories implanted in your head and then learning that they're not even real is kind of terrifying. Also scenes like the fake one after the wardrobe change and the interview scenes with Shuichi, Kaede & Kaito (if they are fake) make it even more creepy as it seems to be implied that it is actually the characters themselves doing it yet it appears to have been done without their consent and they have no recollection of it.

The second half of the trial though, I love. I really like fourth wall breaks when they’re done well and this is so up my alley, it also helps that there’s a lot of great moments and a lot to chew on and think about as well. The protagonist switching, the solution to a few minigames being to just not play and the argument armament. There is a lot to think about when it comes to what the game is saying, I don’t fully get all of it but since I first played this game a year ago it has occasionally popped into my head and I still find new ways to look at things or I’ll see some discourse to do with other games where people are saying or implying things that strongly resemble some of the argument armament quotes which make this game feel weirdly prophetic or very observational. I love how much of an importance this game puts on the power of fiction, how it has the courage to say that (for now at least) its time for this series to stop and I also love how it isn’t scared of pissing people off in order to say what it wants to say. There is one pretty hefty issue though and that’s the repetition, the game has had this issue already with pieces of information constantly getting repeated (especially with the psyche taxis) and also a few of the characters regularly saying the same line or a variation of it, almost like its a catchphrase. It seems to be more of a present issue in this trial though as its already quite long and it becomes a lot more noticeable when its just one word getting repeated, in this case, fiction or fictional. Tsumugi mentions the situation the characters are in being fictional so often and it gets really irritating, it initially seems like its because its straight after the revelation and the game is trying to make sure you understand how shocking it is but she just keeps doing it well after that point as well. Overall though I think I can easily say that I love this case despite my problems with it.

Tsumugi feels like a bit of a mess in all honesty, she’s really boring for ages but once she’s revealed as the villain she’s so good and it makes me wish that the game put the effort into making her more likeable beforehand so that it would have been a bigger twist of the knife once her role is shown. After I played the game for the first time I remembered the part in the fourth trial where she questions Shuichi’s lie about checking the salon for Kokichi and while I already really liked that part, the twist really improved it as it was clear she was just trying to cause drama for views or whatever. This made me curious if she did more things like this and I just hadn’t noticed, so when I played this time I was keeping an eye on her, but she didn’t really. She does do this thing where she asks questions to add to the mystery or repeats what other people say for dramatic effect and you can just see the cut to commercials straight after some of her lines but other than that, the only thing that stood out to me was how she latches onto Gonta. Gonta being an incredibly likeable character and her obviously knowing that he will be well liked makes her constantly be nice to him, stand up for him and look out for him, it feels really disingenuous, but there is a moment towards the end of the fourth trial where he’s practically known as the culprit and Kaito comes out with a reason why it can’t be him, this happening before Shuichi states why it doesn’t matter and that he is still the culprit. Tsumugi says to him when he’s a little confused, that he’s not the culprit anymore and congratulates him, in the moment I wasn’t sure whether she was genuinely trying to make him feel better or not, but after this last trial it seems very likely that she was letting him have a moment of hope before being brought back down to despair again as she’s kind of a piece of shit. Something else though is her FTEs, I think that they were my favourite out of any of the characters, the first one is sort of funny but the rest are really good because its just so nice to hear someone speak so passionately about something they love, talking about the good memories that that thing has brought them. I think I do really like her character but it is difficult considering how dull she can be (even if that is the point).

K1-B0 is a decent enough character, I really like him being a voice of reason in the group and not letting feelings get in the way of working out the truth in the class trials. I love the jokes about him being kinda crappy and having some cassette tape recording function or a polaroid camera as some of his best features, it makes me feel really bad for him but also find him absolutely adorable. His persecution complex is just kind of there, a few good lines come of it but otherwise its just his catchphrase which I can sort of tune out. I don’t really like how the rest of the characters treat him though, Kokichi and Miu I get but everyone really just seems to see him as below them and it stays like this until chapter 5 where he risks his life to save them and then the next chapter has him spouting about their friendship, it just doesn’t really make much sense to me and I’m confused as to why he treats them as well as he does.

Himiko is good, I really like her character development and how it feels like actual effort has gone into it so that there is clear growth, I also enjoyed one of her interactions with Shuichi where she’s trying to go a bit too fast with changing as it felt right that she would make mistakes and not really know how to change given how she seems to have acted like this for a while. I also quite liked her FTEs for the most part as well. I do find her design and voice to be unfortunate though, I really don’t like that she looks and sounds so much like a small child, its a shame because I think the voice acting for her is really good but among all the other characters she just feels out of place.

