TLDR: If you enjoyed the 'Ultimate Talent Development Plan' / 'Monokuma's Test' modes of V3, you will like this game. This game is basically that mode upped to the max and fully fleshed out. There are some differences, and strengths/weaknesses in those differences, but I would almost say to not even start this game if you haven't played at least a little of 'Ultimate Talent Development Plan' / 'Monokuma's Test.
General points, there are microtransactions in this game. You can buy your way through all the character cards + power up stickers. This is not mandatory to do whatsoever, and very easy to avoid. I would ultimately suggest not doing so, because the game is designed for you to play it to gain tokens and to work with what you initially get from the various ingame currencies and vending machines. There are no card duplicates, so you WILL unlock everything eventually. Once you power up a bit it is also very easy to grind for silver/gold coins, and you can even do so while autobattling, so it is NOT a big deal.
Characters, every character from THH, SDR2, V3, and Ultra Despair Girls are pretty much here. You probably won't have as much fun in this game unless you know all of the games/characters, and have at least watched a youtube lets play of all of the games. The casts all interact with each other while also having their own moments with their respective classes. All the characters are written well, with the V3 characters being written as if they were already going to Hope's Peak with the classes of THH and SDR2.
You also need to be careful as there is a possibility of softlocking yourself if you play Development mode too much and don't progress enough in the Battle mode. Make sure you are up to at least floor 100 before you start Episode 5 and that you have some good characters under your belt. This is pretty easy to do and not really a huge barrier, but I have read some forums of people softlocking themselves because their characters were too weak for the boss.
The character interactions in this game are the shining light, they are super fun and in-depth. Tons of characters interact with each other, and there are plot throughlines that are followed and fleshed out with the entire cast. I really like when characters talk about each other, even when the character being discussed isn't around. It's very well rounded and very fun, and is way more fleshed out than V3's 'Ultimate Talent Development Plan'.
Grinding. This game is pretty damn grindy, but the V3 one is too, so if you enjoy rpgs, character-building, and the boardgame, you will have a good time. If you don't and only want character interactions, you can minimize how much you do the battling if you aren't going for 100%. I'll talk about it more in the Battle Mode section, but the equipment crafting material grinding is especially bad, the game is really stingy for some reason. Going through the board game for each character multiple times can also get grindy, with the reward being unlocking more of the story/upgrades/character scenes. if you don't like that kind of game, you either need to take this one really slow, or just lookup character cutscenes on youtube.
Development Plan Mode: This is the board game where you take your character through the board, level them and their stats up, fight monsters, and view character events. As you play, you unlock buffs to this mode so that you start with 1-2 presents to power you up, xp bonuses, starting money, and items on the Central Island shop that make the bosses easier. When you start out, you are not meant to conquer all the islands, and you slowly go through and power up so you can defeat minibosses to get scrolls that let you challenge the MonoBeasts. As you progress in the story and in Battle Mode, you unlock the starting buffs + cheap scrolls on the Central Island Shop so that you can progress to the final island in just a few turns. The board game is fun, although somewhat long, with 50 whole turns for you to build your character. Focus on exploration first, and then once you've mastered the board game and unlocked some buffs, you can start to really power up. There is also a secret boss that you can unlock to take you from level 99 - 100. Compared to the board game in 'Ultimate Talent Development Plan', this one is much more complicated and involved. Your goals are somewhat 'self made' as well because you don't HAVE to fight the bosses every run if you want to get powerful (unless you want to hit level 100, but level 99s can be just as strong). In general, this is a huge improvement on V3's very simple board game, and you will spend a lot of time playing characters through the board. There are achievements and scenes to unlock for playing through multiple times (on different and on the same characters) so you should play through several times to make different builds and see different story scenes. There is a gallery mode to see all of the major story scenes, so once you've unlocked everything for a character, the grind isn't necessary to go through again to see their scenes.
Battle Mode: Unlike 'Monokuma's Test' in V3, the battle mode of this game does not include dungeon exploration. I consider this a bit of a downgrade, but I can understand why they took it out. Instead of wandering a dungeon, you just fight through 'floors' with each floor being 3 waves of battle against various monokuma-beasts. There are bosses to fight, as well as materials to gather as you go up. There are also special missions for each floor, three 'stars' that you can get if you complete special objectives while fighting that floor of enemies. These missions reward coins, which help you in getting presents/character cards/stickers. Usually I like to go through the floors without worrying about the missions first, then I go backwards to hit missions I missed about every 20 floors or so. Just like V3, you do not get experience and do not level up characters in Battle Mode, you purely use the characters as you built them during Development Mode. That being said, there is equipment to craft with drops you get from the monsters. There is a wiki on which floor has which drops, but the problem is that the game is EXTREMELY stingy with materials for some reason. I had a lot of trouble getting a lot of the top gear, and actually used the steam deck controls to create a turbo button for this game so that i could have the automode play itself. Probably at least 30 hours of my gametime in this game is me letting the game run itself while I do other things, because I'm trying to get these damn rare materials. It isn't a problem if you aren't going for 100%, but if you're 100%-ing, definitely either play on a steam deck with turbo, or get an autoclicker or something.
Overall, I am really enjoying this game, it's fun, but is VERY grindy if you're 100%-ing it. If you play casually or just want character scenes, it's still possible to enjoy. I'd recommend it on a sale for sure, but if you like the game modes in V3, this one could be worth full price for you, just to see the concept of a danganronpa rpg more fully fleshed out.
