This game is uh...definitely something.
When this game was first announced, I was decently excited. A new Danganronpa game? And it's based on that cute gamemode from V3 that would have been amazing if it was fleshed out a little more? Awesome! Sign me up!
Unfortunately, this just isn't the case. If anything, this is a less fleshed out version of the V3 minigame, somehow.
In the V3 minigame, the game attempts to emulate the feeling of balancing school life with work, social life, and individual goals; and I think it accomplishes this pretty well. Since you have a deadline to make it to the end of the board before a time limit, it really feels like you're trying to finish the semester while also trying to hang out with your friends and levelling yourself up. It ended up feeling like a pretty light life management fanservice sim, and felt decent as an extra mode in a fully decked out game.
But Danganronpa S? It doesn't even come close to this. Instead of trying to finish the semester, you're tasked with running around Jabberwock Island from Danganronpa 2, fighting Monobeasts, and developing your hope fragments, just like in Danganronpa 2. As far as I can tell however, you'll end up developing your hope fragments no matter what you do, and defeating all the Monobeasts ends up being an optional objective, not something you're expected to do, at least not in early game. This was far less engaging to me then the school system presented in V3. Plus, since my goal was to defeat enemies, I spent most of my time trying to level up my character and buying items, rather than talking with the characters, which is supposed to be the main draw of this title. These interactions were fun for the most part, but always felt incomplete to me personally.
And, just like with V3, you're expected to grind your characters in this mode to fight in a separate mode. In V3, this mode was a JRPG dungeon that had a narrative purpose and felt like a sequel to the school life you just finished. But in this game, that separate mode is a simple VS mode where you battle random monokuma enemies with no narrative incentive at all. There are 100 levels in total, each level has three goals, if you finish all three goals you're rewarded with tokens that you can use for the gacha. Once I played this mode, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that this was a free to play mobile game put on the switch. Except unlike other free to play mobile games put on the switch, this game launched on the switch first.
The gacha itself is also frustrating. The game only gives you five characters to start off with, and when you do a 10 pull, you'll end up getting more cards and items than characters to play as, severely limiting what you can do with the game early on. Which I guess is a staple of mobile game gacha, but since I paid for this game, I'm not at all pleased with this.
I only played up to level 5 in the versus mode, and only levelled up about six characters before giving up. I might pick this game up in the future, just to run around and watch the interactions between the characters, but ultimately, I have no intend on ever finishing this game or even getting very far in it. For what should have been a cute little fanservice game, Danganronpa S asks far too much of its player, hoping this will be your next gacha game that you burn dozens to hundreds of hours in, and it just simply isn't worth it. Get V3, finish the story, and play through that game's side mode instead.
When this game was first announced, I was decently excited. A new Danganronpa game? And it's based on that cute gamemode from V3 that would have been amazing if it was fleshed out a little more? Awesome! Sign me up!
Unfortunately, this just isn't the case. If anything, this is a less fleshed out version of the V3 minigame, somehow.
In the V3 minigame, the game attempts to emulate the feeling of balancing school life with work, social life, and individual goals; and I think it accomplishes this pretty well. Since you have a deadline to make it to the end of the board before a time limit, it really feels like you're trying to finish the semester while also trying to hang out with your friends and levelling yourself up. It ended up feeling like a pretty light life management fanservice sim, and felt decent as an extra mode in a fully decked out game.
But Danganronpa S? It doesn't even come close to this. Instead of trying to finish the semester, you're tasked with running around Jabberwock Island from Danganronpa 2, fighting Monobeasts, and developing your hope fragments, just like in Danganronpa 2. As far as I can tell however, you'll end up developing your hope fragments no matter what you do, and defeating all the Monobeasts ends up being an optional objective, not something you're expected to do, at least not in early game. This was far less engaging to me then the school system presented in V3. Plus, since my goal was to defeat enemies, I spent most of my time trying to level up my character and buying items, rather than talking with the characters, which is supposed to be the main draw of this title. These interactions were fun for the most part, but always felt incomplete to me personally.
And, just like with V3, you're expected to grind your characters in this mode to fight in a separate mode. In V3, this mode was a JRPG dungeon that had a narrative purpose and felt like a sequel to the school life you just finished. But in this game, that separate mode is a simple VS mode where you battle random monokuma enemies with no narrative incentive at all. There are 100 levels in total, each level has three goals, if you finish all three goals you're rewarded with tokens that you can use for the gacha. Once I played this mode, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that this was a free to play mobile game put on the switch. Except unlike other free to play mobile games put on the switch, this game launched on the switch first.
The gacha itself is also frustrating. The game only gives you five characters to start off with, and when you do a 10 pull, you'll end up getting more cards and items than characters to play as, severely limiting what you can do with the game early on. Which I guess is a staple of mobile game gacha, but since I paid for this game, I'm not at all pleased with this.
I only played up to level 5 in the versus mode, and only levelled up about six characters before giving up. I might pick this game up in the future, just to run around and watch the interactions between the characters, but ultimately, I have no intend on ever finishing this game or even getting very far in it. For what should have been a cute little fanservice game, Danganronpa S asks far too much of its player, hoping this will be your next gacha game that you burn dozens to hundreds of hours in, and it just simply isn't worth it. Get V3, finish the story, and play through that game's side mode instead.