Maki is quite good as well, I think her backstory is really interesting and like with Himiko, I really enjoy how present her character development feels. Her relationship with Kaito is neat but I really like how she is able to bond with Shuichi after Kaito’s death as they were all friends, its a dynamic I feel like I don’t see all that often so it made for a nice change of pace. My biggest thing that makes me not think that she’s great or anything though is how she feels quite similar to Kyoko but really not as good.

Shuichi, I love as he grows so much throughout the game and he hits this really nice balance of being kind yet assertive when he needs to, there are so many moments that stick out as just being great character moments, like the ones I mentioned earlier but also how he acts during this final trial. I also really liked how he truly comes across as a detective even when he’s just having normal conversations with people, quite a few of the FTEs have him kind of interrogating whoever he’s talking to and making deductions in his head which I thought was cool and helps make him feel like a more solid character. I’m not the biggest fan of his relationship with Kaito, especially how he seems to get quite easily influenced by him at times that end up feeling like a regression of the growth he had shown up until those points. Even with this, I still think that Shuichi is a great character and along with Kaede, goes into my personal favourites when it comes to video game protagonists.

Overall, I love this game, it has quite a few problems but I think everything is just so good that it makes up for it. I do think that I need to take a bigger break between now and the next time I play it though as I have learnt from this experience that one year is not enough for a mystery game this dense and long. I don’t think how often I play it truly matters though as its something that has really stayed with me since I first played it and I know that it will continue to have a special place in my heart.

“Everything in this world has a writing credit. All our words and actions are just a bunch of lies.”

I already have a review written for Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, but on reflection I don’t think I said anything worth reading in it. I haven’t even played the game again, but after watching a friend play through the whole thing and taking notes all the while, I really got the urge to write a whole bunch more about this thing. I’ve come to believe that it has one of the best (or at least most interesting) scripts in a video game and it deserves to be mentioned on any list of the greatest video games of all time. I know how ludicrous a thing that is to say about a weird anime murder game where a busty girl makes a robot analyze her poop, but try to bear with me on this. Danganronpa V3 functions great as a murder-mystery game in the vein of previous Danganronpa or Ace Attorney games, but where it excels is in being the Ultimate expression of the joys of the video game medium itself. It accomplishes this in several key ways: As a vicious takedown of low-effort fiction, as a celebration of the cathartic power of creativity, and as a meditation on grief and escapism. We’re gonna take it one at a time.

“If fiction has the power to touch people’s hearts, then that power can change the world!”

Danganronpa V3 respects the hell out of its audience, but it also knows them better than they know themselves. In the final trial of Danganronpa V3, the game drops one last bombshell plot twist on us: In the world of Danganronpa, Danganronpa is a fictional franchise. The first two games, spinoffs, animes, everything the player has come to know and believe and discuss with fellow fans, none of it was ‘real.’ It was all an in-universe franchise created to make money, one that took off and became bigger and more morally bankrupt with its success. Eventually the Danganronpa franchise stopped being games animes and novels and became ‘Ultimate Real Fiction’ - a reality show where people are mindwiped, have their personalities altered to become ‘more Danganronpa-like,’ and locked in a dome and forced to kill one another for the amusement of Danganronpa fans. This twist does any things: It’s hilarious, outrageous, and also very upsetting for any Danganronpa fan playing V3 who has come to love the franchise to the point of discussing it on Reddit or cosplaying characters. There’s a reason that the big bad is the Ultimate Cosplayer after all - she’s the character who most obviously represents the kind of person who would get super into an anime franchise to the point of it taking over a significant portion of their life. Danganronpa V3 becomes a direct message to these people about the very nature of media like Danganronpa: “This is not healthy.” Repeated exposure to the same tropes, to graphic violence and misery, to fanservicey sexual exploitation and droning repetitive character developments can have a very real impact on the kind of person who would thoughtlessly consume it without any critical thinking. Just look at Star Wars fans in 2024. In the modern age fandom has become a clique that is intensely dismissive of anything other than what The Thing They Like already is, including new entries in that Thing They Like that doesn’t shut up and play the hits. Danganronpa V3 flirts fleetingly with radical new ideas - a female protagonist, reviving a previously killed character, a double murder with two culprits only one of whom gets punished, but always finds a copout to keep things familiar. Wouldn’t want to risk upsetting our core audience by getting too out of the box, right? It’s easy to look at this as a copout in itself, but the game makes its stance here frightfully obvious. During that final trial, Danganronpa fans flood the screen with comments about what has transpired during the game, like reading a reddit livewatch thread. “This is why I wanted Kaede to live,” says one such comment. “Show me the despair ending,” says another. “If it’s not fun, it’s not Ronpa!” says another still. As the final hours play out and Shuichi’s plan of group suicide to permanently end the Danganronpa franchise begins to solidify, Tsumugi even voices the concerns of the Danganronpa fandom at large for all to hear: “Don’t just end Danganronpa! We supported you, you owe us!”

