Persona 3 vs Persona 4: Which Game is Better? Part 1: Story

In preparation for Persona 4 Arena: Ultimix and Persona Q coming out soon (I couldn't be more excited for both of these), I figured I'd incite some fanboy rage and do something nobody smart would do: pit two extremely popular games in the same game franchise against each other in a head-to-head to figure out which one is "better." Smart, right? That's like people arguing which Legend of Zelda game is the best (Link to the Past) or which Mario game (RPG, then 2) or which Final Fantasy game (Final Fantasy VI) is the best one. It's all subjective anyway...or is it?

Well, as a preface to this head shooting, social link reversing, Teddie-fur fulled throwdown between two cult classic games, I'll just toss out that I think both games are phenomenal. Even though if you boiled them down to their absolute cores you'd basically have two identical games (get social links, use social links to get personas, use personas to fight monsters, win), both are absolutely worth playing, and if you have any affinity for JRPGs at all you should pick not one, but both up. You also could probably boil them down in completely the same way as I'm doing here and have totally different results based on your own personal opinions. So why compare them?

Because why not. Also my blog needs more hits. What? I pride myself in being totally transparent here.

I'm gettin pumped!

This will probably be huge, but for the sake of some kind of structure I broke the grading credentials down into five major categories: Story, Characters, Graphics, Gameplay, and Music. Each might have subcategories and others might not. They will be split up across four different posts, with Story and Characters getting their own days each, and Graphics, Gameplay, and Music all mushed together followed by a conclusion. I will attempt to be a thorough as possible in my analysis, but keep in mind most everything here is entirely subjective and based on my opinion. However, my goal is to convince you that my opinion is right, so listen close, internet troglodyte!

(I'm sorry I called you a troglodyte that was unkind let's just break this down now shall we)

Oh, and THIS IS YOUR GIANT SPOILER WARNING! I won't ruin endings or who the villain is in Persona 4 or anything, but there will be hints to things that happen later in the plots of these games. It's unavoidable. Deal.

Fanboy pains are all too real. 

Part 1: The Story

Overall Story

I made a comment on my Persona 3 FES review that the story in Persona 3 was, quote, "Not all that original or interesting." After replaying Persona 3 Portable I am totally convinced that I was suffering from mild brain damage when I wrote that review. Persona 3's premise follows a group of high school kids recruited into an organization called SEES, which exists to murder big nasty shadows that appear every month during an hour between midnight and one am where spooky scary shadows come out of their school and try to murder people. Also their school turns into the Tower of Babel except Satan made it.

Yeah, totally run of the mill here.

You know, just a regular story about teens shooting themselves. 

While the story does turn into "teenagers save the world" (which is what I complained about in my earlier review), it manages to subvert it's cliche in a variety of ways. Probably the biggest crazy thing is how high the death count is in this game. I didn't realize until replaying it, but tons of main characters don't make it to the end, often dying in unfair or tragic ways. In addition, most characters have rather traumatic pasts that they have to cope with, which often tie directly into the events of the game. Mitsuru's history, Ken's mom, and Fuuka being a victim of bullying all end up tying into the main story in some crazy ways.

Most importantly, the game has a very clear three act structure, and it feels very tightly knit. While the "kill the big bad, save the whole world!" isn't exactly new, the entire game builds up to this point wonderfully, while still managing a ton of crazy twists and deaths along the way. The game is dark and but doesn't force the issue, letting it's themes and existentialism seep into the plot itself, while still providing a well crafted narrative. It's a complete package, with everything from Igor to Nyx tying together in the end as if it was all made for each other.

The only issue I have with it is that the story is that it doesn't really take off until the start of the second act (basically when you get Shinji as a party member). Up until that point it's a bit on cruise control. After the Shinji plot arch, however, the game kicks right into high gear, never stopping until the end. A minor pacing problem, but one never-the-less.

 While I really enjoyed Persona 4's story, I felt that it really doesn't reach the level of depth that Persona 3 has. This is mostly due to the fact that, at it's core, Persona 4 is a detective story. Somebody is committing murders, and you've gotta find out who. While this makes the story compelling, these types of stories rarely have some sort of large overarching world-saving narrative going on in the background; the main focus is to solve the case and move on. Because of this, the addition of the "True End" boss feels weirdly out of place considering everything you invested in had tied off after solving the mystery.

