Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony

First off, don't even consider playing this unless you've played the first two Danganronpa games. Seriously. Just don't bother. Don't even read this review. Come back when you've played them.

That's how I started my review of Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls [絶対絶望少女 ダンガンロンパ Another Episode] and I'm going to say again here - and if I could surround that sentence with flashing neon lights this time, I would. If that game needed you to be up to speed with the lore, this one only just stops shy of demanding that you sit an exam to prove that you can recall all of the characters and events from the previous games off the top of your head. Even I, a huge fan of this series, was struggling to keep up at times, and I just kept thinking about how impossible it would be for a newcomer to get anything like maximum enjoyment from this. And even if you did manage to keep up, if you stopped to look up every reference you didn't get before carrying on, it still wouldn't be enough; the way this game plays with the conventions and cliches of the series, the way it constantly leads you down garden paths only to blindside you with something you never expected because that's not how Danganronpa works, the way it plays all that for laughs as much as horror or thrills.....you're just not going to get it. So building up to this is a considerable commitment - but it's worth it, because Danganronpa as a whole is worth it, because this ends up feeling like a definitive conclusion to the franchise and a love letter to all the things these characters have been through along the way, and because it goes out on an incredible high. This is not just the best game in the series, but one of the very best games I've ever played.

We need to interrogate that 'goes out on an incredible high' statement, though, because there is no avoiding the ending here: it is a wildly controversial creative/destructive decision, one liable to upset an awful lot of fans of the series. Danganronpa V3's final trial doesn't just break the fourth wall, it cremates it with a flamethrower and then piss all over the ashes, and with it, any possibility of there ever being another installment - Danganronpa is dead, as conclusively laid to rest as any franchise has ever been by its own creator. And as if that wasn't enough, the twist ending here completely rebrands and recontextualizes the last two mainline games and basically makes a complete nonsense out of Ultra Despair Girls, a game that is now spectacularly non-canon. (I've seen some theories that suggest both games remains canon and that there's two distinct Danganronpa timelines - I don't buy it, but the fact that those theories persist is evidence in itself of just what a sharp turn the ending of this game takes.) I can absolutely understand why some fans were so angry about this when the game first came out - it would even be possible, with a little bit of bad-faith thinking, to interpret the ending as a direct attack on the fanbase - and I wasn't entirely sure what to make of it at first myself, but having mulled it over, I honestly think it's brilliant. I love that Kazutaka Kodaka has been able to hold firm control of the entire franchise from beginning to end, has kept the quality so high throughout, and has been able to end it so definitively, and so entirely on his own terms.

But divisive ending aside, Danganronpa V3 is absolutely spectacular. Replaying the whole trilogy right through in 2022, I can scarcely believe that I ever thought this wasn't the peak of the series - so many things about it are so obviously the best Danganronpa has ever been. The punchlines come thicker and faster than ever before, and land harder, too. The GUI has been overhauled and looks cleaner and sharper than ever before. The Monokubs are a gigantic improvement over Monomi. The volume of post-game content is dizzying; alongside the usual school mode, there's an expansion to the dating sim element, a selection of arcade games, and a board game/dungeon crawler hybrid that is effectively a whole extra game in itself (an expanded version would later be released separately as a spin-off). The trials strike a balance between the coherency of the first game and the ambition of the second, leading the player's brain down some extremely contorted paths without ever losing a solid train of thought (though I will offer up one significant criticism here from my second playthrough - the ending of the first trial feels quite gimmicky when you know what's coming). The minigames within the trials are the most varied they've been; they've even finally figured out a way to stop Hangman's Gambit from being a total chore. And the characters! Maki is my favourite character in the entire franchise, Keebo is right near the very top of that list too, and Kirumi is another personal favourite. The role Nagito played in 2 is now split into two characters, Rantaro and Kokichi, and neither is even remotely as irritating. Tenko and Himiko revisit the Kazuichi/Sonia dynamic to far sweeter effect; Miu becomes surprisingly charming in spite of herself; the relentless positivity and sincerity of both Gonta and Katio is bizarrely infectious; Korekiyo revisits a reliable series trope to its most skin-crawling effect yet; two of the eventual killers have the most gut-wrenching motives and executions in the series. The game feels like it's really going the extra mile to ensure every character gets to become three-dimensional and enjoy a real sense of development, too; for the first time, the killer and the victim of the first trial continue to matter right through to the game's conclusion.

This feels like the work of a writer who has taken a very considered look at their own work, understood what has worked and what hasn't in the past, and done their absolute damnedest to fix every mistake, repeat every success, and realize the best version of their concept that they possibly could. And he's succeeded. This isn't just the best Danganronpa game; it's the best I could ever imagine a Danganronpa game ever being. A deliriously brilliant game.