Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony

Gameplay

Danganronpa V3 continues the same style of gameplay as the first two Danganronpa games, which is split into School Life and Class Trial segments. During School Life, players interact with other characters and progress through the story until coming across a murder, after which they must gather evidence for use in the Class Trial. 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 someone is lying or telling the truth. During Non-Stop debates that appear to have no clear contradictions, players can now use Lie Bullets to break the conversation with a False Counter. Returning from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair are Rebuttal Showdowns, in which the player must debate with a specific character in order to reach a contradiction.

Danganronpa V3 adds new gameplay elements to the Class Trials. Mass Panic Debates involve multiple characters talking over each other, making finding the correct statement harder, while Debate Scrums have groups of characters argue against each other, requiring the player to use statements from their side against the other side's statements. New mini-games are also added. Epiphany Anagram 3.0 requires players to use light to pick out letters spelling out an answer. Excavation Imagination is a puzzle game requiring players to remove colored blocks in order to reveal an illustration. Finally, Brain Drive sees players driving a car, collecting letters for a question that they must then answer.

Plot

High school student Kaede Akamatsu is kidnapped and awakens in the "Gifted Inmates Academy" (才囚学園, Sai-shū Gakuen), where she meets fellow student Shuuichi Saihara and 14 others. The group is abruptly accosted by a series of bear robots who expose them to a "Memory Light". When Kaede next awakes, she remembers her life as the Ultimate Pianist, while Saihara is the Ultimate Detective. Their other classmates each have their own talents and histories. Monokuma arrives and informs the students that the only way to escape is to successfully kill another student and get away with it in a subsequent Class Trial. If nobody is killed within two days, Monokuma will prematurely end the game by killing all of the students.

Shuuichi reasons that there must be a mastermind controlling Monokuma, and Kaede works with him to set a trap to expose the mastermind just prior to the time limit. However, concerned that there won't be enough time to stop the mastermind, Kaede secretly alters the trap to kill the person it catches. Unfortunately, amnesiac Rantaro Amami is caught and killed instead of the mastermind. During the following class trial, Kaede attempts to uncover the mastermind but fails. She confesses to her crime, encourages Shuuichi to keep going, and is executed.

Although brokenhearted at Kaede's death, Shuuichi soon develops a friendship with Ultimate Astronaut Kaito Momota and Ultimate Assassin Maki Harukawa. Several more murders take place, which Shuuichi is able to solve, though he is often vexed by Ultimate Leader Kokichi Ouma. The students find additional Memory Lights and gradually remember that they are students of the reopened Hope's Peak Academy, who were sent into space in the hopes of preserving humanity after meteors began to fall upon the Earth. Ouma reveals the outside world to be destroyed and claims to have returned the spaceship to Earth and masterminded the killing game before kidnapping Momota.

Shuuichi, Harukawa, and the other students stage a rescue mission with the aim of saving Momota and stopping the game, only to discover an unrecognizable corpse. During the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that Ouma was not the mastermind and only claimed as such to try and draw the real one out. Ouma convinced Momota to kill him in the hopes of creating a crime Monokuma could not solve and defeat the game. Momota urges the survivors to uncover the truth before being executed.

Unwilling to continue the game, Ultimate Robot Kiibo decides to destroy the school, giving Shuuichi until dawn to find the mastermind. Shuuichi, Harukawa, and the other survivors - Ultimate Magician Himiko Yumeno and Ultimate Cosplayer Tsumugi Shirogane - investigate the school and discover evidence contradicting their memories, as well as inconsistencies in Amami's crime scene. They further learn that Amami was the Ultimate Survivor, having taken part in a previous killing game. Shuuichi calls a final class trial to re-try Amami's case.

At the trial, Shuuichi accuses Shirogane of being the mastermind, having killed Amami and framed Kaede. Shirogane confesses and reveals that the students' memories, talents, relationships, and personalities are entirely fake, the Memory Light being a brainwashing device and the destroyed world being a sound stage. The students are in fact taking part in "Danganronpa 53 (V3)", a lethal reality TV show watched by millions based off of the fictional Danganronpa media franchise. She offers the students the choice between "hope" - where she is executed but the students must choose two of their own to take part in the next killing game as Amami did - or "despair" - where Kiibo will be executed and the game will continue.

Shuuichi encourages the students to abstain from voting, meaning execution but also the end of the game. Shirogane erases Kiibo's personality and has him serve only as a conduit for viewer votes, but Shuuichi uses this to make an impassioned plea directly to the viewers to stop watching. At the vote, all parties abstain including Kiibo, indicating the audience has given up on Danganronpa. As the remaining viewers tune out, a defeated Shirogane orders Kiibo to destroy the school. He does so, killing Shirogane in the process, then self-destructs to allow the others to escape. Shuuichi, Harukawa, and Yumeno consider the possibility that Shirogane was lying about their pasts being entirely fake and depart for the real world.

Development

Danganronpa V3 is produced by Yoshinori Terasawa, and planned and written by Kazutaka Kodaka, while the character design is done by Rui Komatsuzaki. The game is being developed at the same time as the production of the anime series Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School, which Terasawa and Kodaka described as being difficult; they still try to develop both projects without making any compromises, as such an opportunity does not arise often. The "V3" in the game's title was chosen to differentiate it from the anime; the "V" is short for "Victory". Terasawa and Kodaka described the game's production level as being much higher than that of previous games in the series.

There was division among the staff in the development team regarding whether the game should be a sequel or something new; because of this, it was decided to make something that was both a sequel and new. The game's theme is described as "psycho-cool". As with previous games in the series, the game's original score was composed and produced by Masafumi Takada.

Promotion and release

The existence of a third Danganronpa title was first teased in September 2013 with the announcement of Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls. In March 2015, Kodaka revealed that Danganronpa 3 was in early development. The game was announced at Sony's Tokyo Game Show presentation.

The game was released for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in January 12, 2017 in Japan. A playable demo featuring Makoto Naegi and Hajime Hinata, the protagonists of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, was released on December 20, 2016. The limited edition of the game will include an original video animation based on Goodbye Despair, titled Super Danganronpa 2.5: Komaeda Nagito to Sekai no Hakaisha. Coinciding with the game's Japanese release, Danganronpa V3-themed PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita consoles will be released in Japan. NIS America will release the game in English in 2017.

Two multiple-disc soundtrack albums containing music from the game were released on February 24, 2017, both through composer Masafumi Takada's music label, Sound Prestige Records.

Reception

Danganronpa V3 was awarded by Famitsu with a score of 37/40 Within its first week of release in Japan, the PlayStation Vita version sold 76,166 copies, whilst the PlayStation 4 version sold 40,006.

As of February 22, 2017, The PlayStation Vita version has sold 115,840 copies in Japan.