All Aboard The Hope Train! - Danganronpa: Ultra Despair Girls

Hello beautiful people of the Internet! (Ah! U-uhm... Sin..? Uh... Never mind...) A-And not so beautiful ones? Oh that so does not suit me... Oh shut up you I'm in a good mood for once. Just deal with it. Uh... O-Okay sure... Today- Today! After a long long week of waiting Ren and I are finally pleased to present to you our review of one of the best games to come out this year! This game is pure perfection! A gift from the heavens! Oh you just all have to play this wonderful game! You'll have to excuse Sin's excitement... when a game like this comes around it's almost impossible to calm her down...

Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls is the third Danganronpa game to be released and falls chronologically between the previous two games. Experienced fans such as ourselves will recognize a number of things that prove this including characters from the second game, and relatives of those from the first, a very charming touch. Unlike the other two games in the series however, both of which are visual novel/detective style games, this one is more of a Third Person Shooter, and this creates a few little problems on the surface of the game. Hey! What kind of problems could you possibly be talking about! We always say how important it is for a game company to try something new! Well... yes that may be true, but unfortunately UDG does something a lot of games that try that do - It loses it's identity. Huh? Gosh Sin you really can't see past those rose-tinted glasses today can you? This game is far from perfect. (IT IS PERFECT!) No. Let me explain.

Arrrrggghhhh...! WHY ARE THESE A THING!? Turn them on and the point an arrow where you're supposed to go. I've never seen a more unnecessary game mechanic.
Pfft yeah... the whole game is basically linear so any other ways you could go at one of these are just a dead end with a collectible... So dumb....

The primary thing I feel like I have to say, is for those of us who really enjoyed the previous Danganronpa games, this one feels extremely dumbed down. But that's because it's a different genre of game! You can't expect all the players of a shooter to have the intellect of a detective game player! Well sure of course that is the case, but the way the game has been executed puts it in a position where, sure it's still good and fun to play, but it loses a lot of appeal to both audiences. I should probably mention we played through this game on Ultra Despair difficulty first time round, and I was very disappointed in how easy it was to complete (Well... it was very easy...) and this is the first problem, even on the hardest difficulty, if you play shooters and are good at them, the majority of the game-play will be of little challenge. Alternatively it loses appeal to the Danganronpa fans too because, the game just holds your hand through the entire thing! the answer to every single puzzle room is all but shown to you just through what the characters say when you get your first overview of the room! "If you shoot X Monokuma with Y we can take them all out at once!" But every puzzle room at least up until the final chapter is impossibly obvious anyway. The puzzle-solving is dumbed down for the shooters, and the shooting is made too easy for the puzzlers. It just becomes one big pile of mediocre.

The game breaks the 4th wall on occasion and while for the most part it's really gloomy there's a lot of humour hidden within too... Look, they even use Ren's training potty as Save Points!
(What did you just say!?)

Ugh... Ooohh... I can feel my heart breaking right there... You know for the 'nice guy' of our team you can be super brutal! Haha... Sorry Sin... but if you're not going to talk about the bad aspects of the game then who will? Oh shush! The game has plenty of redeeming qualities! For- For example! Let's talk about the plot a little! Okay sure well the plot is good... Komaru Naegi (Little sister of Makoto, the first game's protagonist) was kidnapped at the beginning of the Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event In Human History or whatever it's called... She was imprisoned in a two-room apartment for a year and a half... Then one day, a black and white bear thing tears down her reinforced door and attacks her. She escapes, and runs into a survivor from the first game, he gives her a 'Hacking Gun' that can rewrite the codes of machines by shooting them, tells her to get the hell out, and she is left on her own. Outside the bears are murdering everyone around, in a brutal animated cutscene, and the city is in chaos... After finding a little bit of refuge and meeting up with some secret agents to help her escape, she thinks she's finally in the clear... but the escape helicopter is hijacked by the Monokumas, and takes her off into an airship, where she is made a target in a game, by five rather unique characters... I guess we'll get back to that a bit later but the game doesn't hold back with getting the action started right away, but at the same time it also offers a huge number of questions, such as why Komaru has been locked up, why the Monokumas are attacking, and just what the hell is going to happen next. the plot really feels like a Danganronpa plot and that's a huge plus. The game just oozes despair at every point and that's exactly what a Danganronpa game should do.

The Teddy Bear's Picnic was clearly lost in translation over on Japanese shores

It's true, the underlying fact is that on this island - Towa City, a riot is taking place... and not just any riot... A riot where all the adults are being killed by children. It's a really despair inducing subject huh? In fact all the themes within the game and some of the issues dealt with made us think we wouldn't ever see this game leave Japan. The main villains of the game are a group of 5 kids, probably around 10 years old maybe even less than that each. Haunted by their pasts they set out to crate a paradise for children to live happily forever by murdering ever single adult in the city. They call themselves the Warriors of Hope like a cute little RPG party, it draws a nice little parallel to how most kids play around but obviously this isn't all just play. 

I don't care how many adults they killed they're still totally adorbs!
Except Jataro, The Priest, nobody likes him.
Oh ew. God no I skip all of his cutscenes!

