QCF: Trigger Happy Havoc: Danganronpa

he pressure of succeed in your adult life in today’s society gets stacked thicker by the year, and this generation—it’s palpable. So naturally, any opportunity to attend a private school that only accepts the best and the brightest in exchange for guaranteed success in life would be a stupid one to pass up right? Fifteen individuals thought that, and it’s a shame too, because unbeknownst them and the impression of the prospect of their enrollment, it will be the worst decision of their lives.

The Vita hasn’t pulled any punches lately, and with both, tenured third-parties advocating the hardware alongside Sony welcoming fresh and bold ideas from independent developers, the variety in its library has gotten pretty juicy. Giving the title a chance, Nis America brought to the portable underdog, the bizarrely Japanese murder mystery thriller Danganronpa under the card of Trigger Happy Havoc, and well, lets us just say...that the Ace Attorney series will have some serious competition after this series picks up the steam it’ll get from the direction it’s heading in.

Visual Novel games tend to cater to the obscure niche of fans that openly embrace the esoteric conventions of its ilk, but Danganronpa immediately sets itself apart with exceptional writing and engaging takes on familiar mechanics.

The theming of Danganronpa floods over into both the presentation and direct dynamics that works to immediately pull players in; that theme reluctant action—everything is constantly moving and shifting whether you want it to or not, and getting through it will depend on how much players will pick up on. Trapped with a group of fourteen other students who’re the best in their respective fields of interest are subjected to the option of isolated communal living of Hope’s Peak Academy—a prison moonlighting as a school that’s cut off from the outside world. The group’s options are binary, either spend the rest of their lives within the confinement of the school grounds or will to the price of freedom; by secretly murdering one of their colleagues. While the premise may seem hokey at first glance, it’s the brilliant mix and pacing of both hokey and anguish that brings players full circle when psychological torture of their predicament takes a back seat to the humor from the eclectic count of personalities and the unassumingly cute yet demented animatronic bear of an antagonist that torments them.

All of these character depths, be their flaws or strengths, and whatever it is that they do to make them the ultimate whatever, end up crafting these amazing mystery scenarios for the murders that you’ll need to solve, but solving them isn’t enough. Danganronpa does an excellent job of injecting a sense of agency in everything done, from the physical clue collecting to skill-based challenges that influence the courtroom styled debate into playing out like an actual game.

Players will take control of the offensively ordinary Makoto Naegi, the unremarkable individual who’s been given the chance to attend the school by the fancy of a lottery draw. Half of the game is composed of exploring the grounds of the academy through both first-person perspective and fixed scenes akin to that of a point ‘n click scenario. While the gameplay is extremely linear in design, the illusion of discovery is conveyed by the superior direction of the environments context and the solid bond it forms with the subtext of the current situation. Along with exploring, socializing with your new classmates will not only flush more out of the story but it’s key to your success in the courtroom beyond mere testimony, it affects the physical dynamics of the core gameplay.

During the course of the game and the interim of trials, you’ll be able to interact with the group individually, and by either succeeding in their inquiries and purchasing/giving the right gifts to them, you’ll be able to earn additional skill points and skills. The purpose of the skills are perks that affect your performance for certain aspects of the murder trial gameplay, whether it’s additional time or health, or increase in cross-examination, these skills are vital to seek out if you’re to advance the game because Danganronpa is far from average in your standard litigation simulator.

Not to spoil a whole lot, each trial is segmented into physical mini-games that relate to the context of the courtroom process that adds a maniacal but significantly enjoyable element that enhances the process of debating who the culprit is. Open debate for example, which is similar to that of the Cross-examination mechanics found in the Ace Attorney games, revolves around you finding the contradiction within the various bits of testimony shared with evidence that you gathered prior to the trial; while it sounds just as familiar as the outlined comparison given, Danganronpa turns that shit up on its side.

Open-debate takes this process and throws into a fast-moving montage of angles of the group within the courtroom and a cursor that acts as a reticle to aim the specific evidence required to debunk the particular lie in the discourse in the form of a bullet. In order to bring down the contradiction, players will need to take aim at the physical subtitles that account for the dialogue—that’s physically angled and contorted like a shitty Windows 95 screensaver no less, along with proxy text that’s contextually arbitrary to the testimony at hand and acts as a deterrent to arguing the argument at hand. This is only one of many elements that compose the process and as I mentioned, those skills come in handy, like one that steadies the shaky aim of your reticle for reliable shooting for example, results in a visual logic game that demands more than simple logic skills to get ahead without every playing out like some shallow gimmick.

All of the familiar elements that Trigger Happy Havoc utilizes, from its presentation to its active dynamics, are all concentrated into a wonderfully fresh fusion of madness that delivers an unadulterated tale of black comedy and despair, that won’t be soon forgotten. Even though the Vita doesn’t already have a lot to choose from to begin with, Danganronpa stands out on its own for its violently refreshing take on the niche genre of visual novel inspired games and the psychology of the interaction that would normally command them, and because of that, it’s highly recommended.