That feeling of ownership permeated every element of Danganronpa V3. From the deliberately out of place fanservice scenes that are all written as though the characters involved have become possessed and lost their sense of self, to the grotesque punishments that are largely a significant step up in brutality over the previous games, down the finer points of the game’s narrative progression and character arcs, everything plays out the way a Danganronpa fan experiencing this adventure would want. Until the end, where playing on the player’s empathy and affections towards this game’s cast is the central narrative device used to end the series. Shuichi speaks directly to the audience of Danganronpa fans - directly to the player - and his words land. He appeals for reason over fanaticism and for freedom over the capitalistic bloat of endless franchising. The player, despite being a huge fan of the series, supports him. We want to see Shuichi win, because Shuichi winning is Kaede winning, and didn’t we all want Kaede to stick around and achieve her goals? We are convinced by Danganronpa V3 that the Danganronpa franchise needs to end - that it deserves to end. Seven years later, it’s still dormant. I’m sure there are execs in suits chain smoking cigars trying to get another mainline Danganronpa entry out the door. Maybe it’ll be announced five minutes after I post this. But as of this writing, the finality of it all rings true. You truly believe that Danganronpa is over, and you truly believe that you wanted it to be.

“This is fiction. There is no greater meaning. No greater meaning to death. No greater meaning to life.”

So Danganronpa V3 spends a lot of time talking shit about Danganronpa, and about factory-line media in general. A lot of people who play the game come away thinking that it hates itself, it hates video game sequels in general, and it definitely hates the people who enjoy them. It certainly does feel antagonistic, but there’s a lot of optimism in there too. Hope to match the despair, if you will. If there’s any one thing V3 is absolutely certain of, it’s the power of lies to influence truth in both positive and negative ways. Kokichi Ouma is one of the game’s main characters, but even when he’s sacrificing himself to save the remaining cast from the killing game he never feels like a good guy. His character is one of chaos and obfuscation. He will lie about every single event in the game, lie about every single feeling he feels, for the sake of manipulating the characters for his own benefit. Often that benefit is just a troll-y “wouldn’t it be funny if I make these losers think I’m sad when I’m not” sort of thing, but not always. His desire to lie for the purpose of hiding a very real truth from people grows more and more as the game goes on, culminating in his sacrifice being clouded over such an absurd web of lies that it takes the surviving characters hours of discussion to even realize that he’s no longer alive, let alone decide whatever his objective may have been. Kokichi’s aims with his lies are convoluted and shifting, it’s impossible to determine what side he’s on and what he seeks to achieve with his actions, but Kokichi isn’t the only liar in this cast. New to Danganronpa V3 is the ability for the player to lie during the trials, presenting false evidence or faking testimonies in an effort to steer the conversation in the direction that they think will lead to the truth. It’s a really cool system, and I’ve gotta give props for taking one of the game’s core thematic ideas and gamifying it in such an interesting way - especially in a Visual Novel where ‘gameplay’ is barely a factor for the vast majority of the runtime. These lies are often necessary to reach the truth of the case, and it makes for a fascinating moment in every trial when you realize you’re going to need to start making shit up if you want to figure out what really happened.

It’s easy to think of this idea of “lies being just as valuable as the truth” with some real ideological concerns. We live in a world where only a few short years ago a lot of families across the US were torn apart by QAnon. Conspiracy theories run rampant and have real political impact nowadays in a way that seemed laughable only ten years ago. But I don’t think the game is arguing lies are great or that believing lies is good - just that they can be necessary. A good lie that sweetens the blow of a bitter truth isn’t all bad, and may even be a coping mechanism you use to process the loss of something important. Like telling a kid that their dog is sleeping instead of dead, so that they aren’t devastated before they understand the concept of death. A lie is a tool for affecting human beings, the morality lies in how you use it. This game celebrates the idea that good stories can be used to impress positive messages onto the audience, altering the way a person who interacts with the story sees and empathizes with other people or plights. It’s a nice thought, and one the game spends the bulk of its final hour ramming into your head. But it does so with such conviction that it’s impossible not to be convinced. “Sure,” you say to the crazy video game where the robot bear and caveman, “I believe that this story can positively impact my brain chemistry in a permanent way.” And you’d be right! I came away from V3 feeling, of all things, more confident in the stories that I was writing. Maybe that’s why it worked so well on me - maybe this theme is more impactful for the wannabe creatives than it is for the people who just want to play and love the video game. Who knows? But even with this ultimately positive message reinforced so strongly at the game’s finale, the journey there is riddled with sadness that feels very real, even if it is all a lie.