There's the Hero, who was bullied endlessly by adults. The Priest, a creepy kid that wears a hideous mask and everybody hates. The fighter (Wait for it... Oh God...), who although it isn't directly said it is very clearly implied that she was repeatedly gang-raped for money as her father sold her and her mother out. There's also the Sage, who was used as an experiment by his father to see just how smart a kid could be when pushed to the limits. And the real leader of the group is Monaca, a wheelchair ridden girl who is just so... so... She's really messed up... you'll understand trust me! regardless they're a colourful cast that you can actually kinda grow attached to, but you see what we're talking about here... Child abuse, extreme bullying and all kinds of themes are explored in this game and it is seriously dark to think about. Oh. and of course we can't forget child death and the issue of whether it's okay to kill children if they're murdering adults. Because child mortality is a great concept people like to make apparent in games, isn't that right immortal children of the Fable universe. Anyway the kids throw you into the city where you meet Toko Fukawa/Genocide Jack, a schizophrenic survivor from the first game, who isn't actually too popular in the Danganronpa community until her character actually grows in this experience. You can play as Genocide Jack in a sort of hack and slash Devil May Cry fashion if you get into a pinch.

But we digress. Yes we do! Let's talk about the game some more! The atmosphere of the game is exactly how it should be (at least it is for the first two chapters) the environments to explore are dark and creepy, the background music offers nothing but a sense of unease, and all you can see lining the streets of Towa City are countless corpses on the floor and crucified on walls that brings a harsh reality to the player that just screams 'look at all these people who have died'... it's really very tragic, even if every non-important character whether they're dead or alive is just a blue or purple person depending on their gender. not to mention that EVERY girl in Towa city has a pony tail, because they couldn't even be bothered to change that... pisses me off...

I hope Blue Silhouetted Man was paid a lot for all his deaths in this game... 

The gameplay itself actually feels similar to Resident Evil shooting wise. There's 8 kinds of ammo to choose from that are all useful in different situations and have unique ways to utilize them to their fullest, which you can switch in a flash with the D-Pad. Press down the left trigger to ready the gun and use it's laser pointer to aim. You can move and shoot thank God! Take that Resi 5! Hitting the Monokumas in the eye will do a lot more damage and increase the power of the next shot too which is a great little mechanic. Hitting the eyes is very inconsistent though. We could do it very often but a lot of the time shots don't crit when they look like they should, and vice versa. But other than that the shooting is fun and feels genuinely rewarding when you see those Monokumas finally explode.

Dance ammo is great when you're in a bind, it forces whatever it hits to dance so it won't chase or attack you! I need to get some of this stuff for Sin...
(I heard that!)

Speaking of the Monokumas... they come in a number of different varieties which should all be handled in different ways, but one of the main problems which makes the game a bit too easy is they just attack so slowly! They run up to you and get close, then they wait five seconds or so before slashing at you or whatever that type does. it gives you more than enough time to move back a little and continue blasting their face off. Later in the game they start diving at you with attacks though, so it's a little harder but they still have that pause. The designs are particularly good too though, each of them are unique and immediately recognizable to the player so you can quickly change your strategy if necessary. Let's not forget the Junk Monokumas... Oh God.... (Shudder) I still have nightmares...

*Famous 'Psycho' music plays*

How about playing Genocide Jack? The 'OP' get out of a bind free character. She's totally invincible but that's the only drawback of an otherwise solid part. Her combat is fluid, responsive and above all fun, even though a lot of it is just spamming square to cut everything down with no real thought. But that in itself is pretty awesome, Because it really reflects the murderous and relentless nature of Genocide Jack just cutting everything to pieces with no remorse.

The other aspect of combat, the bosses, are all about finding a way to expose their weak points and blasting them with your gun. If only the way to open their weak point wasn't made brutally obvious through in game dialogue! Yeah... Ren never really got over how easy the game was... it's true! We never really did anything 100% right in any of those boss fights, but every time we ran close to low ammo or even low health more would just appear on the ground for us to collect. Yeah... We never died in combat once actually... Even when you drop to 0 health you get a quicktime event that will keep you alive if you can press triangle with a pretty lenient timing.

The Kids control their own giant robots for the bosses...
They look so badass...
I need one...

See Sin look... I know you love the game and all but it's far from perfect, it's still really super fun and all, but the fact we can say all this stuff... that it helps you too much, it's almost impossible to die... We should not be able to say this stuff about Ultra Despair difficulty... I... I know Ren... But... But at least it's fun... That's what matters... And the story will really appeal to Danganronpa fans too... That's right... and let's ignore the fact it suffers from Final Fantasy XIII syndrome, having cutscenes every minute or two for today... I don't want to make you too upset... Ren! You... You... Ugh! I... I don't even know anymore... Just let me go play it again...

Hahah... Well that's all for this week everyone! I swear these posts are getting longer and longer each time! As a disclaimer I still recommend that you play this wholeheartedly if you're a fan of Danganronpa. it offers a lot of insight into events regarding the Biggest Most Awful Most Tragic Event in Human History and is a very welcome look into the despair filled Danganronpa universe while we wait for Danganronpa 3 to arrive now it's finally been announced. This is the darkest entry into the series so far and that itself is worthy of significant praise. All that's left to say is, this may look like a fun little kiddie shooter, where you shoot mechanical bears instead of people but I assure you it's not, so don't push it aside like it was some kid's game... Because it is... But it isn't.