What is all the fuss with Danganronpa?

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

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Sep 1, 2010
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I bought 1-2 Reload version on PS4 and I'm halfway through the 1st game and the writing is just bad. Basically all the characters are so one-dimensional with the "gamer" character being probably every gamer stereotype you can think of while being exaggerated to the nth degree. All the male characters are pretty bad with only one interesting one. Of course, the player character is the blandest person ever. The female characters fair quite a bit better coming much closer to actual humans than the males but still we're only reaching average quality at best. There's one female character that has split personalities (which are both highly annoying) but each personality is as one-dimensional as you can get. The plot so far is nothing that great (I have I think 7 characters left alive) and the wacky teddy bear thing Monokuma really isn't that wacky or entertaining really. The murder plot themselves aren't anything really above a CSI episode. The whole sorta "wacky" Japanese school setup with students killing each other has been done more interestingly and entertainingly in basically any other Japanese movie I've seen with such a setup with even my limited experience of such things.

I started playing Wolfenstein II as I got it cheap on Black Friday and the story and characters are far more entertaining than anything going on in Danganronpa. Shouldn't something that is a "novel" have better characters and plot than a AAA FPS about killing Nazis? Lastly, if Danganronpa does get good at the end with some satisfying twists, why the fuck is it taking so long to get good? The game / visual novel is longer than a freaking full season of a network TV show with 20+ hour long episodes.
 

Maximum Bert

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Playing it at the moment after getting in in the sale just on Trigger Happy Havoc atm just reached the murder in chapter 3 and while it took a little while to get going I am having a blast and am liking the characters and story a lot more than I thought I would probably because it does take time to establish them even the ones that die early (to an extent).

Also loving the trials so far its got just that right amount of engagement without feeling frustrating or to simple and most of my questions have been answered as it is going along but I must admit some parts were a bit baffling the first time I played through that section of the trial and occasionally it is hard to see exactly what a picture is attempting to portray in the comic book assembly bit.

Dont like it though? dont play it. I am pretty much the opposite of yourself on this OP since while I dont have Wolfenstein 2 I did get Wolfenstein New Blood as I had heard it had a good story and while I am not a huge fan of FPS I have enjoyed them in the past but after a few hours its done nothing for me mechanically or narratively so for now I have left it. I cannot say I am surprised however as I have never been able to get engaged with a FPS story for some reason even ones like Goldeneye, Halo and Spec Ops the line but different people engage differently with different things.

If you want to be really pedantic about it you can call everything cliche and bland I mean its all been done before in some form.
 

Rednog

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Meh you have to a fan for that type of game. Phoenix Wright, Zero Escape, Danganronpa they're all in the same vein of games. You're either a fan of them or you're not. It's like enjoying a B movie, some people just don't like that sort of thing, while others bask in the cheesiness and absurdity.
 

Michel Henzel

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May 13, 2014
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I have never seen it, nor have I any idea what it's about, all I know is everyone is gay. Yes, I hang out with too many fujoshi, sue me.
 

Urgh76

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I enjoy my Dangan Ron Pauls as much as the next guy. Though the writing isn't the best and some twists are definitely seen coming a mile away, I still just greatly enjoy the atmosphere that they're able to create along with genuinely having fun with how the gameplay is set up.

Their strongest bit of gameplay which definitely comes from unconventional use of your truth bullets such as stealing a word from someone's statement to use later, or flat out lying when you need to (V3). That combined with the want to know who dies next, who killed them, what their execution is going to be, and overall why they're there and doing what they do are the big reasons to keep going. If you don't have the desire to see all of that or it just isn't strong enough, you just won't enjoy yourself as much.
 

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

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Sep 1, 2010
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Maximum Bert said:
If you want to be really pedantic about it you can call everything cliche and bland I mean its all been done before in some form.
Describe Hifumi in any way that is not a straight-up gamer/nerd trope/cliche. The character is insufferable because all those tropes are then exaggerated by at least 10x to the point where he finds 2D women more attractive than 3D women (as in real life). Freaking BJ Blazkowicz is far more "human" and relatable than any character in Danganronpa.

MC1980 said:
Thank you!!! The characters are so insufferable, I don't even want to spend any time with any of them (during Free Time), I just want everyone to die so I don't have read the boring ass shit that they constantly say. I wish Danganronpa was like Until Dawn in the sense that I could then purposefully kill these people.

Are the rest of visual novels on this writing level as well? Is it like anime where things will be considered masterpieces (like Elfen Lied) yet will be trainwreck bad? At least Elfen Lied was only 13 episodes and at least entertaining in the sense that it kept getting worse and worse where I just had to see how bad it would get vs this 30+ hour exercise in blandness. I really can't find this "phenomenon" happening anywhere else (where stuff that's unfathomably bad gets rated by a near consensus as a "masterpiece"). It's like on par with say Netflix's Iron Fist or Batman v Superman getting an 8+ rating on IMDB, that just doesn't happen.

