"Quit bein' so gloomy! This is the year of the Jets! Fuck the Patriots!"

I loved 95% of this game and it was going to be my all-time favorite Danganronpa game... at least up until the 2nd half of the last trial of the game. Up to that point, it was a 5/5, but it stumbled for me a tad at the end. The meta-commentary just didn't land for me, unfortunately. I was OK with the ideas presented in the ending, but I hated how they went about executing it... The silliness reached an all-time high during that final trial, and it all felt a bit too on the nose and came off a bit stupid.

Regardless though, that doesn't detract from me loving the game as a whole. It has the greatest first trial in the series BY FAR, has the most gruesome and depressing executions, and it overall has the greatest presentation and style of all 3 mainline games.

The trials were great as always - and I loved the introduction of the Scrum Debates. I wish they were used more often, but the music and premise of those were hype as hell.

The "truth vs lie" theme was an enjoyable and interesting difference to its predecessors, especially after being knocked over the head so many times with "hope vs despair".

Kokichi is a fun stand-out character here as well, but I still prefer Komaeda from DR2. I really liked the cast of characters in DR3 overall outside of a couple exceptions. But that goes for all the DR games.

I wish we could have more Danganronpa, but maybe it is a good thing they ended it here before running the franchise into the ground. I will miss the wonderful, weird settings, zany characters, heartbreaking losses, and insane murder mysteries/plot twists...

"Some lies can lead the world to hope... Some truths can lead the world to despair... So I don’t think anyone can really say which is more right in the end.”

Clair De Lune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpsN6b95DAQ

Easily the best playing and best written entry in the series. I actually like or am at least interested by almost all the characters here, which is a definite upgrade. All the trial minigames aside from Nonstop Debate (the Mass Panic variant is ok too) and Debate Scrum are complete shit though. Hangman's Gambit is as trash as ever, Argument Armament is somehow an even worse ""rhythm"" minigame than the first game's, Mind Mine is such a nothing idea I can't believe it got past the conceptual stage, Psyche Taxi is tedious drivel (seriously if your MINI game needs a 9 minute timer what the hell are you doing), and Rebuttal Showdown is okay but more annoying than fun.
I will say though, the typography going on during the trials in this game is insane. The trails are also a lot more consistent in quality than the first game, though most don't reach super high highs.

Case 1 has some clever twists but the murder method being such a looney toons-ass rube goldberg machine setup is kinda silly.
Case 2 is decent, though whoever designed that execution is a sadistic bastard.
Case 3 has some more silly physics shit going on but has one of the more memorable setups in the series.
Case 4 has an interesting setup too, but I think manufacturing a way for one of the characters to act out of character works in some ways but ultimately feels like a kinda cheap way to get a twist.
Case 5 is easily the most interesting and stand out trail from a writing perspective, though actually playing it was needlessly frustrating here and there.
Case 6 is an interesting one since it starts with a retrial of the first case, which provides some fun twists and turns. The latter half is much like the final case of the first game in how overly drawn out, long and tedious it is. Though the actual big reveals this time around are way more interesting.
This game's ending is more meta than the zuck's wet dreams. It becomes insanely corny at that point, but these games have always ended on really corny notes. I vibe with most of what they're trying to say there, and they take a really interesting approach to saying it, hokey as it is.