Another problem with Persona 4 is your detective team sometimes seems to be falling behind on what is going on. Not offensively so, but you'll probably have figured out a lot of who got tossed into the Midnight Channel long before Youske comes to his brilliant deductions. The game also tosses not one, but two rather obvious red herrings that your party eats up before the end, both of which resulting in a "Whew, the case is closed!" and then "Wait, what?" that makes them look kind of slow on the upkeep. In the nicest way possible of course; I love you guys.

Youske: Master Detective. 

That being said, this game isn't lacking for emotional standout moments. The final kidnapping of the game and the scene where it's revealed is arguably one of the tensest, craziest things I've seen in a game, with everybody losing their minds over what happened (and the player in shock that the game would do this to them). After rescuing said undisclosed person, the events following are equally traumatic, with the game taking a rather dark turn out of the blue. This, however, isn't necessarily for strength of the story necessarily, but the strength of the characters it established (which I'll cover later).

As it stands, Persona 4 is an engaging story because it's designed to be. Mysteries are popular because they're easy to follow and are proven to keep readers engaged (look at how well thriller novels sell, and how many are published a year). It's by no means a poor story, but it seems more like a device to both move the gameplay forward and give the characters something to interact over rather than the crux of the game.

That being said, when compared to Persona 3, Persona 4 has a much faster start. It immediately throws you both into the mystery and quickly gives you objectives and explains what has to be done in order to move forward. Because of this, it's first act feels much better paced when compared to it's predecessor's.

Keep in mind, I'm not comparing characters here, I'm comparing the written, underlying story. While Persona 4 is certainly interesting, it doesn't take the risks or make the connections that I feel Persona 3 does. Persona 3 also digs deeper into its lesson on accepting death (which we'll go over more momentarily) and ties it into it's story beats perfectly. Persona 4's core element (learning to accept oneself, finding the truth about a person) isn't tied in quite as tightly with the murder mystery. So, in the end, I think Persona 3 takes this, first act pacing issues aside.

Story of my freaking life. 

Conveyance of Underlying Themes

 Persona 3 is about death. More importantly, it's about learning to accept death, and everything that entails. From the moment the game opens with you shooting yourself in the head to summon your Persona, to the 2/3rds-mark choice as to whether you'd rather continue living in ignorance but inevitably die a horrible death or continue knowing your demise and fight impossible odds against it, this game is heavily ingrained in it's message about dying. Characters have to shoot themselves in the head over and over and over again to summon their personas. Aegis, a robot, questions both whether she is truly alive and, thus, how to cope with her own "death," or if it even exists. The death of a main character rocks the party and makes them realize their own humanity. A freaking ten year old kid attempts suicide in this game, then attempts to murder the person who killed his mom. Ideas about persistence in the face of death and learning to accept that everybody will eventually die, but we have to choose every day to live is a core element of Persona 3, and it executes it near flawlessly.

There's a psychological theory called Terror Management Theory that I really think is interesting (so much so I wrote a paper on it). In a nutshell, everything human beings do and create and react to is in relation to this constant, pervasive knowledge that we will all one day die. Religion, relationships, social structures, creating offspring; all this stuff we do is just reactionary to this dissonance in our heads. We create these things things because thinking about death bothers us. We create buffers to combat it because it's pervasive and, since we are sentient, the realization of our inevitable demises will never, ever go away. Even if we shut it out, the thought of death horrifies us, even if it's dying of old age at the end of a long life. We can't escape it. It's going to happen.

Even your Personas are suicidal. 

Persona 3 so excellently covers not only this type of terror, but also presents ways to overcome it (while still giving you a chance to succumb in a rather important plot choice). The shooting of themselves over and over again, the fighting against impossible odds knowing death is inevitable; all of this is to show that when we learn to embrace it, we no longer fear it. And considering how the final moments of the game play out, the ending is absolutely a perfect capstone on the message the game is trying to convey. It's bittersweet, but it was absolutely necessary for the themes in Persona 3 to persist. In addition, a good deal of the social links in Persona 3 (vs Persona 4) have themes of death and learning to accept death for what it is (particularly the Old Couple and Sick Young Man). I cannot praise this game enough for it's use of symbolism and psychological existentialism.