Rednog said:
Meh you have to a fan for that type of game. Phoenix Wright, Zero Escape, Danganronpa they're all in the same vein of games. You're either a fan of them or you're not. It's like enjoying a B movie, some people just don't like that sort of thing, while others bask in the cheesiness and absurdity.
I very much enjoyed the 2 Phoenix Wright games I've played. The trail system is much better (and more sensical) in Phoenix Wright vs Danganronpa's dumb mini-games where you have to argue with a character for some pointless reason and then the game keeps adding "mechanics" onto those mini-games for some reason. Phoenix Wright's cases and characters are far more interesting as well. I'm not at all above enjoying a B-movie like Sharknado or a movie that is unintentionally a B-movie like The Happening but I'm not going rate those as 8/10 just because I had fun with their badness. And, I don't feel good cheese to be culturally that different as Platinum Games are great at writing good cheese while I proudly own The Machine Girl on DVD. Outside of the occasional chuckle worthy dialog like a character explaining the intricacies of "proper" milk tea, Danganronpa's dialog just boils down emphasizing each character's extremely one-dimesionalness nature or basic plot dialog like so-and-so didn't show up, let's find them, I'll search there, etc.
 

TilMorrow

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Jul 7, 2010
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To be frank, if you don't like it then you don't like it. Danganronpa 1 is meant to come off as super cheesy and one dimensional as that's what the Mastermind had planned for this killing game from the start. The intrigue comes from understanding why all the characters act like they do and why they're like that and finding out the Motivations for the killing game in the first place. The over-the-top-ness is purposely done to mask the sinister nature of everything not to mention some of the crimes are fun to puzzle out (the early ones are pretty weak but they're meant to be).

As for Danganronpa 2, everything starts to get even wackier but the whole story is harder to figure out (unless you spoil yourself) whilst being a definite improvement over Danganropa 1.




But Danganronpa V3 is the fucking best. Literally can't say anything about it without it being a huge spoiler.
 

Rip Van Rabbit

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Nile McMorrow said:
[HEADING=3]V-Consent![/HEADING]
~Nyahahaha!

[small]I'm sorry, I just adore Angie's head-bopping[/small]

------

OT: Niche game has niche appeal, go figure.

Danganronpa, as a franchise, revels in it's own absurdity. The mystery is ever-present, the motives serve as a decent payoff/gut-punch while unraveling a case, the group dynamics change and it's overall an interesting and intriguing affair. There's this delightful balancing act of having a dark setting where terrible things happen while counterbalancing it with surprising humor and over-the-top ridiculousness.

Danganronpa 1 is probably the most rough around the edges. I did like the claustrophobic sense of dread while trapped in the school. Probably the weakest cast overall, in my opinion. Danganronpa 2 significantly improves on just about everything. And Danganronpa V3 does all that while improving on the cast once more.

It's a divisive series, clearly. Going by the tone of your opening post and subsequent replies...this just isn't your cup of tea. It's better to move on than make a thread seeking validation.
 

balladbird

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It's very anime. It runs heavy on the tropes of anime, and while its premise and gameplay conceit is interesting and unique, your ability to enjoy the game will ultimately boil down to how much you can tolerate some of the more grating anime tropes.

I actually liked the cast well enough, thin archetypes though they were. There were some things the story did that I didn't like... in particular having a character championed as a hero who deserves a happy ending despite them being a serial killer who definitely deserves death an order of magnitude more than anyone else in the cast, but they're funny, so it's all okay(!), but on the whole I had a lot of fun with it.

It's a series that's not quite as intelligent as it believes itself to be, and if you dig too deep you'll find more and more to frustrate you, but as a pulp anime mystery-drama with over-the-top visuals it's a lot of fun. Sounds like it just isn't right for you. I'm a sucker for death game shows, so I love the series a lot, even though there are times when it's a bit too anime even for me... and I'm one of those stereotypical internet people with an anime avatar!
 

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

Muse of Fate
Sep 1, 2010
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Nile McMorrow said:
Danganronpa 1 is meant to come off as super cheesy and one dimensional as that's what the Mastermind had planned for this killing game from the start. The over-the-top-ness is purposely done to mask the sinister nature of everything not to mention some of the crimes are fun to puzzle out (the early ones are pretty weak but they're meant to be).
You can play with tropes to make a point or really just for the sake of comedy but how is a 15+ hour setup of tropes hitting you over the head again and again and again worth the payoff? Cabin in the Woods plays off tropes, it's 90 minutes. Excel Saga plays off anime tropes with legit comedy throughout. Nothing in really the 15 or so hours I probably played Danganronpa is what I'd consider over-the-top besides for really Monokuma (and the handful of punishment deaths) and that shtick was gotten really old already.

Rip Van Rabbit said:
OT: Niche game has niche appeal, go figure.

Danganronpa, as a franchise, revels in it's own absurdity. The mystery is ever-present, the motives serve as a decent payoff/gut-punch while unraveling a case, the group dynamics change and it's overall an interesting and intriguing affair. There's this delightful balancing act of having a dark setting where terrible things happen while counterbalancing it with surprising humor and over-the-top ridiculousness.
The point isn't that niche game is niche, it's that the niche fanbase overrates the shit out of it. It's like how the Nier fanbase proclaimed it to have the greatest game story ever when it was just a decent anime type story with a couple interesting characters. Just because something conforms to your favorite tastes doesn't inherently make something amazing, not every pizza is amazing for example.

