With the Hunger Games craze that has swept the globe over the past few years, it's easy to pass up any teen drama involving kids killing kids as a Hunger Games clone. Earlier this year publisher NIS America brought one such potential clone to western Vita owners with Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, a game that was cruelly overlooked by many gamers as was easily one of the best games available on the PS Vita.
But does Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair ace the class as a school kid killing simulator, or does it fall victim to bad sequel syndrome?
So before you read further, if you have not played Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, please leave and play it before continuing with this review as it is imperative that you play the original game before you play the sequel.
You are Hajime Hinata, a new student at the prestigious Hope's Peak Academy, a school that selects 15 of the most talent students from surrounding high schools and provides them with an education that will set them for life. After losing consciousness soon after arriving at the school, Hajime awakes on a tropical island with no memory as to what his talent is. It is here that he and his classmates have been put into a kill or be killed game of survival by the evil, yet also strangely adorable mechanical menace Monokuma. In order to leave this island they must kill a classmate and get away with it; but its never as simple as it seems.
Danganronpa 2 is difficult to call a sequel. Its almost as if you went to a theatre to watch a play, with Trigger Happy Havoc opening the show and Goodbye Despair coming on after the interval; its almost as though its an extention of the original game, but with new characters, environments and some gameplay additions. The two games are so closely linked, you could play them back to back and it would be as though you had never actually changed game.
For those who played Trigger Happy Havoc, Goodbye Despair plays almost identically. Both School Life and Investigations play out the same way bar a few minor differences in the way characters interact. You now unlock skills by purchasing them with 'Hope Fragments', which are earned by spending time with students; this also helps you keep track of how far through your report card you are with said classmate. You also have a Tamagotchi like pet to look after, if you are successful in raising it to adulthood it will give you Monokuma Coins and presents for classmates.
Class Trials are mostly the same too, however there are some notable changes and additions in this area of gameplay.
Nonstop Debate has been tweaked, which is no bad thing as the system was near flawless in the last game and now its just been slightly built upon. In this you must shoot down and disagree with weak statements using evidence collected during the Investiagtion; now you can also agree with statements made by shooting them with the evidence. You also still have Bullet Time Battles, though these are now called Panic Talk Action sequences.
Hangmans Gambit has been modified significantly though. Now you must match letters flying across the screen in order to form a word or sentence whilst also not allowing different letters to touch each other. This is much more frantic than in Trigger Happy Havoc, however it is also more time consuming; personally I prefer the previous iteration of it.
Two new additions to class trials are Rebuttal Showdown and Logic Dive.
In Rebuttal Showdown you must cut through enemy statements to weaken their influence on the group, when a weak point in their argument surfaces you must select the right evidence to prove them wrong to strike them with and dismantle their argument; its a nice addition that works well.
Logic Dive requires you to traverse an obstacle course whilst choosing the correct path to go down in order to come to a conclusion to something.
The Closing Argument has also had a major overhaul, making it much easier to tell what panels go where thanks to fewer missing panels and a description of the event that goes in the panel.
These new additions make the class trials even longer, now requiring a break in the middle to allow you to save your game; It also adds more variety to the class trials and makes the debates faster paced.
The games visuals are no different to Trigger Happy Havoc, it still employs an anime style to environments and character models, however there are more frequent and bigger 3D cutscenes this time round. The audio again is simply amazing, with a fantastic soundtrack (though most of the songs from Trigger Happy Havoc make up the bulk of it) and yet again a brilliant English voice dub that is far above expectations.
The question is which game is better? The answer is neither. Both games are equally good, where one stumbles the other one strives, however both games get what really matters spot on. I would argue that you simply cannot get better games than the Danganronpa series on the Vita, so if you are a fan of visual novels, Phoenix Wright-esque trials and anime then you owe it to yourself to play these games, I would even say they are a system seller for the Vita.
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair – 10/10
+Another Fantastic, Unpredictable Story
+More Brilliant Characters
+Changes Up Unpopular Gameplay Mechanics
+Great Presentation
