Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls

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Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
Beyond hope... lies absolute despair.
Protagonist(s): Komaru Naegi
Genre(s): Action
Adventure
Platform(s): Microsoft Windows
PlayStation 4
PlayStation Vita
Developer(s): Spike Chunsoft
Publisher(s): JP: Spike Chunsoft
WW: NIS America
WW: Spike Chunsoft (PC)
Country: Japan
Series: Danganronpa
Predecessor: Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Successor: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls is an action-adventure video game developed by Spike Chunsoft for PlayStation Vita. The game is the first spin-off of the Danganronpa series of visual novel games, set between the events of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. The game was released in Japan on September 25, 2014, and was released by NIS America in North America on September 1, 2015, in Europe on September 4, 2015, and in Australia on September 10, 2015. The game was released on PlayStation 4 and Windows worldwide in 2017.

Plot

Set between the events of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Ultra Despair Girls focuses on Komaru Naegi, the younger sister of Makoto Naegi, as she struggles to survive in the post-apocalyptic world created by Ultimate Despair. Forming an unlikely tag-team with Toko Fukawa (a survivor of the first game's killing school life), Komaru must out-gun a legion of deadly Monokuma robots and the fanatical "Monokuma Kids", who seek to turn Towa City into a "paradise for children" by murdering all of the adults with the mysterious group called the Warriors of Hope.

Good Qualities

  1. It's the first game in the Danganronpa series not to be a visual novel, but rather a Third-person shooter game. While the visual novels are great games as well, it was nice for the Danganronpa series to try a new genre.
  2. The game introduces us to Makoto little sister, Komaru, as well as Yasuhiro Hagakure's mother Hiroko, Aoi Asahina's younger brother Yuta, and Chihiro's Fujisaki's father Taichi, who are all very likable characters (in spite of the latter two, in particular, getting little screen time and exploration).
  3. Toko gains much more focus, development, and backstory exploration, going from an annoying cynic to a loyal friend. The first game largely portrayed her as a cynical jackass who always assumed the worst in everything and pushed the other students away. In the beginning of this game, she made a deal with Nagito Komaeda to save Byakuya Togami from the Warriors of Hope, which involved bringing Komaru to their HQ. Because of this, Toko ends up tagging along with Komaru throughout a majority of the game. And as it goes on, Toko provides Komaru with emotional support and entails the former on her past (which played a large part in how she became the way she currently is). As the two learn more and more about each other, and while Toko does occasionally tease Komaru, you can tell how much she obviously cares for her. To the point that she's willing to break her promise to Byakuya to help Komaru escape Towa City. But by the end, she's willing to protect and escape with them both, her crush, and her best friend.
  4. Komaru also gains a lot of character development herself as the game goes on. She starts the game off as a skittish and nervous girl when the Warriors of Hope target her in a killing game. But as the game goes on, her experiences help her become more courageous and independent. After her speech to the adults, unknowingly turning them into killing children, her walking animations and holding of the Hacking Gun change to reflect how much more composed she is now.
  5. There are much fewer protagonists this time (reduced from 16 to 2), which can be considered a bad quality, but it can also make the story easier to follow due to the fact that there are less people to keep track with and establish over the course of the game.
  6. The Warriors of Hope all have tragic backstories involving their abusive parents to explain why they hate adults so much. And by the end, they redeem themselves (excluding Monaca) and side with Komaru (as later confirmed in Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School).
  7. Speaking of the Warriors of Hope, the idea of a group of kids growing to hate adults due to their abusive parents, leading them to join forces and start a revolution together by slaughtering the entire adult populace of their city in order to create a peaceful paradise for children is a very original and interesting concept for a game. Almost like an adult and more dark version of the Cartoon Network classic, Codename: Kids Next Door. But the alignments of the kids and adults/teenagers are reversed here, with many of the antagonists being children while the main heroes as well as most of their allies are teenagers as opposed to the CN show (although not all the adults are portrayed as good people here either, and the Warriors of Hope undergo redemptions near the end, as previously mentioned in GQ# 5). Near the end of the game, the adults become the antagonists and they become a terrorist group, willing to kill all children, they even attempted to kill Komaru and Toko.
  8. The emotional moments are tearjerking, like Taichi's death, each of the Warriors of Hope's respective breakdowns, Yuta dying while trying to escape the city in order to get help for Toko and Komaru, Toko's discussions on her the abuse she faced during her childhood (which include being tied by her classmates to a jungle gym with a garden hose after being accused of stealing another student's lunch and locked in a closet for three days straight with no food), Shirokuma's betrayal, and Komaru's breakdown near the end of Chapter 5.

Bad Qualities

  1. Haiji Towa is a very unlikeable character, whom is worse than the Monokuma Kubs and Tsumugi in Killing Harmony are.
  2. The game prioritizes its story above all else. And while said story is a great one, it leaves the gameplay looking rough and unpolished in a number of areas and the graphics not looking incredibly detailed.
  3. The genre change and massive reduction of characters to follow can be negatively received by Danganronpa fans that aren't used to these changes.
  4. The animated cutscenes have no option for subtitles whatsoever, which can be confusing at times.

Reception

Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls received "mixed or average" reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the game received an average score of 72, based on 35 reviews. The game sold a total of 70,596 copies on the PlayStation Vita during its first week on sale in Japan and was the third best-selling game of the week. The PS4 version sold a total of 1,810 copies during its first week on sale in Japan and failed to reach the sales charts. The Steam release had an estimated total of 32,000 players by July 2018.

The game has sold a total of 128,559 copies in Japan (PS Vita: 123,278 copies/PS4: 5,281 copies).

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