After your investigation is complete, you proceed to the class trials where you work with the others to pin point who committed the murder. Again I love the ability to use the analog sticks to navigate around while using the touchscreen to inspect elements. Once a murder is committed by someone, you have a certain amount of time to investigate for clues that can range from other students’ accounts of what happened to general evidence. The game gets its name from the Class Trials that take place after a murder has been committed. The map mode is nice but it feels like a last minute addition and would have made more sense on a 3DS with a second screen. When you sleep at night there’s a Monokuma Theater segment that is different each time revealing different things and even advertising the game at one point which made me burst out laughing. This visual novel aspect is great because you learn a lot about the endearing characters. These presents are obtained by spending Monokuma coins in the store at Hope’s Peak Academy. You can also give someone a present after spending time with them. This bit is akin to social links in the Persona games. Spending time with other people earns entries into their Report Card in the game grants you skill points. There are many story segments that have you forcibly visit certain places and talk to certain people and on other days you get “Free Time” where you can spend your time either resting or with other people. Take your time and inspect everything because you are randomly given Monokuma coins that you can use to buy gifts and unlock extras after inspecting. Interacting with objects and things in the environment is pretty easy with the ability to press triangle to highlight objects you can interact with. Speaking of choices, it is always great when Japanese games have an option to use the original voice overs because some people prefer having the game played the way it was originally released as far as possible. Most games have this stubborn way of forcing you to pick one. I love that they allow using both physical buttons and triggers on the Vita and the touch screen. DRTHH has absolutely nailed the controls. You communicate with everyone by focussing on them and hitting X. Your main controls range from point and click exploration within small areas to first person exploration in larger areas. The game has you pumped right from the get go and is pretty hard to put down when story elements keep you hanging by a thread with unexpected plot twists and just plain shocking things. However if the killer is identified incorrectly, he or she will graduate and be free while everyone else suffers. The rest continue living in this communal life controlled by a bear. Monokuma makes it clear that when someone is killed, there will be a trial where everyone has to find “The Blackened” and if the killer is correctly identified, he or she is punished. You have no choice but to play along with this game of survival because the only way to escape is to kill someone and not get caught. Also there’s no way to escape because all the windows in the building have been barred shut with metallic plates and when you start out you have access to very little of the building. Monokuma is sadistic and seems to be controlled by something. Monokuma takes control of your school life and it turns into a survival situation. There are no classes and the situation goes from anticipation for a new school life to panic and despair as you and your new friends are put into a scenario that instantly reminded me of the SAW series. Hope’s Peak however isn’t what everyone thought it was. Unlike in games like Persona 4 where you interact with more people as time goes by to understand how they are, DRTHH has you interact with all 14 students from the get go and thanks to their traits and in most cases unique looks, it takes very little time for them to get ingrained in your memory. You play as Makoto Naegi who ends up here because of a lottery. Every student at Hope’s Peak Academy is “The Ultimate something” where something can range from baseball star to martial artist. Hope’s Peak Academy is where the cream of the crop from Japan’s students end up. It took me a few days to finish (close to 25 hours) but Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc (henceforth DRTHH) is now on my must haves for PS Vita list. “Imagine Persona and Ace Attorney and Virtue’s Last Reward together” is what a lot of people said before launch. The game was supposed to be a visual novel with point and click elements and a lot more. Having not seen the animation or played the original PSP game, Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc (Danganronpa 1 in Japan) intrigued me the second I watched a teaser.
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