Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

2012

Audio: English, Japanese · Subtitles: English, Japanese, Chinese

adventure
visual novel
action
thriller
mystery
single player

The story

The follow up to Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. The main character, Hajime Hinata, a new 'Ultimate' student at Hope's Peak Academy. On their first day, Hajime and all of his classmates are taken on a field trip to the mysterious Jabberwock island by their anthropomorphic rabbit teacher, Usami. Usami explains that on this island the students are to have fun together and become friends to gather Hope Fragments. Usami's field trip does not go as planned when Monokuma appears and begins a new Killing Game. Anyone that wants to leave the island must commit a murder and get away with it. If the murderer is successful, he/she is allowed to leave the island, while everyone else is killed. When a murder occurs, the player investigates. After the investigations, a trial commences to determine who the culprit is.

What it’s like

Bright, cartoonish colour sits over a rotten core: candy-pink and sky-blue island vistas, saturated anime portraits set against stark white courtrooms, and crime-scene rooms rendered in flat, glossy 2D with bold outlines and exaggerated expressions. Sound design swings between jaunty, chiptune-flavoured pop and sudden silences, while the trial sequences build a pulsing, pressurised score that rises with every accusation. The rhythm is talky and punchy, with long stretches of banter and investigation broken by abrupt, gruesome reveals; the bloody murder scenes and grisly crime-scene imagery are brief but brutal, and there is violence, torture-adjacent cruelty and a steady undercurrent of dread rather than comfortable calm. Emotionally it runs on cheerful absurdity curdling into anguish, as a group of oddball teenagers learns to distrust one another and a new protagonist is pulled into the chaos. It suits late-night, lights-on play for mystery fans who enjoy twisty deduction, dark humour and a jolt of shock, and it is not a fit for anyone wanting something gentle or violence-free.

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