“Why do we have to feel that sadness over and over and over again? Even if this is fiction, the pain in my heart is real. The sadness that I feel when I lose the people I love is real.”

For all its talk of truths and lies, I find V3 to be just as strongly about grief and how we cope with it. Its characters are shut down and cut apart, again and again. A friend is killed, a friend betrays them, their principles are shattered, their core beliefs are proven wrong. Every single chapter, significant losses are endured by our characters. And it all takes a toll - by the game’s end, our remaining characters are utterly destroyed. Our main protagonist spends multiple days unable to will himself to move, contemplating suicide. Another on several occasions lashes out with violence against those who have hurt her, fully aware that she will get herself killed in the process. The entire game is spent in a haze of grief and mourning, as soon as Rantaro is killed and Kaede processes what she’s done. But it doesn’t focus on the despair of our characters as much as you might think - it focuses a lot on the various coping mechanisms that they use to push on, coping mechanisms that are easily translatable to the real world. Shuichi deals with the loss of Kaede by beginning a routine with Kaito (and eventually Maki), forming new friendships along the way.. Hitting the gym is a pretty common coping mechanism when upsetting things happen, so seeing a parallel here makes sense. Hitting the gym is also a known booster of confidence, which ties in great with Shuichi taking Kaede’s last words to heart. He’s found a way to carry her wish forward - by enacting the changes in himself that she wanted to see, he’s found a way to process her loss and move forward. Elsewhere, around the game’s halfway point when several likable characters have passed, we see religious fervor overtake the cast. Approximately half of the remaining characters form a cult, worshiping an unseen God who they believe will free them of their suffering. It’s a fascinating turn for a game like this, nothing like it happens in the previous entries, and it makes a lot of sense. After being ripped from your lives and forced to watch friends kill and betray one another, turning to a deity who you believe can make all that go away and fighting against those who won’t is a pretty normal response. Further escapism comes in Chapter 4 when the characters, unable to cope any longer with the reality of their situation, attempt to transfer their consciousness into a video game where killing is impossible. But when even that last ditch effort to move on strikes out, we see them cling not to positives of the present or even the possibilities of the future, but the promises of the past. Once they’re made to remember being Hope’s Peak students, they feel a renewed vigor. They are now able to cope with where they are because of who they are, cope with what they’re going through because of what they’ve already been through. Even Korekiyo’s outrageous backstory winds up being an example of a character coping with loss. Every chapter we see coping mechanisms introduced and torn down, and the cycle repeats until the game’s final moments.

“There’s only one way to get through this awful feeling. If anyone’s gonna help you, it’ll be her… in your memories.”

Through the game’s first trial, its developers are able to subsume the player in its two primary emotions: Doubt and grief. The player feels betrayal, having been lied to by the game about its protagonist. They have grown to love Kaede, not just Kaede but what Kaede represents - for both the Danganronpa franchise and the medium of video games as a whole, where strong-willed playable women are still a sizable minority of protagonists. Along with that, the player feels grief, a strong sense of loss for Kaede and her aforementioned meaning. Nobody blames Kaede, instead, they turn that blame towards the creators of the fiction that would devise such a cruel loss. In feeling this way, we have fallen into Danganronpa V3’s trap. By investing the player in Shuichi’s character development, and replacing his blooming relationship with Kaede with a similar one between Maki and Kaito, the game deftly transplants some of the player’s’ feelings for Kaede elsewhere. It gives you something new to latch onto, to mitigate that feeling of loss.

The game has provided even the player with a coping mechanism.