Persona 4...isn't nearly as dark. People have complained, actually, that it's "too happy" compared to other Persona games, but I don't mind it. Persona 4 seems to really have two main core themes: the idea that we all have a darker side that's a part of us that we don't want to see (but have to inevitably accept if we are to be truthful to ourselves), and the idea of seeking truth (presented in both a personal setting with the characters' individual shadows, and the truth of finding out who the killer is). Of the two of these, the former (accepting oneself for who you are so you can move on to self-improvement) is probably the most prevalent, and similar to Persona 4 this theme not only shows up in the plot but also the social links you find throughout the game.

This idea of self-acceptance is presented extremely well, and arguably the theme across multiple characters is actually stronger here than in Persona 3. Not only does every party member have to overcome and accept their shadow self, but even after the fact their social links have to do with them dealing in the aftermath. The game doesn't pull any punches and say "oh, you accepted this crappy part of you? Happily ever after!" Instead, they are simply made aware of these parts of themselves they don't like, and move to make steps in their lives to adapt accordingly. It's a story about self-improvement and introspection, something I can absolutely get behind.

More like one Youske and one awesome Youske. 

The second portion, the seeking of truth, plays a somewhat lesser role in the story aside from trying to solve the case (though you could argue they're "seeking the truth in themselves," which is a valid point). They try to spin it into the random final boss that just kind of shows up at the very end after the case is solved (the "Seeking of the truth" lead you to realize the game wasn't over even though it clearly tries to get you to avoid the True Ending). Characters bring it up a lot, but honestly it isn't really executed as smoothly. In many ways, the mystery plotline seems distinctly separated from the personal introspective story presented by the characters, or at least not as tightly woven as it could have been.

Still, the themes are still there, are executed well. Truth be told, while they're important, the kind of take a backseat to the character interactions, which is fine but it just shows where more of the focus of this game was.

I'm a sucker for dark, depressing stuff, but that isn't the only reason I think Persona 3 has an edge. First off, as I explained already above, I feel it's underlying themes and message are better woven into the overall narrative. Everything just ties together better, especially considering how you could construe that the events at the end were predetermined from the start, and in that regard innocuous things throughout the game start to find new meaning.

But what I think is more important is Persona 3's story is more relevant on a broader scale. The idea of accepting the inevitability of death and finding the courage to continue living despite that is (as mentioned regarding Terror Management Theory) persistent across every human being from the moment they realize their own mortality until their inevitable passing. This makes the story one that is more "timeless," or at least can be applied to a whole range of ages, genders, etc.

And if Persona 3 couldn't beat the Jesus metaphor in any stronger...

Persona 4's message of introspection and learning to accept oneself, even the worse parts, is arguably just as constant over one's life, but in truth these types of things are usually more commonly explored during adolescence and new adulthood. I, as a 28-year-old married dude who is writing game reviews during his lunch break at work, feel as if I've undergone most of this transformation of learning who I am and coming to accept it. I'm now in the stage where I need to be self-reflective less often but still strive for self-improvement. Deep down I learned who my "true self" was through the "fun" trials of adolescence and my early twenties, and now feel comfortable with myself. That isn't to say everything is gumdrops and buttons, but Persona 4's specific message is less relevant to me than, say, my unavoidable death is.

As such, I found Persona 3's themes to not only be conveyed better in terms of the medium it was presented on, but also felt more powerful and resonated stronger. Of course, I'm also a dude diagnosed with depression so I think about dying like all the time, so I might be a special case. But I still feel that Persona 3 both embraces and conveys it's themes in a much more unified vision than Persona 4 does.

This isn't canon!

Tonal Differences 

As mentioned before, Persona 3 is a dark game. This ties in well to it's predecessors, too, seeing as both Persona and Persona 2 (both parts) are intentionally dark and foreboding. Oddly enough, the style in Persona 3 isn't quite as dark as the previous two (with the characters being more cartoony and the sprites less adult looking), but it still conveys very dark themes.

Persona 3 is about death. I'll just keep saying this until you go insane from hearing it. Characters die, lots of them. The overall color pallet for the world is intentionally bleak and creepy. The Dark Hour is a mix of blood reds, dark greens, and blacks. The menus are a sort of muted blue color, using black as an accent. Even your school feels less bright and cheery (than, say, Persona 4), with the overall world feeling like it's in a haze of dreariness.

