Danganronpa Another Episode（絶対絶望少女 ダンガンロンパ Another Episode）

Whew! It's been a while since my last foray into the crazy world of Danganronpa, but I finally finished this odd little over-the-shoulder shooter spin off entry with puzzle mechanics and it only took me over 2 years!

That doesn't look... um... appropriate

If you've never played the first game and care about avoiding ANY spoilers, I would recommend staying far away from this game. Don't even look at the cover art as it reveals a lot of what will happen in the first game. But don't leave! I won't get into any of it and I was very deliberate in choosing the screenshots.

No shitty, hit-and-run shocking spoilers in this blog!

I usually play shooters exclusively on the PC with mouse+keyboard but I got used to this game enough to enjoy it. The shooting mechanic is slower paced and deliberate than the typical shooter. So much so, I would just categorize this as an action game with shooting and puzzle mechanics. There are a bunch of puzzle type rooms where you can defeat all the enemies in one fell swoop if you use the various bullets the "correct" way. These bullets are unlocked throughout the game though you get a sneak preview of all of them in the beginning.

The only part I didn't like was the lack of frequent save points. These save points are actually portable potties called omaru in Japanese, which sounds similar to Komaru, the main character. Anyway, it was annoying to play a portable game that you can't easily turn off at any time.

Nothing more relaxing than taking a BIG dump

Speaking of portable, the graphics look amazing on the Vita (incoming switch whiners alert!!) and the settings are the usual colorful Danganronpa style. I especially loved the nice touches for the super stylized fire and swirling sewage water.

Even sewage water looks attractive. Nice water.

Some might say that the Kamaitachi no Yoru style for all the adult characters reeks of laziness but I dunno. If it's all the same to you, I appreciated not seeing a disturbing pile of detailed corpses, personally.

This probably would have been Cero Z if not "abstracted"

The 3D characters for the main cast looked great and transitioned very well from the 2D paper Mario style of the first two games, especially Komaru. And no matter how much it tries to paint her as just an average, regular JK, I just don't buy it. I don't care what the game says, but Komaru is HAWT. Not to mention the fact that unless some genetic engineering dramatically change the average Japanese girl's anatomy in the game universe, her boob size is definitely NOT average.

Game includes profiles of all the characters with measurements (84 cm bust here)

Besides the graphics (great) and gameplay (ok), the real highlight, as you would expect from Danganronpa, is the story. I'm genuinely surprised that this didn't get censored in the West as some of the subject matter is shall we say... highly politically sensitive? Even though nothing is explicitly explained nor shown, it's still extremely touchy especially when it pertains to children (argh, phrasing!).

First game I ever played that actually has the balls to say "child porn". Argh, once again, phrasing!

But putting aside all the crazy, taboo shit, I thought the final chapter was really, really good. It went in a direction I didn't expect and I really enjoyed the plot overall as well as the character development, even though the latter was more orthodox.

The music for the series seems to be getting better and better as this one had my favorite soundtrack so far. Though the list of songs wasn't quite as long and varied as I would have liked, I'm still humming "yeah yeah yeah" as it's damn catchy. Good stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh uh uh

The Danganronpa series has been a sleeper "HIDDEN GEM!!!" hit in the west so all the games are fully localized. Obviously, as a Jhipster, I can only scoff at the English voice acting and lame localization. There is a riddle in the game that uses wordplay about a gunman breaking dishes. Because "gun"（銃） is a homonym for "ten" and 割る not only means "break" but also "divide", the answer is to divide by ten. Unfortunately, none of that makes sense in English so here's NISA's stupid answer to the "riddle".

Ugh, so forced and stupid. English is lame #weeaboo

Score: 4 this makes Lord of the Flies sound so tame out of 5 (20 hours recorded but probably around 25 with resets)

Objectively, this one is a 3.5 above-average game and just a 3 average in the gameplay department. It would be a stretch to say that this spinoff was better than the first two main entries. But I dunno, I just really liked the last chapter and felt really satisfied at the end. So I'm going to just go with my gut and stick with 4 as a great game. No, it has nothing to do with how cute Komaru is... not even a smidgen... mostly... I mean, got dayum, she's HAWT! My score is probably not what the typical Shitaku crowd would agree with but what do they know? Jack squat, that's what.

2 Jhipster thumbs up!

Gotta love the fanart

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely