Danganronpa 2: Ultimate High School Level Boredom

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

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No, it was not worth ignoring Crymore for two weeks to play this sleeping aid.

(This post should be relatively spoilerless, except for the parts indicated by spoiler tags. Most of the screens I used were blacked out so you can’t guess who’s alive in each chapter. Expect unmarked Danganronpa 1 spoilers, cuz this is the sequel and the original’s anime and game have been out for a while. Get with the times.)

 

Characters

Danganronpa 2’s characters are fantastic.

Danganronpa_2_Portraits
Well… I still don’t know the red guy’s name, and top right needs a bullet to her head like she needs a bullet to her head, so perhaps I spoke too soon.

Let’s try this again: One of Danganronpa 2’s characters is fantastic. Hell, they were so good I was almost fooled into thinking this game was gonna be worth playing.

Chapter 1+ spoilers (this really only spoilers the character’s personality after the first trial):

Spoiler:

Fucking Nagito Komaeda.

Nagito

This is the character I always wanted in a death game — some OP, batshit insane bishie psycho that dominates every scene hard enough the other characters wish they knew the safe word.

Slide

Danganronpa 2 goes one step further than having you just watch his antics, and actually puts you in his shoes for a portion of the game, showing you first-hand that this isn’t just a narrative trick; Nagito is fucking balls-to-the-walls bonkers. And it’s so fucking satisfying.

Danganronpa_2_-_Ultimate_Hope

The icing on this sex cake is that he’s not even evil — his sole goal is for hope to win out over despair. And to this end he’s willing to kill himself… or others… or everyone. Whatever it takes for hope to reign supreme. And that’s good, right?

So good.
So good.

But I’m gonna be straight with ya. For however great Nagito is, he can’t save this game from itself. And considering Danganronpa 2 will inevitably become an anime, I gotta let ya know that if you were cool enough to click on the spoiler without having played the game, the anime will be a better time investment (5 hours vs. 30).

Save your money and your time and just play the waiting game on this one. Nagito will hold out for you; he’s a good boy like that.

 

 

Gameplay

Danganronpa 2 is a visual novel that thinks it needs gameplay. This complicates things because it doesn’t.

Official art.
Yup, this is a legitimate screenshot from the game. Can you hear it crying out for help?

Basic gameplay for the non-VN part revolves around taking a list of clues, and then as characters engage in conversation with one another, utilizing one of those clues to agree or disagree with one of the characters.

While it can be fun to progress through the story this way, that fun lasts only so long as you can understand whatever fucked up logic the puzzle goes by. And I can guarantee that won’t always be the case. So when you can’t connect with the writers’ broken minds, you’ll be stuck playing trial and error with the game, which quickly wears thin and results in drop-kicked Vitas.

"I'm sure if I wait long enough the fun will start."
“I’m sure if I wait long enough the fun will start.”

There’s a bunch more modes, but they’re all equally awful. And I’m not gonna sit here and read the manual at you just to satisfy some butthurt Danganronpa fangirl who’ll take the omission of any minor feature’s explanation to indicate I didn’t “get” the game, when like the majority of the fanbase she just read the wikia and called it good.

I beat it. I “got it”. And it was awful. I’m sorry, fujoshi. You’re wrong about this series; it sucks. Let’s move on.

 

 

Pacing

Much like Danganronpa 1, the set-up is great — you hit the ground running. Death, betrayal, people going whacko — all that shit bleeds quality. Except, after a few hours in you start to wonder why the fuck you’re playing this game when there are umpteen other more interesting things you could be doing. Like being in a coma.

My thoughts exactly.
My thoughts exactly.

Chapter 4 is the trough of this mediocrity cycle. The characters all get stuck in a funhouse, meaning the case revolves around the building’s architecture for the twists. Woohoo.

Now, show of hands, who actually likes architecture puzzles?

If you put your hands up, you can stop lying. I'm not that gullible.
If you put your hand up, you can stop lying. I’m not that gullible.

By the time I got to chapter 4’s trial, I had enough; I grabbed a walkthrough to tell me what exactly to do for the trial, threw my brain on auto-pilot, and then powered through the dialogue by jamming the X button like I was trying to get my Vita off. Can’t say it was nearly as enjoyable for me as it was for the Vita.

 

 

lol NISA

As to be expected from any NISA-localized title, poor writing, bad grammar, and spelling errors are jarringly prevalent. Like I mentioned earlier, I found myself running through the dialogue as quickly as possible to get through the mind-numbing dialogue, but I did slow down to grab a few screens as examples.