#SADBOYS

It fits the game well, tying it's themes into the way it looks nearly perfectly. From the opening scene of Yukari trying to shoot herself in the head and failing, all the way down to it's bleak final boss and shocking ending, Persona 3 knows the message it's trying to convey and isn't pulling any punches. Again, this is a game where a ten-year-old shoots himself in the head over and over to summon his inner self. They aren't kidding around.

While Persona 3 felt like George R. R. Martin writes a high school story, Persona 4 feels like the Scooby Doo after school special. This isn't a bad thing, by any means, but the mood is so dramatically different from P3 (and the rest of the series) it's almost shocking. Gone are drab, dark blues and blacks and reds and are replaced with popping, bumblebee yellows and blacks. Characters are brightly colored and wear brighter clothing (Chie's outfits are a sterling example of this) and just generally feel more alive and happy. And while the game is about solving murders (and does have a few rather dramatic and dark moments), the themes of the game are about overcoming personal problems, which almost every character does handily. The songs are happier and have more pop to them, NPCs you talk to are chipper, and the game is arguably one of the funniest I've ever played. It's in stark contrast with its predecessors, so much so that people actually bag on the game for it (not sure why; not like those other games went anywhere), but as someone once said to me, "This might be the happiest M rated game ever made."

This is a game about sadness and feelings!

This chipper attitude actually does the game some favors, if only for contrast. There is a rather dramatic moment in the game (the final kidnapping) which, had it been in Persona 3, would have been shocking but not as impactful. Putting in in the happy-go-lucky Persona 4, however, makes it all the more dramatic and heartwrenching. It's in this case where it's lulling you into a false sense of security works in the game's favor, and I commend it for it.

It's a TIE?!

It's a copout answer, but it really boils down to what you want in your JRPG story. If you are into dark, bleak stuff because that stuff's your jam (read: you like Game of Thrones or The Last of Us), then Persona 3 is the game for you. It doesn't have the same absurd levels of violence or gore-scars as you might expect from a "dark, adult" game (and I commend it for that; Persona 3 is a rarity among video games where it earns it's M rating for actually being mature, not by adding blood and guts and sex in the hope it'll sell), but it does present a very dark story that will make you think.

Persona 4 is, as I said before, like going on an adventure with all your friends. It has it's ups and its downs, but overall it's a good, fun ride. If you're into hanging out with a lot of funny characters and just having a good time with not as many huge "downer" emotional moments, Persona 4 fits that bill a lot better.

The point being is that I feel both games knew the tone they wanted to convey, and even though the tones are dramatically different, both succeeded equally at what they set out to do. As such, neither really excels over the other in that regard.

Hey, wake up! It's time for the scores!

That's it for today! But what are the scores?

Persona 3 secures an early lead!

But be sure and tune in tomorrow where I blab even more about the characters from these games, top to bottom, nobody is left out! And as always, my reviews for all these games are floating around on the site, should you for some reason want more Persona related nonsense.

Angry at my responses? Want to talk about Terror Management Theory? Care to chat about the storylines of these two games? Please leave a comment and we'll talk about it! I'm always down for some Persona talk, man. Always.

DanganRonpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

The Short

Pros
- Well crafted murder mystery with just enough dark undertones
- Pacing is very well done; there's hardly a dull moment
- Doesn't fall into the trap of being overly wordy when it comes to inner monologues
- Cases rarely intentionally leave information out to make the ending more "surprising"
- That being said, there are plenty of red herrings, and most work very well
- Characters, despite being obvious caricatures, are genuinely entertaining
- Trial scenes are exhilarating and solving cases is satisfying
- Final scene is exactly what it should be for this story

Cons
- A few minor plot holes persist through to the end
- Some areas of the game could have been better streamlined
- It sucks when your character is like fifteen steps behind you during investigations
- Minigames in the trial start fun but get horribly obnoxious by the end (particularly NonStop Debate)
- Was released as a two pack in Japan for one price, split it up here for more dollahs. Second game is needed to fully understand the world and connections between the two stories.

Monokuma laying down some philosophical puns. 

