Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc review: deadly combination

Equal parts social sim, murder mystery and courtroom thriller, Danganronpa kept me enthralled with concepts that felt fresh and familiar all at once. It pieces together a devilishly good story with characters that feel like individuals and mixed mechanics that play well together. Though built on violence, Danganronpa isn't strangled by its dark nature.

Danganronpa stars Makoto Naegi, a high school student preparing for his first day at Hope's Peak Academy — a school that only takes the best and brightest. At least, that's what they think, right up until Makoto and company are trapped in the school and forced to participate in a killing game. In order to escape, one must murder a fellow student without being discovered. Get caught and you'll be "punished" with death; get away with it, and everyone else is punished.

Danganronpa's mystery unfolds through very different yet equally engaging mechanics. During Daily Life sections, I roamed around the school and socialized with other students. There's a practical purpose for choosing to be friendly; as the relationship between Makoto and his classmates grows, you pick up new skills to use later in the game. The game's memorable cast makes the sim aspect all the more enjoyable. Deciding who to spend time with each day was a genuine challenge, and even Danganronpa's most irritating characters reveal redeeming qualities as the plot progresses.

Getting close with students has a high potential for emotional turmoil when the game switches to Deadly Life. These segments occur after a murder has taken place, switching gears to detective-like gameplay. Picking apart crime scenes and questioning other students pulled me even deeper into the game's story, but not without some unnecessary handholding.

You can't leave specific areas until you've found all relevant clues, and the game provides redundant hints as to where to go next — when it doesn't just automatically take you there. Sometimes I would understand a clue well before the game would let me move on, which was frustrating. In one extreme case, I mentally pinpointed the guilty party five minutes after the murder — and still had to go around collecting clues.

Punishment scenes reminded me that Danganronpa is built on brutality. But the game's shocking violence is paired with kooky antics in a way that somehow makes it digestible. The villainous Monokuma is a black-and-white teddy bear whose words teeter between mischievous and psychopathic in the same breath. Victims are always covered in hot pink blood sprays that make crime scenes look more like pop art parties than kill rooms. Even the sheer horror of being trapped in a school and forced to murder your friends is downplayed by the cheerful, chirpy tunes of the game's everyday music.

For every lighthearted gesture Danganronpa makes, it never mistakes death for something casual. I didn't have time to bond with everyone in the game — there were simply too many interesting characters to chose from — but each murder carried a dreadful weight. Every discovery was a surprise; every death, a strange rush of dread and relief as I learned the fates of those I'd grown close with.