Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony

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Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
Third time's the charm.
Protagonist(s): Kaede Akamatsu
Shuichi Saihara
Genre(s): Visual Novel
Platform(s): Microsoft Windows
PlayStation 4
PlayStation Vita
Nintendo Switch
Release Date: January 12, 2017
PlayStation 4
JP: January 12, 2017
NA: September 26, 2017
EU: September 29, 2017
AU: October 6, 2017
Trilogy
NA: March 26, 2019
EU: March 29, 2019
PlayStation Vita
JP: January 12, 2017
NA: September 26, 2017
EU: September 29, 2017
AU: October 6, 2017
Windows
WW: September 26, 2017
Android, iOS

Anniversary Edition
Switch: December 3, 2021
Android, IOS: TBA
Decadence
JP: November 4, 2021
NA: December 3, 2021

Developer(s): Spike Chunsoft
Publisher(s): Spike Chunsoft (JP)
NIS America (WW)
Country: Japan
Series: Danganronpa
Predecessor: Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
Successor: Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp


Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony is a visual novel mystery game developed by Spike Chunsoft for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Microsoft Windows. The game was released in Japan in January 2017, and in North America and Europe by NIS America that September. A Windows version was also released at the same time. It was also released on the Nintendo Switch as part of Danganronpa Decadence on December 3rd, 2021.

Plot

Kaede Akamatsu, the Ultimate Pianist, awakens inside a locker in what appears to be an abandoned school building with no idea how or why she ended up there. She soon finds a boy stumbling out of a different locker, who also doesn't know how he got there. He introduces himself as Shuichi Saihara, the Ultimate Detective. At the behest of five bear-like mascots calling themselves the Monokubs, Kaede and Shuichi explore the Ultimate Academy and meet 14 other Ultimate high school students, the very best in their fields selected by the government's Gifted System. Soon, however, they are introduced to the Monokubs' "father", Headmaster Monokuma, who explains to the sixteen Ultimates the rules of their new lives: they are trapped inside the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles, and the only way to escape is to kill one of their own and successfully get away with the crime in a class trial. Kaede soon discovers that they are indeed trapped, and she, Shuichi, and the other Ultimate students are forced into playing Monokuma's sadistic Mutual Killing Game, with the Monokubs piloting Humongous Mecha called Exisals to enforce the rules and kill students who break them.