The Long

I'm not the biggest fan of visual novels. There, I said it. While I was really into them in high school and early college, eventually the whole concept became somewhat taxing. While games like Persona 3/4 and Phoenix Wright managed to combine enough intrigue with their wordy stories, others like fan-favorite Katawa Shoujo, despite still being good stories, missed the mark. Often times these types of "games" boil down to one or two major "choices" over several dozen hours of reading through text, and often times the main character's over-abundant inner monologues completely kill the pacing for me. You can like them, I'm fine with that (and again, I think Katawa Shoujo in still an excellent story piece when it's boiled down), but the tediousness of these types of "game's" pacing often turn me away.

...so why did I even bother with DanganRonpa? Besides the fact that the "Vita has no games?" (it has plenty, by the way). Well, the promise of Phoenix Wright meets Battle Royale was too much for me to pass up, so I dove deep into this high school of despair and emerged...relatively unscathed? Let's take a look.

As a note: DanganRonpa is best played completely spoiler free. I take care in the review to not reveal anything that isn't said within the first 10-15 minutes of the game.

You know Leon? We gonna get along just fine. 

The plot of DanganRonpa is its main driving force, and it starts off with a bang. You play as Makoto, a regular-ass dude who just so happened to get invited to Hope's Peak Academy, a school where only "Ultimate" people get invited too. "Ultimate" in this context could be replaced with "World's Best." You have the Ultimate Baseball Star, Ultimate Programmer, and some other weirdos like the Ultimate Fancomic Drawer and Ultimate Fortune Teller. You and fourteen others all get invited to this school, but on your first day there something crazy happens and you pass out. You then awaken to find all of you have been transported to a hellish version of Hope's Peak, with all the windows and doors leading outside sealed.

While investigating, you come across a remote-controlled anamatronic bear named Monokuma (what is up with me playing games with evil anamatronics lately?). He then announces that he's taken over the school, and everybody is now trapped there forever. The only way they'll be allowed out is if they kill another student, and then get away with it. Once a student is murdered, a brief time for investigating will be allowed, and then a student trial will take place. If the murderer (called "blackened" by Monokuma) is correctly revealed, they are executed. If they aren't, they get set free and everybody else gets executed. So it's pretty freaking imperative that you figure out who killed who.

School's In. Prepare to have a bad time. 

The game's pacing is near perfect. While the intro sequence is a bit lagging, once it gets into the juicy character and plot moments the game blasts off and doesn't slow down. It's quite difficult to stop playing (as evidenced by the fact that I beat this game in under a week). The story takes some absolutely crazy turns along the way, with each of the murders escalating the stakes and being all the more shocking. The ending is a wallop of a reveal, made all the more satisfying by the fact that you use all the evidence you've gathered to break down most of it yourself. That being said, the large "twist" at the end is fairly difficult to predict, and the final ending scene (which has, not surprising to me, earned a lot of negative feedback) is actually perfect when it comes to closing out the story.

Before I go into the cases, it's important to make note of the characters. As stated there's fifteen students total and then Monokuma, the obnoxious bear that can not only show up at any time and in any place, but is also intentionally snarky and rude, trying to provoke you constantly. The rest of the cast cross a wide spectrum of characters, but they're all pretty nuts. I won't spoil it, but watching them interact is half the fun of enjoying the story as it unfolds, and despite being obvious caricatures of the "Ultimates" they're representing, several have surprisingly three-dimensional personalities. As the game goes on, people you first suspected to be scumbags you have second thoughts on, and people you felt were stable break down. Ultimately, the game's interesting premise lived or died on whether or not all these characters trapped in a school together had interesting chemistry, and I'd say it succeeded. Mostly.

Hiro may be dumb as a brick, but you can't say the guy isn't a bro. 

I won't dig into spoilers, but Kyoko is bland. There, I said it. They try to make her more interesting by tying her into more story bits, but she never really has that spark of life that the other characters do. Yeah, she isn't totally insane like the rest (which makes it easy to render opinions of them), but I really felt she didn't go anywhere.

The other big bland character is, oddly enough, the main character. Makoto is entirely uninteresting. While I understand he probably was meant to be a character one would project themselves into, the guy has no backbone outside of the courtroom, and is completely reactionary. Rarely is he proactive enough to investigate on his own (often times other people drag him along), and in general he just comes off as someone there for the ride. It's not gamebreaking, but being in his head means what he thinks is generally uninteresting and solely used for the plot (rather than developing and actual character out of him), and even by the end the guy felt totally empty.

