Monokuma is Back for More High School Murder Mystery in Danganronpa 2 - Preview
by Karl Koebke , posted on 14 June 2014 / 3,765 Views
E3 2014 wasn't a great time for Vita owners. There were no new game announcements dedicated to the platform during Sony's press conference and even a game that was on Vita in the East has been ported away from the Vita for the West. That said, there were some great Vita games to try out at E3 this year even if they weren't given a very high profile, and Danganronpa 2 was one of the best.
For those who don't know, Danganronpa (you can read our review here) was a game about a group of students all forced to play a game of “who can murder a fellow classmate and get away with it?” Originally a PSP game, this Vita title had style to spare, with unique and interesting characters in a crazy setting. Players would inspect the crime scene and then engage in debating minigames with their classmates in order to discover and prove who the true killer was for each crime.
Danganronpa 2 starts out with a seemingly more innocent set-up. A group of 'ultimate' high school students are brought together and forced on an uninhabited island by a stuffed animated rabbit named Usami. All they have to do to get off the island is get along and collect all of the hope fragments by making friends with each other.
The new group of ultimates is as lively as ever, with a sex-fiend ultimate cook, shy ultimate nurse, and peppy and upbeat ultimate musician. Interacting with your classmates is a large part of the Danganronpa experience and I'm glad to see that the new cast seems to be just as interesting as the first. You also seem to be locked into a much larger area this time around, with five islands all connected to a central island that acts solely as a hub. Hopefully this doesn't turn out to be the same amount of content as the first game merely in a different presentational format.
Those aren't the only changes since the first game either. Getting hope fragments and exploring the island will eventually increase your character's level, which makes them “stronger” according to the tutorial and gives them access to more skills and abilities during classroom trials. A NISA representative told me that some new minigames have been added to the debates as well, but I couldn't get far enough to see them in action for myself. One smaller change I noticed was that the main menu now has an “e-pet”, which seems to function a lot like a little Usami tomogatchi. You can clean its poop from the room and give it presents, and it appears to grow as you take more and more steps to explore the island. I'm very curious to see what comes of this addition, if anything.
The main character is decidedly pessimistic about this whole “get along with everyone and I'll let you go” deal Usami is trying to sell, almost as though he played the previous game himself. Usami does her best to lighten the mood by giving everyone a motive to be happy: a party. Just as our main character gives in and decides to enjoy the beach party with the other students, the sky goes dark and so does everything else. Monokuma makes his appearance, takes control from Usami, and changes this from a beautiful school trip into a “killing school trip” much like the first game. This, unfortunately, is where my demo had to end as I had already spent a long time on the game by this point.
Danganronpa is one of my favorite titles on the Vita and it looks like Danganronpa 2 is going to be joining the first on that list. Hearing that cute yet creepy music whenever Usami popped up to block me off from one area or another or explain something made me very nostalgic, and improvements to the classroom trial sequences and a new story that isn't spoiled by an anime series has propelled this game to the top of my most wanted list. Hopefully for NISA's sake the buying public will share my excitement when Danganronpa 2 releases on September 2nd.