The setup of Danganronpa isn't really that absurd. I watch a somewhat decent amount of stuff that comes out of Japan and from my rather limited exposure, the whole "make kids kill each other in school" setup seems to possibly even be a freaking genre in Japan. I've seen 3-4 other such movies with that basic setup so it doesn't come off as absurd or wacky, just boring in comparison to the other stuff I've seen (which only one of said things I'd say was really good). And Danganronpa is not very high on the ridiculousness or OTT factor especially when we're comparing it to Japanese stuff. Wolfenstein II is more OTT than the halfway point in Danganronpa.

balladbird said:
It's very anime. It runs heavy on the tropes of anime, and while its premise and gameplay conceit is interesting and unique, your ability to enjoy the game will ultimately boil down to how much you can tolerate some of the more grating anime tropes.

I'm a sucker for death game shows, so I love the series a lot, even though there are times when it's a bit too anime even for me... and I'm one of those stereotypical internet people with an anime avatar!
I don't inherently have a problem with anime except when it sucks (like anything else). Most anime sucks because most anime is just tropes and nothing else. I've seen and enjoyed the hell out of the Excel Saga so anime tropes is not a problem if it's done in a fun and entertaining way. For the 15 or so hours I've played Danganronpa, it's just been tropes without any fun or entertainment (i.e. most anime). There has been very little good and I could've used that time to have watched a season of TV that is actually good instead of waiting for some extremely long overdue payoff that isn't going to make those first 15 hours retroactively good. It's sorta like you can't make a movie that'll "fix" Batman v Superman because it's a bad movie even if something that the movie sets up might end up later being amazing as it won't give me back my 2.5 hours of misery.
 

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

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Sep 1, 2010
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I finally finished the game last night and the game doesn't even get much better during the ending. The mastermind was interesting enough to be somewhat entertaining, even then they weren't what I'd consider a good villain. Their whole plan was actually kinda dumb and contradicted much of what they monologue about actually. This ending / the last trial goes on for 2 hours. Lots of TV shows have finales that are shorter and much better than this. The time you have to put into this game and the quality entertainment you get out of it are at basically opposite ends of the spectrum (lots of time for little quality). I'm totally not playing the 2nd game on the disc and I'm selling this, I'll probably actually make money on this game but the time I won't get back.

The game also does so many annoying things. The number of dialog boxes that are just "..." is so fucking annoying. Then, the game forces you to literally talk to these characters that are horribly annoying. For example, I search the whole room and get all the clues I can but I can't leave the room (as the game tells me I haven't found everything yet and can't leave) because I need to talk to this dumbass character standing in front of me. Even the murder puzzles are joke easy for the most part. I get told at least 10 times that this chicken coup has 5 chickens in it so obviously the murder is going to happen here and there's not going to be 5 chickens anymore. Can't I figure out anything on my own? And the amount of time this game replays scenes and dialogs is so annoying, it'll replay a scene that just fucking happened 5 minutes ago; yeah, I remember that, it just fucking happened.

The Honest Trailer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtPjABVsdSE] nailed it (that I just watched after finishing the game)...
"Please don't make me play Hatsune Miku."

Nile McMorrow said:
To be frank, if you don't like it then you don't like it. Danganronpa 1 is meant to come off as super cheesy and one dimensional as that's what the Mastermind had planned for this killing game from the start.
I just finished the game last night and there's no reason the characters needed to be one-dimensional for the plot whatsoever. It was just bad writing.
 

Kendritch

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Apr 22, 2018
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I think there's a fundamental flaw with this game that the DR fans don't seem to admit. No matter how self-aware you are about your characters being cliched archetypes, they are still cliched archetypes. Or to put it in another way: self-aware bad writing is still bad writing. This bad habit in writing was present in the '90s after Scream began the self-aware slasher craze, but it seems to have made a return around 2010s when movies like Deadpool came around. Being clever about how bad your jokes are don't automatically make your jokes any better or funnier.

Secondly - and here's the other important argument that the fans like to use - knowing why the so-called "Mastermind" do what he does in order to appreciate the cliched characters is also bad writing. Pretentiousness aside, when it boils down to it, games are made for entertainment value. If you have to force your audiences to slog through unentertaining bad characters in order to make some fatuous point by the third installment, then you're doing something majorly wrong. You're not entertaining your audiences. You're just setting up some pretentious game-lore that the gamers are supposed to care about after an exhausting experience spending time with boring and predictable characters.

Playing Danganronpa and its sequel, I just felt... empty. There was no fun in it, because I couldn't care less about these uninteresting cartoonish personalities at all. It doesn't help that certain characters in DR2 are even subverted versions of DR1, and by "subverted," I merely meant having a few of their personalities and appearance changed, but otherwise being the same copy+pasted characters.