A phrase of warning: this recreation accommodates an outline of sexual assault and makes frequent references to little one abuse, and so this text additionally touches on these subjects. Deal with your self, and please do not learn this for those who do not want to.
Danganronpa was one in every of my lockdown consolation video games of alternative, and I’ve spent the years since accumulating a painstaking understanding of the expanded universe that surrounds this trilogy of homicide thriller visible novels. I’ve watched the entire anime, learn tie-in novels and all of the manga that is been translated into English (I even began studying Japanese as a result of the non-translated manga appears to be like even higher and it would really be faster than ready for all of it to return out); and I’ve even performed all through the deeply bizarre spin-off shooter that is celebrating its tenth birthday right this moment.
Danganronpa One other Episode: Extremely Despair Women was launched for the PlayStation Vita on this present day in 2014, and received a second life through PlayStation 4 and PC ports in 2017. The latter is what allowed me to snoop into others’ enjoying habits through Steam’s world stats, and study that I am amongst roughly 45% of gamers on the platform who’ve really crushed this recreation after beginning it.
That is not really a horrible retention statistic — I’ve seen highly-lauded video games with a a lot starker drop-off price — however to me it nonetheless tells a narrative concerning the oddball nature of this recreation. The way in which I see it, to even hunt down an obscure story-led third-person shooter title spun-off from a sequence of visible novels, you are in all probability fairly nerdy about that sequence already and aiming for completionism. Seen in that mild, the truth that solely 45% of these presumed franchise die-hards caught it out to the tip credit reveals what occurs when the unstoppable drive of endurance required to be a Danganronpa fan within the first place meets the immovably unusual object that’s Extremely Despair Women.
I had so many various emotions over the course of enjoying this recreation. I cherished it for starring side-characters from the unique, injecting some much-needed long-term character growth right into a franchise that tends to wipe the slate and begin afresh with a brand-new solid each entry. I resented it for its wildly unpredictable and ungenerous save factors, which turned what ought to have been rewarding trial-and-error puzzles into pointless frustrations I bodged my approach by way of as rapidly and messily as wanted. I used to be pretty detached to its capturing, to be sincere; I grew up on janky mid-2000s motion video games, and UDG largely satisfied me to play together with the well mannered pretence that it was a retro throwback and never only a shooter made by devs who concentrate on visible novels.
Ultimately, my principal takeaway was that Extremely Despair Women is an unmissable addition to Danganronpa lore, and for all its faults accommodates a number of the finest storytelling within the sequence, fleshing out backstories for a number of characters given quick shrift in the primary video games, whereas including a number of extra who grew to become iconic in their very own proper. Later entries into the franchise actually assume that you just’re as acquainted with the characters and occasions of this recreation as you might be with the two main-sequence titles that preceded it. Which is why it is bizarre that Spike Chunsoft and co. do not appear that eager on acknowledging it any extra.
As I’ve already mentioned, Extremely Despair Women did get ported to PS4 and PC again in 2017, however that is the final outing it had. Whereas the three core Danganronpa titles have all by now additionally made appearances on Xbox methods, and had been notably remastered for a Nintendo Swap assortment in 2021 in a obscure nod to the franchise’s tenth anniversary, Extremely Despair Women has languished by comparability. Certainly, the Danganronpa Decadence Assortment boasts that it contains 4 video games — however rapidly corrects your pure assumption by letting you recognize the fourth is a brand new, non-canon board game-style spinoff. The board recreation in query, Danganronpa S: Final Summer season Camp, even contains UDG characters together with these drawn from the remainder of the franchise, however is offered with out the sport that provides them context.
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It is a curious omission provided that the Vita and the Swap are about as appropriate as methods made by totally different corporations will be, and porting between them is reportedly a relatively easy course of. Nevertheless it turns into considerably much less odd when you think about that there have been two huge components working in opposition to Extremely Despair Women when it got here to anthologising the Danganronpa franchise for the Swap. It is a third-person shooter that performs utterly otherwise from the visible novels that make up the primary sequence, and it is about as removed from Nintendo’s family-friendly picture because it’s potential to get.
Danganronpa’s already a sequence about susceptible younger individuals being manipulated into brutally murdering each other, however Extremely Despair Women nonetheless by some means managed to be a lot, a lot darker. Regardless of the surreal presentation that it shares with the franchise as a complete, there is not any getting round the truth that the central theme of UDG is horrific violence dedicated each in opposition to and by kids.
I do really assume that UDG largely offers with these themes pretty properly, with a surprisingly empathetic (given the darkly comedian tone of the sequence as a complete) deal with how such violence impacts survivors within the aftermath, moderately than depictions of the violence itself. There are, sadly, a number of locations the place the sport badly fumbles this — most memorably an unskippable interactive scene the place you as the primary protagonist should defend your self from a sexual assault or get a recreation over, which I think about is the place fairly a couple of of the DNF’ing 55% dropped off.
To be clear, I imply it after I say that I nonetheless actually loved this recreation for essentially the most half, despite the fact that the aforementioned scene got here as an disagreeable shock that it was troublesome to push previous. Extremely Despair Women actually is not the one work of fiction in historical past to fail to tug off the balancing act when trying to mix harrowing realism and darkish comedy. However all the identical, I can simply see why all of the content material warnings on this planet would not persuade Nintendo to let UDG anyplace close to one in every of its kid-friendly methods — which, by extension, implies that different platforms getting the anniversary remasters now thought of the definitive variations may even need to do with out.
Finally, although, even for those who had been to do one thing to mitigate that one badly misjudged scene, the central downside with Extremely Despair Women stays that it does not actually cater to any basic demographic. Its one-strike-and-you’re-out puzzles aren’t intuitive sufficient to attraction to followers of that style; critical motion followers aren’t going to like sitting by way of hour-long cutscenes to get to the comparatively transient sections of janky capturing; and its scoring system punishes poor efficiency in fight, that means it is more likely to show too unforgiving for gamers primarily or completely into visible novels, even ones interspersed with minigames like the primary Danganronpa sequence.
No, as I mentioned on the outset, Extremely Despair Women is absolutely aimed toward only one sort of participant: hardcore Danganronpa followers who’ll push on by way of any bizarre experiment sequence creator Kazutaka Kodaka cares to check out with a view to get their lore repair. And what a lore repair it’s! Which makes it fairly ironic — even when it is utterly comprehensible — that the remastered collector’s version of the sequence omitted it, regardless of bodily copies coming wrapped in a £90 steelbook clearly aimed toward these very same followers.
