Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony Anniversary Edition (NSP, XCI) ROM

Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony Anniversary Edition Deceive, Panic, Reason! Trials demand deceit and logic to guide your peers to the correct verdict! A fresh saga unfolds! Danganronpa V3 makes its debut on Nintendo Switch. Embrace a brand-new Danganronpa realm, brimming with unparalleled thrills and surprises. Immerse yourself in a “psycho-cool” setting, where 16 unfamiliar faces become victims of abduction and imprisonment within a school’s walls. This game is a visual novel developed and published by Spike Chunsoft. The game was released in Japan in January 2017 for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, and in North America and Europe by NIS America in September 2017. A Windows version was released worldwide on the same date. An enhanced version of V3 with the subtitle Anniversary Edition was released for Nintendo Switch in Japan in November 2021, and worldwide in December 2021. This improved version was also released for Android and iOS in April 2022, and for Windows 10 and Xbox One in September 2022.

GAMEPLAY

Danganronpa V3 continues the same style of gameplay as the first two numbered Danganronpa games, which are split into School Life, Deadly Life, and Class Trial segments. During School Life, the player interacts with other characters and progresses through the story until coming across a murder victim and entering Deadly Life, during which they must gather evidence for use in the Class Trial. Roaming around the world and interacting with objects during both School Life and Deadly Life will yield experience points for the player. Experience points are used to level up and with each level, the player obtains more skill points which enable them to equip skills to help with Class Trials. Like in previous games, Class Trials largely revolve around the Non-Stop Debate, in which characters discuss the case, with the player required to use Truth Bullets containing evidence against highlighted statements determining whether a character is wrong, lying, or telling the truth.

During Non-Stop debates that appear to have no clear contradictions, there is an option to deliberately lie by changing the bullets being used. Returning from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair is Rebuttal Showdowns, in which the player must debate with a specific character to find a contradiction. Danganronpa V3 adds new gameplay elements to the Class Trials. Mass Panic Debates involve multiple characters talking over each other, which makes finding the correct statement harder, while Debate Scrums have groups of characters arguing against each other, requiring the player to use statements from their side against the other side’s statements. New minigames are also added. Hangman’s Gambit 3.0 requires players to use light to pick out letters spelling out an answer. Mind Mine is a puzzle game requiring players to remove colored blocks to reveal an illustration.

Finally, Psyche Taxi sees players driving a taxi, collecting letters for a question that they must then answer by picking up the correct escort. In addition to this, the previous games’ Bullet Time Battle/Panic Talk Action minigames have been replaced with Argument Armament, another rhythm game where players must hit buttons in time to the beat before building a sentence from four groups of words at the end to silence a panicking character. As in the previous games, there are also various modes outside the main game. The Death Road of Despair minigame is accessible by visiting the area under the manhole in the school: it is a platform game intentionally designed with a very high difficulty level, in which all 16 students try to escape the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles while trying to evade bombs, traps, and holes. After finishing the main game, other modes are unlocked.

Salmon Team Mode is an alternate mode similar to School Mode and Island Mode in the previous games, in which Monokuma decides to cancel the killing game and turn it into a dating reality show, allowing players to bond with the other characters. There are also two brand-new modes. The first one, Ultimate Talent Development Plan, has the player choosing any character from Danganronpa V3 (or from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, after unlocking their cards) and advancing in an 8-bit game board representing their school life at Hope’s Peak Academy while they increase their skills and interact with other characters. After completing this mode for the first time, a new mode is unlocked, Despair Dungeon: Monokuma’s Test, where the player uses the characters developed in Ultimate Talent Development Plan to stop a horde of Monokuma creatures unleashed by the Monokuma Kubs in an 8-bit turn-based role-playing game.

CHARACTERS

The game features 16 high-school students being forced into a mutual killing game. Each character has a special skill or ability, known as an Ultimate Talent. Danganronpa V3 is viewed from the point of view of two protagonists. Despite being advertised as the game’s sole lead, Kaede Akamatsu is only a false protagonist, as she is no longer the player character after the first chapter. The remainder of the game is played from Shuichi Saihara’s perspective; the Ultimate Detective is reserved and unsure of his talents. Other participants of the Killing Game include child caregiver Maki Harukawa, anthropologist Korekiyo Shinguji, robot K1-B0 (“Keebo”), and astronaut Kaito Momota among several others. The game features a mascot character, an evil anthropomorphic talking robotic bear known as Monokuma who is in charge of the killing game. Alongside Monokuma, the game introduces the Monokubs, five smaller robot bears who serve as secondary antagonists and are viewed as children by Monokuma.