All of our empathy and closeness with Kaede has seamlessly been transferred to Shuichi without our even realizing it. We are made to feel his feelings for completely different reasons. Where Shuichi grapples with believing in his abilities and in carrying forward Kaede’s wish, the player grapples with respecting Kaede’s wish for Shuichi to carry on. We want Shuichi to surprise us, to grow and to become a character that can make her loss feel worth something. The game tricks us into rooting for Shuichi the same way Kaede did, even though the player was conceptually betrayed by Shuichi’s very role in the plot. It’s a magic trick. Just as the game’s characters go through arcs where they figure out how to cope with their tragedies, the player is made to cope with the losses by grasping at what remains of Danganronpa V3 and placing their faith in its ability to make it all worthwhile. This all stands in stark contrast to Monokuma’s blase attitude towards the deaths of his own children. It separates him from the game’s characters and players, and when the curtain rises in that final trial and we see the operation behind it all, we know intuitively that there is an ideological wrongness to it that stands in stark opposition to everything we have spent 40 hours investing in.

In several key moments, the game plays an excerpt from the unfortunately named Claude Debussy’s piano movement ‘Clair de Lune.’ Kaede mentions the piece by name, calling it a calming piece. Its deployment in the game is anything but - clearly meant to emphasize feelings of sadness and heartbreak whenever it arises. I think of Clair de Lune as sort of a codex to view the game’s themes through. Clair de Lune starts with that immediately iconic and sober melody, a slow start and stop that evokes that feeling you get when you meditate on a certain sadness. As the piece progresses, it becomes violent, a tidal wave ripping across a calm sea. It’s fierce, unpleasant, downright annoying to listen to. Eventually it calms, and the third and final part of the piece begins: A reprise of the introduction, but in a different register. I think that’s an audio version of what Danganronpa V3 is saying about grief and how we process it. Our default state is interrupted by horror, throwing everything awry. Loss of income, the death of a loved one, the betrayal of a lover, there are many forms that horror can take and they all result in chaos and doubt and pain. In the end, it settles down, and we adjust to the new way things are. We return to our default state, but we are changed. We look at things a little differently. We think and act a little differently. We’ll always be ourselves, but we’ll never be the same person we once were. We’ve been revised.

In the end, we have no choice but to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off. All the shit we endure. All the pain and strife, the self-doubt and self-hate. The pain caused by others and by ourselves. The hopelessness of facing another day in the bodies we inhabit. It’s all too much. It’s a weight that stamps us out, pressing defeat upon us like we are cattle being branded. But there is one saving grace. One power that pain does not have over us: Choice. Misery cannot kill us alone. It is us as individuals who have the ability to choose whether or not to give into it, or to live a life open to joy. Our lives are our own.

“Why… am I here? Why did I even survive?”

Danganronpa V3 exists as a singular expression of feeling in the medium of video games. Using the concepts of video game franchises and the fandoms they cultivate, Danganronpa V3 is able to use uniquely immersive storytelling tricks to put the player in the shoes of both the game’s protagonists and antagonists at the same time. It runs the player through emotions of grief and persistence, developing and broadening those concepts until ultimately the player is mourning the Danganronpa IP itself, while celebrating that they saw it through to the end. If there’s any one reverberating thought that the player takes away from V3, it’s on the power of words. Danganronpa V3 has made us fight against it and against ourselves using the nature of its franchise, genre, medium, and the player’s own desires as weapons. There can never be a creative work like this again, because no creative work is as uniquely positioned as Danganronpa V3 is to tell a story like this. If it came from a franchise without the celebrated twisty absurdity as Danganronpa, all of the goofy plot reveals would feel out of place. If it came at any other point in the Danganronpa franchise, none of its self-effacing ribbing would feel apt. V3 makes no sense as a second game in a franchise, hell it barely makes sense as a third. But it makes perfect sense as a third mainline entry after a series of loudly disliked spinoffs. Without radical change, the Danganronpa IP was destined for a slow suicide, and we know how echo chamber fandoms feel about radical change.

Still, the very very end of Danganronpa V3 is not one of desecration. The fourth wall breaks and our trio of survivors are left to explore the world outside of Danganronpa. They ponder the impact the ending of Danganronpa will have on its fans, hoping that the world will positively receive what they’ve just done. Hoping that their fiction will inspire real people in some way, to better themselves and to better the lives of others. It’s a shockingly saccharine final message for a game so drenched in innocent blood, but it’s the only one that makes sense. The first time I played V3 I thought this epilogue was unnecessary and maybe even took away from the game’s message about destroying the Danganronpa IP. Over several revisits, I’ve found that this epilogue is the whole point, and I was misreading the message. It isn’t about destroying the Danganronpa IP. It’s about creating an ending to it that recontextualizes its existence as something more than schlock. I’m not sure if this franchise deserves it, but I do think it gets there in the end. No, I know it does.

“Was this lie able to change something? Was this lie able to change someone? If it was able to change even the smallest thing… Then the story isn’t over.”