Monokuma can say some outlandish and genuinely funny chunks of nonsense. 

But the meat of the game is obviously how it addresses the investigations and trials of the murders, and whether or not it knows how much information to dish out and why. In this regard, I feel the game is near perfect. In both the investigation and later trial instances, the game does very well in letting you connect pieces together and, if you are clever, figure it out before even going to trial. Unlike some other games (*coughPhoenixWrightcough*), DanganRonpa very rarely brings new evidence in during a trial sequence. This means you can usually get a grasp of who did it (or at least prime suspects) and form a full story in your head before going in, rather than having only part of the picture and relying on the game to decide when you get the whole story.

There is a plus and a minus to this. The plus is that DanganRonpa knows how to stay one step ahead of you. On the second case, I was certain I'd cracked it. I'd dug extremely deep into the clues, found several layers underneath that worked together, and all my assessments felt just far enough from the initial evidence that I had to have outsmarted the game. Turned out that, during the trial, there was a twist that was not blatantly revealed but totally could have been called had I looked a little harder at the evidence. I hadn't been wrong in my assertions, the game had just thrown a brilliant red herring to make me stop digging, but if I'd kept going I would have found the error and solved it. The game intentionally tricks you into thinking you're ahead of it, when actually there's another layer in. That's pretty good writing!

Though, once it humiliated me on the second case. I was ready for it in the later ones. I successfully predicted the next two even before the investigations happened, though I will admit the way they happened was different than I'd concocted. But I still guessed the killer right in them, but it wasn't an easy thing. The game respected my intelligence, and if I was smart enough to figure it out, it rewarded me. Or I rewarded me, with the smug satisfaction I felt after watching someone I knew was the killer try and lie their way out of their situation while I completely destroyed their claims.

And the case is solved!

Without pushing too much further into the story, I'll just leave it at that. The characters do well at making you love or hate them, or be situated in some area in-between (usually resulting in massive distrust). The game starts off straight up flying in the face of your expectations and knowing it's going to mess with you, and it delivers. While I'll admit the two most shocking instances happen both at the beginning and the end, there's more than enough crazy in the middle to keep you going.

Oh, and the game is actually pretty funny. Despite adhering to it's dark premise really well (aka Hunger Games has nothing on this, especially after revealing what was really going on in the ending), the characters' play off each other enough to be genuinely entertaining (if some in more messed up ways than others), and the characters slowly becoming more and more mentally unhinged as the situation worsens makes them both funnier and scarier at the same time. Overall, solid stuff, and the story is addicting and certainly worth the read.

Hey, didn't they say this in Persona 3 too? What is up with Japan and sad rabbits? 

The actual "gameplay" of the game is divided into three main events. Aside from just general story stuff that happens whenever it feels like it, there are three distinct events you participate in: Free Time (read: social linking your friends), Investigations, and Trials. I'll break them down for ya (protip: Trials is longest).

People compared this game to Persona 4, probably because of both the game's bright, eye-popping style through its UI, and also because it had "social links" like the previous game. I'll just toss this out there right now: they aren't really as in depth as in Persona 4, so much so the comparison is hardly merited. While they do provide a good bit of humor and a little insight into the characters, next to nothing you find out during these events is valuable during an investigation or trial. In addition, the game straight up lets you skip Free Time if you want to just move the story along, so even it knows they're not that important.

All free time actually gives (besides a look into the character you are visiting with) is small passive power-ups that can be equipped during the trials (and a few other minor bonuses, I should point out). Some are better than others, but you could easily beat the game without any of them. Social links also require you to give the respective person presents they like in order to rank them up faster, which means either guessing or consulting a faq. As it stands, they're nice distractions (and there's some funny stuff hidden in there), but not as impactful as you might think.

There you go.

Investigations are very Phoenix Wright-esque, though they do a better job at helping you follow their rules. As mentioned before, you often have a babysitter as you move around, and the game won't let you leave a scene until you've found everything it's decided you should find. In this same vein, it's impossible to go into a trial missing information, so ultimately it's a limited-interaction Disneyland trip through a few crime scenes. Not that there's anything wrong with that; at least I'm not pixel hunting or totally lost (again, cough, Phoenix Wright's investigation scenes).