STORY

High school student Kaede Akamatsu is kidnapped and awakens trapped in Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles, where she meets 15 fellow students including Shuichi Saihara. The group is abruptly accosted by the Monokubs who expose them to a “Flashback Light,” a flashlight similar to a neuralyzer. When Kaede next awakens the students remember having ultimate talents; for example, Kaede is the “Ultimate Pianist” and Shuichi is the “Ultimate Detective”. Monokuma – a robotic bear – arrives and informs the students that the only way to escape the academy is to successfully murder another student and not be voted as the culprit at the resulting trial, known as a class trial. Initially, the participants are unwilling to take part in the “killing game”, until a new rule is imposed – if nobody is killed within two days, Monokuma will prematurely end the game by killing all of the students. Shuichi reasons that there must be a mastermind controlling Monokuma, and Kaede works with him to set a trap to expose the mastermind just before the time limit.

Kaede accidentally kills the amnesiac Rantaro Amami instead of the mastermind. During the following class trial, Kaede encourages Shuichi to expose her and is executed. Afterward, Shuichi develops a friendship with the Ultimate Astronaut Kaito Momota, and the Ultimate Childcare Giver (later revealed as Ultimate Assassin) Maki Harukawa. Many more murders occur throughout the game, with each culprit getting caught and executed. Ultimate Tennis Pro Ryoma Hoshi is willingly killed by Ultimate Maid Kirumi Tojo in hopes that she may escape the killing game and save Japan from destruction. Ultimate Artist Angie Yonaga and Ultimate Aikido Master Tenko Chabashira are killed by Ultimate Anthropologist Korekiyo Shinguji in his belief that killing people brings his dead sister “friends” in the afterlife. Ultimate Inventor Miu Iruma is killed by Ultimate Entomologist Gonta Gokuhara after he was manipulated into doing so by Ultimate Supreme Leader, Kokichi Oma.

The students find additional Flashback Lights and remember that they are students of the Hope’s Peak Academy led by Makoto Naegi, whom he sent into space in the hopes of preserving humanity after meteors began to fall upon the Earth and a deadly epidemic had ravaged the remainder of the population. Near the end of the game, Kokichi reveals the outside world to be destroyed and claims to have returned the spaceship to Earth and masterminded the killing game. It is later revealed that Kokichi is not the mastermind and, through a complex process, he collaborates with Kaito to create a murder in which either he or Kaito are plausible victims, to such a point that even Monokuma does not know who was killed. Through Shuichi’s deductions, it is eventually revealed that Kaito killed Kokichi, and is subsequently executed. Later, the students discover evidence contradicting their memories, as well as inconsistencies in Rantaro’s crime scene. In response, Shuichi demands a retrial of Kaede’s case.

At the trial, Shuichi accuses Ultimate Cosplayer Tsumugi Shirogane of being the mastermind, having killed Rantaro and framed Kaede. Tsumugi confesses and reveals that the students’ memories, talents, relationships, and personalities are entirely fake, the Flashback Light being a brainwashing device and the destroyed world being a sound stage. The students are taking part in “Danganronpa 53 (V3)”, the 53rd season of a lethal reality TV show watched by millions based on the fictional Danganronpa media franchise. All of the Ultimates, barring K1-B0, were ordinary individuals who willingly had their previous lives’ memories permanently erased in exchange for talent and a fake background who had joined purely for fame, fortune, or the thrill of the game, and who were far less trusting and altruistic than their killing game selves. K1-B0 is revealed to be the camera for the viewers and possesses an antenna that lets him hear the audience’s opinions on the show, and encourages him to battle Tsumugi’s despair with hope.

Realizing either choice will continue the killing game, Shuichi encourages the students to abstain from voting, meaning everyone will be executed but the killing game will also end. At the vote, all parties abstain including Tsumugi and K1-B0, the former willing to sacrifice herself to continue Danganronpa and the latter indicating the audience has given up on Danganronpa. As the remaining viewers tune out, a defeated Tsumugi orders K1-B0 to destroy the school. He does so, killing Tsumugi and Monokuma in the process, then activates his self-destruct feature. The survivors, Shuichi, Maki, and Ultimate Magician Himiko Yumeno consider the possibility that Tsumugi was lying about their past selves willingly signing up to participate in Danganronpa and depart for the real world.