This happened to my buddy Silver once.
Despite me thinking it wouldn't really be my thing, I managed to gather some curiosity in the series when I saw a friend of mine go through it. In spite of its shortcomings, the first Danganronpa manages to be a stylish and engaging experience that I ultimately enjoyed at the end of the day.
DR1 excels in its presentation, from the visually striking art of the backgrounds, UI, character portraits, and groovy soundtrack to the feeling of tension and uneasiness that only manages to get worse and worse as you start to slowly unravel the mysteries of Hope's Peak Academy, and watch your number of friends slowly dwindle over the course of the game.
And that is a good enough segue into the story and writing, and unfortunately, where my problems with this game start to come through. Not every character in this game is bad, per se, a lot of them just.. aren't very interesting. There are some characters I did very much like, such as Makoto, Kyoko, Monokuma, Byakuya, and Sakura, those fellas have a ton of wonderful moments (Byakuya is stretching it because i find him funny more than anything) and for some like your time spent with Kyoko and Sakura, I can safely say were the best moments for me in the game; but a lot of the other characters I ended up just.. not really giving too much of a shit about or flat-out didn't like. Toko and Hifumi especially are downright insufferable, and I just about hated listening to them nearly every time they had something to say.
The trials in this game aren't too bad, with some really goated ones like in the first and fourth case, and some simply enjoyable, or meh, and a particularly bad one. Solving the mysteries of whodunnit are made fun by the minigames within these trials; my favorite being the Closing Arguments, where you match up everything that's happened up to that point in a comic book, with a sick ass art style to boot. Most of the mysteries are well-written (except for the mystery in Chapter 2 where characters do stupid-ass things) and there are some genuinely good plot twists and developments that happen within them; a large part of why I love Chapter 4 especially. That being said, my problems with the trials are that a large majority of developments happen thanks to three characters in particular: Makoto, Byakuya, and Kyoko. Everyone else.. doesn't really feel like they contribute too much to the development of the trials a good chunk of the time other than saying something funny, or just some flat-out stupid shit before Makoto has to put them in their place and remind them to use their brains for once, it's odd. The Bullet Time Battle minigame also seems very unnecessary and more like, again, having to force one of the chucklenuts you're arguing against to think. It's like if before you deliver the final evidence in Ace Attorney that will convict the culprit for good, you had to play a game of Dance Dance Revolution against them. It's unnecessary. And remember that particularly bad trial I mentioned earlier? I was referring to Chapter 6; the final trial, and the worst in the game. I agree with what my friend UnluckyLucky said about it; it feels exclusively like an exposition dump, and full of information that really could've been told earlier, which is a shame since that means the game fumbles right at the end.
I have a lot of negatives to say about this game, but the game's still damn good. What it does right it does more often than what it does wrong, and it what it does right, it does damn right. But I just wish it was always that good instead of stumbling so much. But hey, that's what sequels are for.. right?
By the way, my friends and I kept a count for how many times they say the word "despair" as I went through this game. We ended with a total of 194 counts of said word. And I felt like I was going fucking insane by the end of the game where it's in like, every other message.
[EDIT 07/05/22]: Oh, you have no fuckin' idea, past me. You ever hear about hope?
Despite me thinking it wouldn't really be my thing, I managed to gather some curiosity in the series when I saw a friend of mine go through it. In spite of its shortcomings, the first Danganronpa manages to be a stylish and engaging experience that I ultimately enjoyed at the end of the day.
DR1 excels in its presentation, from the visually striking art of the backgrounds, UI, character portraits, and groovy soundtrack to the feeling of tension and uneasiness that only manages to get worse and worse as you start to slowly unravel the mysteries of Hope's Peak Academy, and watch your number of friends slowly dwindle over the course of the game.
And that is a good enough segue into the story and writing, and unfortunately, where my problems with this game start to come through. Not every character in this game is bad, per se, a lot of them just.. aren't very interesting. There are some characters I did very much like, such as Makoto, Kyoko, Monokuma, Byakuya, and Sakura, those fellas have a ton of wonderful moments (Byakuya is stretching it because i find him funny more than anything) and for some like your time spent with Kyoko and Sakura, I can safely say were the best moments for me in the game; but a lot of the other characters I ended up just.. not really giving too much of a shit about or flat-out didn't like. Toko and Hifumi especially are downright insufferable, and I just about hated listening to them nearly every time they had something to say.
The trials in this game aren't too bad, with some really goated ones like in the first and fourth case, and some simply enjoyable, or meh, and a particularly bad one. Solving the mysteries of whodunnit are made fun by the minigames within these trials; my favorite being the Closing Arguments, where you match up everything that's happened up to that point in a comic book, with a sick ass art style to boot. Most of the mysteries are well-written (except for the mystery in Chapter 2 where characters do stupid-ass things) and there are some genuinely good plot twists and developments that happen within them; a large part of why I love Chapter 4 especially. That being said, my problems with the trials are that a large majority of developments happen thanks to three characters in particular: Makoto, Byakuya, and Kyoko. Everyone else.. doesn't really feel like they contribute too much to the development of the trials a good chunk of the time other than saying something funny, or just some flat-out stupid shit before Makoto has to put them in their place and remind them to use their brains for once, it's odd. The Bullet Time Battle minigame also seems very unnecessary and more like, again, having to force one of the chucklenuts you're arguing against to think. It's like if before you deliver the final evidence in Ace Attorney that will convict the culprit for good, you had to play a game of Dance Dance Revolution against them. It's unnecessary. And remember that particularly bad trial I mentioned earlier? I was referring to Chapter 6; the final trial, and the worst in the game. I agree with what my friend UnluckyLucky said about it; it feels exclusively like an exposition dump, and full of information that really could've been told earlier, which is a shame since that means the game fumbles right at the end.
I have a lot of negatives to say about this game, but the game's still damn good. What it does right it does more often than what it does wrong, and it what it does right, it does damn right. But I just wish it was always that good instead of stumbling so much. But hey, that's what sequels are for.. right?
By the way, my friends and I kept a count for how many times they say the word "despair" as I went through this game. We ended with a total of 194 counts of said word. And I felt like I was going fucking insane by the end of the game where it's in like, every other message.
[EDIT 07/05/22]: Oh, you have no fuckin' idea, past me. You ever hear about hope?
3 Comments
despaironpa
the idea of playing ddr in an ace attorney game is sort of funny actually
UnluckyLucky
1 year ago
Chapter 6 is bad.