Why It Finds the Truth

  1. It arguably has the visuals graphics in the Danganronpa trilogy. The backgrounds/character designs are very creative and intricate with every detail being visible in every frame and on every character.
  2. Like its predecessors, the cast consists of a group of students who are all extremely complex, interesting, and capable of having an entire story dedicated to themselves due to their distinctive personalities.
    • Kaede Akamatsu, the Ultimate Pianist, is caring, understanding, and a capable leader. Sadly, she is a false protagonist, mainly because she died in the first chapter due to Tsumugi and Monokuma manipulating everyone into thinking she killed Rantaro
    • Shuichi Saihara, the Ultimate Detective, is initially shy and timid, but later grows into a leader following Kaede's death.
    • Himiko Yumeno, the Ultimate Magician, is introduced as a secretive and lazy girl, but later learns to open up to those around her and express her emotions more freely.
    • Kaito Momota, the Ultimate Astronaut, is a passionate, comical boy with a habit of over-exaggerating his emotions and actions and dreams of going to space.
    • Kirumi Tojo, the Ultimate Maid, is a seemingly submissive but secretly manipulative woman who is determined to escape the school at any cost due to having the entire country dependent on her.
    • Korekiyo Shinguji, the Ultimate Anthropologist, is a cool-headed and intelligent student who shares a deep love for human nature.
    • Tenko Chabashira, the Ultimate Aikido Master, is an energetic martial artist with a hatred of men and a crush on Himiko.
    • Gonta Gokuhara, the Ultimate Entomologist, is an enormous but gentle and dim-witted boy who aspires to be a gentleman.
    • K1-B0, the Ultimate Robot, is a robot equipped with an advanced learning AI, invented by a robotics genius named Professor Idabashi.
    • Angie Yonaga, the Ultimate Artist, is an accomplished artist from an island nation who considers herself a conduit of the god of her island, Atua.
    • Ryoma Hoshi, the Ultimate Tennis Pro, is very serious and pessimistic, believing he has nothing to live for due to losing his loved ones and being a death row inmate.
    • Maki Harukawa, the Ultimate Child Caregiver/Assassin, is an initially cold and hostile girl, but over time warms up to those around her late in the game, especially her boyfriend Kaito.
    • Rantaro Amami, the Ultimate ??? (Ultimate Survivor) is a mysterious and rather cavalier boy who, for an unknown reason, forgot his talent but is determined to learn it.
  3. Speaking of the characters, it's almost certain the player will end up becoming emotionally attached to at least one of them, making the deaths all the more impactful.
  4. As much as the four execution are so disturbing, Kaito got a less disturbing death by going through Blast Off! from the first game before dying from his illness and causing the execution to fail.
  5. Incredible Japanese and English voice acting, especially from Kikuko Inoue/Kira Buckland as Kirumi Tojo, Akio Otsuka/Chris Tergliafera as Ryoma Hoshi, and Kenichi Suzumura/Todd Haberkorn as Korekiyo Shinguji, and Megumi Hayashibara/Grant George as Shuichi Saihara what they put a lot of effort into expressing their characters and it feels like they want to do it at all.
  6. Heartwarming and touching moments like Gonta giving a sleeping Himiko a piggyback ride to her room, Maki inviting Shuichi into her lab where Kaito is learning how to put a crossbow together, and Himiko's speech about living positively from now on at the beginning of chapter 4.
  7. The new debates and mini-games were cleverly done. Debate scrums divided the courtroom into teams. That is awesome because it expands upon the characters and where they stand in a very simple mechanic. Once you have the killer cornered, you also have a one-on-one debate with them and they get a cool supervillain-like design during the mini-game.
  8. somewhat humrous dialogue like:
    • "Atua says so!"
    • "Don't thrust the blame onto me! You degenerate males and your...thrusting! Ugh!"
    • "You still got a ways to go."
  9. It does a grand job at its unpredictability. The ending is certainly not one a fan can just guess, and that goes for most of the trials as well. There are a lot of discoveries to be made and plenty of room for fans to think but a conclusion is hard to get to earlier in a case you are in. It is awesome to see the truth slowly reveal itself with each clue.
  10. There's not once a dull moment in the entire game, not an opportunity to shake things up and keep the player on edge that the game doesn't take.
  11. The camera perspective issue in the previous games is fixed here, so now it's adjustable and not limited to being shown from a low level.
  12. The ending for the game is very interesting. As it shows that Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko survived Ultimate Annihilation (the final execution which killed Tsumugi, Monokuma, and Kiibo) and speculate that it was because Kiibo saved them due to the outside world wanting them to live. As the survivors speculate about what the outside world has in store for them, Shuichi keeps Tsumugi's final words in mind and begins to believe that she was lying about Danganronpa being nothing but pure fiction and that perhaps Hope's Peak Academy and the Remnants of Despair might actually exist, much to the girls' surprise. He also doesn't believe that him and the other students' past selves wouldn't willingly sign up for a Killing Game no matter how mad of a world they lived in. He also tells Maki and Himiko that he doesn't see much meaning in truth and lies due to how, in spite of them seemingly being fictional characters, they were still able to impact the world around them. And as he puts it "Some lies can lead the world to hope... Some truths can lead the world to despair... So I don't think anyone can really say which is more right in the end." And the trio depart for the outside world. What makes this ending so interesting is the fact that it's never confirmed if what the students had been told by Tsumugi and Monokuma were actually lies or not. And therefore, it leaves it up to the player to decide if Danganronpa was simply fiction or not. This is also similar to the first game's ending. As it has the survivors leave the school and enter the world that Junko Enoshima had told them was inhabitable and overun with despair. According to Kazutaka Kodaka, this is because things like hope and despair don't actually exist outside, and are actually defined in your head. The same thing also applies to truth and lies/reality and fiction in this game.
  13. The Ultimate Talent Development Plan, while non-canon, is very cute and funny. It follows the characters of all 3 Danganronpa games as they all go to Hope's Peak Academy together in a world with no despair or killing games, just fun slice of life adventures with the cast. It even has interactions with characters that share similar personalities and traits like:
    • Nagito Komaeda meeting Kokichi and Korekiyo.
    • Sakura Ogami meeting Nekomaru Nidai and Akane Owari.
    • Tenko meeting Mahiru Koizumi and Sakura.
    • Peko Pekoyama meeting Tenko and Gonta.
    • Ryoma meeting Celestia Ludenberg and Izuru Kamukura
    • Gundham Tanaka meeting Himiko and Gonta.
    • Byakuya Togami meeting the Ultimate Imposter and Kirumi.
    • Ibuki Mioda meeting Kaede and Sayaka Maizono.
    • Gonta meeting Sonia Nevermind and Byakuya.
    • Maki meeting Genocide Jack and Kyoko Kirigiri
    • Leon Kuwata meeting Kaito and Akane.

