This game is so frustrating, man.
Trying my best not to spoil it, even though I'm not sure why. There's a lot to be said about the ending, but most of my gripes are with the main game.
There's so much about it I genuinely like. I think the music, aesthetics, presentation, and some of the characters and their designs are top notch for the series. What sucks is that those positives are all marred down by completely asinine writing. Most of the trials are answered by some of the most insane, unsatisfying ass-pulls I've ever seen. The murders just feel so much more extra than they've ever been, among other things, and it really takes away from how I feel about these characters and the situation they're in. Part of what endeared me to the first two game was how relatively grounded some of the mysteries were while still being a challenge to piece together. Here there's just so many additional steps to the killings that its hard to get invested. There's so much about the writing that just come off as padding. These trials feel like they take 4 hours when they can easily be summarized in 1, at most. It's literally just that bit from Family Guy about The Godfather, the whole game really does insist upon itself.
Truthfully, I probably wouldn't be complaining about much of this if it weren't for the fact that I can not stand half of this cast of characters. They're not bad because some of them are bad people, that's pretty much what the games are about. I hate them because they're annoying. I really didn't think it would be possible for these games to have a character I genuinely despised more than Hifumi, but they found a way to do it *multiple times*. Reading Tenko and Angie's dialogue makes me feel like I'm in Groundhog Day, because it feels like I'm reading the same thing from them over and over again. Kaito in particular drives me insane. The game is so insistent on how important he is, when none of it feels earned. He's not funny, charming, or interesting, he's like a dime-a-dozen "idiot with a heart of gold" character with dumb-ass hair that leaves no impression on me. These are all big problems when I'm expected to be invested during the story's pivotal moments. Because I don't care what happens to Kaito, or Tenko, or Angie, or Maki, or whoever because there's nothing interesting for me to latch onto. They're either really trite, one-note caricatures, or the game has to insist that I care as a reader. Danganronpa is an easy game to accidentally self-insert as the main character when the events of the game are objectively theirs and not yours. And I haven't had this much a problem as I did with V3. I'm so turned off by how much the game feels the need to tell me these are the main character's friends when they do not come off as people they would be friends with. And it really sucks because there are some real diamonds in the rough among this group. Keebo is incredibly endearing, and Gonta is just a great character to spend time with. Even Miu, this really loud, obnoxious pervert without any filter that might have come off as abrasive and grating actually caught me off guard a lot and made me laugh. But since there's a set amount of characters that need to kill or be killed, the story needs a reason for that to happen. The problem is that the reasoning behind most of these are really unsatisfying, come entirely out of left-field, or are just all-around stupid. (Sometimes all 3.) And that drastically harms how I view them as characters. There have been so many murders in the first two games that I can understand from the guilty party's perspective and almost empathize with in a way. (I'd love to give examples but that would spoil games I actually love.) That's part of why I like the characters. Even if they've got these ultimate talents, they're ultimately just people. Connecting the dots on who they kill and why tells you a lot about them, and it can make them feel very human. They don't always have to be sympathetic reasons, I just have to understand them. There is almost nothing like that in V3. And each chapter I played through I was more and more baffled that these are all games in the same series.
The game really loves dropping these little subversions in the story, but almost all of them fell completely flat in my eyes. There isn't a single story beat in this entire game that stuck with me nearly as hard as the 180 I had with my opinion on Trigger Happy Havoc after I finished the first trial. I only just got into Danganronpa this year because I wanted to form my own opinion on the series after hearing about it for years. Starting the first game, I went through most of the first chapter thinking it was just some stupid, immature anime game, that I was going to hate it and that I was way too old to be getting into it. But once I actually got to the first trial and saw that the characters were people with actual, like, multiple facets to them that felt real and grounded that I could pick apart as a reader, I was hooked. The first game isn't perfect, there's a lot in it that I find frustrating (Hifumi) and like a test of my patience (Hifumi). But for what its worth, it's my favorite in the series on a good day. 2 is also great, I just think the first just strikes a special chord with me. I don't really have that with V3, I just feel like the extended time I spent with it is time I'm never getting back.
Small tangent, but this game also just doesn't feel optimized for PC. There'd be so many times where frames would drop on the overworld or the UI would be incorrect despite me going to the settings. I've never had as much input delay/drops where actions would just not register as I have with this game. I played it on two different rigs and these problems still persisted exactly the same. This is bizarre to me for a game that's almost entirely a visual novel, and for being the only game in the series I've had these problems with.
Last note, and spoilers but also not spoilers, I guess: I've seen people describe the ending as like a contentious litmus test for whether or not you actually like Danganronpa. But I've been scratching my head chapter after chapter thinking "what about the rest of the game?" (The ending is also bad, but I don't feel like giving much away.) I don't think I've ever thought about writing a Steam review this long in my life, man, this game got under my skin.
I really wanted to like this game, I genuinely did. But as it stands, I feel like I just wasted 50 hours of my life.
I wish I could save Ryoma and Kirumi and put them in a better game.