NISA_Danganronpa_Localization_01 NISA_Danganronpa_Localization_02  NISA_Danganronpa_Localization_04

NISA_Danganronpa_Localization_03

I mean, I can accept a certain level of unprofessionalism. But when half the problems can be solved by one run of spellcheck? Well, you’re basically insinuating your audience is gonna be too stupid to notice the errors. And don’t get me started on the untranslated Japanese text or the dialogue that sometimes cuts off at the bottom of the screen… The only way this coulda appeared more low-budget is if they outsourced the translation to Bing instead of Google Translate.

 

 

Plot

Ending spoilers ahead.

Spoiler:

This…

Fuck you Danganronpa 2

…is bullshit.

Pulling the “and everything was a dream” card as your big reveal is amateur hour at its worst. And then we get this twist? Really?

Megas Plot Twist

Way to take the 30 hours I put into this game and throw them in the bin.

And the MC goes super saiyan for no goddamn reason.
The MC going super saiyan for no goddamn reason did little to alleviate the pain.

The whole ending sequence is based around the characters having trouble deciding whether to [escape the game and lose their memories from their time in game and revert to their “evil” high school selves] or [stay in the game and keep their game memories] and it fucking lasts forever as you just mash on the x button hoping to reach the credits so you can look at Danganronpa porn without worrying about getting spoiled by doujins or something.

The worst part isn’t even that the end results in the MC retaining all his memories (making the whole conflict in the end sequence completely useless), but that there isn’t much Ibuki hentai out there to be had.

Yeah, it's complete bullshit.
Let’s not lose sight of what’s important here. Where’s the best girl love?

 

Important Clarification

Teacher_Junko
Now, don’t get me wrong.

Just so we’re all on the same page, I don’t actually masturbate to hentai; I’m not a nerd. My full-length mirror is the only fap material a narcissisté such as myself requires.

Mirror Mirror
Yeah, I can get off on this.

But how could I call myself cultured if I didn’t appreciate the form of Ibuki going down on Chiaki while Chiaki plays a 3DS game or something and Hajime watches from the door in like… chibi form with a single tear rolling down his left eye as chibi Nagito is doubled over, laughing at him? I mean, that’s Art 101, and the internet still hasn’t gotten to that point?

Boo
Then fuck the internet,

and fuck Danganronpa 2.

 

 

Overall score:

Spoiler:
Cantaloupe*/10.

*Cantaloupes suck.

24 thoughts on “Danganronpa 2: Ultimate High School Level Boredom”

  1. I really hate the MGU mode, becase of the fucking item appearance rate. But I really like their spelling becase of reasons. Also I totally agree with you about the ending…

    Reply
  2. Glad I didn’t watch the first anime, and I sure as hell won’t be watching the second if the game itself is this bad already, this all sounds so bad that it’s… bad? Don’t know where I was going with that. But someone has to suffer and this is suitable to be D_S’ punishment for not making a review for 2 weeks.
    Will Ansatsu Kyoushitsu be just as bad?

    Reply
  3. I love the Danganronpa series and honestly, 2 had my favorite story… but there were times in some of the trials where I would be stuck for 20 minutes plus because I never thought about using a swimming suit filled with gravel as a weapon (Though I did play on their hardest difficulty, but I didn’t have this problem in the first one).

    I actually enjoyed the architecture trial but that fucking “Dead Room” survival puzzle was dumb as hell and ended up needing a guide for that.

    Never understood why people liked Nagito… I am only assuming people like him due to the amount of fan art and doujins related to this character rather than others.

    I absolutely hate the translation though… I do wish they stuck to “Super High School Level” instead of “Ultimate”.
    You hear “Hajime” you see “Hinata”
    Translation pls.

    My inner Danganronpa fanboy is still hyped for the third one.
    and the shitty translation that comes with it.

    Reply
    • If you talked to Monomi in the FDR she literally gave you all the answers (well actually she’s confused and Nagito is the one that figured it out), or you could have clicked on the door to the octagon and pay 100 monocoins to skip it. Also I really liked the architect puzzle the first time I played it, and I still do, but the second time I noticed they kinda hammer shit in way too much like it’s too confusing. They must have talked about the doors with the other houses logo in the tower like 5 times between the investigation and the trial.

      Reply
      • I actually needed the walkthrough to do the NEWS puzzle cause for the life of me I couldn’t figure it out. Monomi helped me with the weird dot puzzle though I thought I could do it after trying a bunch…

        A lot of the plot twists were sorta hammered in, I noticed that with the architecture one as well as the Nagito trial as well.
        I still enjoyed the game none-the-less.

        Oh, my complaints is the newly added Logic Drive and the Hangman Gambit
        Those were absurd minigames

        Reply
    • I alternated between chapters. I suppose I liked the Japanese voices better, but the switching was more entertaining to me.

      Reply

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