Bad Qualities

  1. The Monokuma Kubs are very annoying and serve as little more than unfunny fillers who interrupt the trials at the best parts.
    • Monotaro is the clumsy leader.
    • Monokid is a bear with abuses monodam who never shuts up.
    • Monophanie is literally just Monomi from Danganronpa 2, but with a ton of disturbing fetishes.
    • Monosuke is little more than a whiny jerk.
    • Monodam is the most robotic of the five (though he's also the most likeable).
  2. The Mastermind, Tsumugi Shirogane, is also incredibly unlikable to many fans, as she's little more than a one-dimensional Junko rip-off who has little to no personality or impact on the story until the reveal of her being the Mastermind. She also feels like a very weak and forced villain.
  3. Miu is a very pornographically abusive to her classmates.
  4. Kokichi, while good, also constantly gaslights his classmates, and messes with them in a life-threatening situation like a class trial.
  5. The executions are the most disturbing in the entire series in the entire series. From Kaede being wrongfully tortured to death by having her hanged body bashed around violently, Kirumi being forced to climb a thorny vine in order to escape all the while being repeatedly cut by buzz saws and falling to her death, to Korekiyo Shinguji being spun at ridiculous speeds before being boiled alive in a giant pot and having his spirit banished from the land of the living, to Gonta being stung and skewered in the stomach while Monophanie's stomach is torn open and Monotaro gets sliced in half.
  6. The pace struggles at first, but luckily gets better as the game goes on.
  7. The twist near the end (that the entire Danganronpa series from this point was all just fictional) while there is some hinting that it actually isn't the case and that Tsumugi was lying about it as well as some jabs at the fanbase (i.e. lines that can be interpreted as the developers gaslighting or guilttripping players for getting invested in the characters and not wanting to do anymore games, having to lose the mini-games to advance the trial at a certain point, the plan to purposefully end the trial anticlimactically by boring the audience by going in circles with the topics & the length & the final Argument Armament), even if Kodaka said that the fictional audience wasn't meant to represent them, can still be negatively received by some people, and the severe trauma the survivors experienced at that their can heavily affect real people, reminding them of suicide and abuse. No wonder why Shuichi sworn vengeance against Tsumugi, Monokuma, and the outside world themselves.
  8. The romance between Kaede and Shuichi can feel a little rushed. However, it would have been executed better if you could make an alternative to this game, where Kaede isn't a false protagonist. This wouldn't make a single difference.
  9. Many classmates are mentally and verbally abused, One was even driven to suicide, and allowed another student to kill them. Overall, Shuichi suffered the most abuse and trauma. This game is not for people who experienced abuse in real life.
  10. Kokichi making many racial slurs to Keebo, all because he's a robot. This may make African Amercians angry. Heck, he was willing to manipulate Gonta into killing Miu.
  11. The humans in the outside world are portrayed as nothing but monsters who take pleasure in tv shows or snuff films like killing games. They, Tsumugi, and Monokuma got their comeuppance when Shuichi took his revenge against them.
  12. The fact that Monokuma willingly broke his own rules and manipulated Kaede into thinking she killed Rantaro and wrongfully convicted her, torturing her to death.
  13. The first four victims of each execution were heavily tortured to death. Except the last two. This game is the most disturbing and horrifying entry the whole series, tied with Ultra Despair Girls.

Reception

Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, and was the second-highest-rated PlayStation Vita game and fiftieth highest-rated PlayStation 4 game of 2017 on the review aggregator Metacritic.

Danganronpa V3 was awarded by Famitsu with a score of 37/40 Within its first week on sale in Japan, the game sold a total of 116,172 copies (PS Vita: 76,166 copies/PS4: 40,006 copies) with the PS Vita version being the second best-selling game of the week and the PS4 version being the third best-selling game of the week. This would be the highest debut for a Danganronpa game so far. By February 2017, the PlayStation Vita version had sold over 115,840 copies in Japan. The Steam release had an estimated total of 73,400 players by July 2018.

The game had sold a total of 194,300 copies in Japan as of December 2017 (PS Vita: 129,415 copies/PS4: 64,885 copies).

Trivia

  • The game was banned in South Korea because of a rumor about a 17-year-old from the Danganronpa roleplay community murdering a child, despite then proving that he wasn't on the roleplay community.
  • This is the first Danganronpa game to break several previous traditions:
    • The main protagonist (Who will not be mentioned here) died in the first chapter of the game.
    • A student with an unnamed talent (The Ultimate ???) also died in the first chapter.
    • While the previous two games had the muscular-build characters as the victim (except Trigger Happy Havoc), at this time they're the culprit.
    • None of the students having the title "Ultimate Lucky Student". (Not counting the fake Makoto Naegi and Nagito Komaeda.)
    • Having six Closing Arguments instead of five like THH and GD.
  • The death pose of Rantaro Amami is similar to Chihiro Fujisaki in Trigger Happy Havoc.
  • Throughout datamining the game, a lot of people found an unused sprite of Miu Iruma where she holds a spiky dildo.

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