Game Cover

Ahem! This is an announcement from the Ultimate Academy! Rise and shine, kiddos! It’s another gorgeous day for a killing game! So get out there, embrace your homicidal urges, and have a fabulous day!

Previous Danganronpa games:

• Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
• Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

Platform played on: PC (Anniversary Edition)

# Review

In the final game of the Danganronpa trilogy, another 16 high school students with Ultimate talents are trapped in a school and pitted against each other in a killing game where each student is asked to try to murder someone else and get away with it in order to escape. As with the previous two games, the talents this time range from the benign, such as being the best tennis player and the best inventor, to more wacky talents such as being the best cosplayer and the best robot. This time, along with gamemaster Monokuma, there are also five Monokubs which support him.

Monokubs

The gameplay, as with the previous games, consists of reading through the visual novel and participating in class trials. The story is from the perspective of one of the participants in the killing game: Kaede Akamatsu, the Ultimate Pianist. I personally enjoyed the story the most out of the trilogy; the pacing is very good and the characters are all memorable. The player can explore the school, interacting with different objects and characters. The player can also build friendships with the other characters by spending time with them.

Interacting with objects and characters

The best part of the game is again, the class trials, where the students engage in a debate to figure out who the culprit is. Unlike the previous game which had some very bad mini games, the mini games in V3 are an improvement in every aspect. The games are more polished, such as having better animations for the debates. I also really enjoyed many of the mini games.

Class trial

Class trial mini game

On top of the main game, there are also many side mini games. The first ones unlocked are the casino games, where players can bet and win casino currency which can be exchanged for perks and gifts. Instead of the resource management games of the previous two entries, V3 has the Love Across the Universe: Dangan Salmon Team gamemode, where the player can just focus on completing the relationships with each of the other characters. There is also the Ultimate Talent Development Plan, which is a board game where the player collects different character cards from entire Danganronpa trilogy. The player can play on different boards and develop each player card. It’s actually very well made and serves as an homage to the entire series of games. It’s very cool to see the characters from games interact in mini plots with characters from the other games.

Character development board game

After developing several character cards, the player can actually use the developed cards in Despair Dungeon: Monokuma's Test, a full turn-based RPG.

Monokuma's Test RPG

I found the system for character progression a bit lacking; while you can grind for materials in the RPG, all of the actual character progression occurs completely separately to the actual RPG, in the board game. Despite this, the RPG has some depth and reminds me of RPG Maker games.

Turn-based combat

Unlike the previous two games’ Anniversary Editions, this game actually runs well on PC. The game speed is normal and the environments fully load.

# Conclusion

A fitting conclusion to the trilogy.

# Overall rating: 8.1

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