Now the Trials are where things get crazy. They're exhilarating, to say the least, mostly because of the sheer number of people. Again making the Phoenix Wright comparison, in that game it's essentially a throwdown of logic between two people. In DanganRonpa, you've got over a dozen (at least at the start...) tossing in arguments and opinions that you have to sift through. This is where the real "gameplay" emerges, for better and for worse.

OBJECTION!

There's four events that can happen in a trial, often multiple times: NonStop Debate, Hangman's Gambit, Bullet Time Battle, and Closing Argument. I'll go over the pros and cons of each in brief.

NonStop Debate is the most frequently repeated scene. In this, characters from around the group shout out opinions and speculations on the given topic at hand. As they're arguing, you load "Truth Bullets" (basically the evidence and facts you've found along the way) into your...truth gun? Gun of knowledge? Something? And take aim. When you find a statement that  your "bullet" contradicts, you fire it at the offending statement, obliterating it with Logic and Critical Thinking. Much like the entirety of graduate school.

The game mixes it up along the way, by adding both multiple options to choose from (and you have to cycle through to find the right one), "white nose" obscuring the topics (which you have to clear by tapping the back of the Vita or targeting it with the cursor before you can bullet it), and my favorite: you can take one person's statement and temporarily turn it into a bullet and then fire it against another statement. The latter of these is my favorite as it requires the most critical thinking (since often it just gives you the right truth bullet so you only have to find the offending statement; this requires you to find both the wrong statement and the one it contradicts), and so it's a pity it doesn't actually come up as often as you'd think. Most are simple and can be solved with basic logic.

That being said, this mode pissed me off to no end, mostly because near the end actually hitting the words becomes incredibly difficult. The location of the "white noise" blocking it is completely random, which means sometimes you don't have enough time to both clear the noise and fire the bullet before the statement moves on. There were times when I very clearly hit the statement, only to have the game decide it was "too late" and move on. Luckily the whole scene cycles if you fail to present an argument (and you can fast forward at any time to move things along quicker), but knowing the logical error only to be thwarted by bad shooting controls and the RNG white noise gods is straight up infuriating.

Editor's Note: I just now realized I never used the "slowdown" power given to you at the start of the game. Upon replaying it, even on the hardest difficulty, shooting the words down is a lot easier. So that last section was pretty much me being stupid, whoops. It's still challenging, but the ability to slow down time to line up your shots makes it much less painful. 

I swear purple text, if you get in the way one more time...

Hangman's Gambit is by far the easiest. Basically if someone asks a question that requires a word (or a combination of words) that you don't have evidence for, you jump into Makoto's head (which, apparently, is empty except for random floating letters, which makes sense now that I think about it) to figure it out. There is a random word spot (which gets a few letters filled in depending on your difficulty setting), and it's your job to fill in the remaining letters. They float randomly from the core of Makoto's thought processes, so you shoot 'em with your truth guns in the right order until the word is formed.

Again, not only is the game itself easy (just tap the right letters; a monkey could do it), but the words you have to find are extremely simple to decipher based on the context clues. I get they probably needed something else to do here, but it really is just kind of...there. And easy. Really easy. Did I mention it's easy?

Easy like your mom, HEYOOOHH

Bullet Time Battle is a...rhythm game? Yeah, it actually totally is. Which does an awful job of explaining how it works the first time (the only time I ever failed at a case was during the first two Bullet Time Battles), so I'll break it down easily here.

Basically when another character just won't shut up about something, you have to lock and load dem truth bullets to learn them how to be quiet. Essentially, a song with a beat plays, and a section on the bottom of the screen indicates when the beats hit. You can only press buttons on the beat (hey, it's like Crypt of the Necrodancer! ), and your goal is to shoot away the negative thoughts. Except they kind of suck at explaining exactly how to do it, so I'll tell you.

Pressing "X" on the beat locks onto a thought/word cloud. Once locked on, pressing Triangle to the beat shoots it. Later, when you have a limited number of bullets, pressing Square to the beat reloads. So once you figure that out, just press "X, Triangle, Square" to the beat, repeat, and you'll win. You can literally do it in your sleep.

The game tries to throw you off by making it so the enemy can block the visual indicator of beats, and also it increases/decreases the tempo depending on how you are doing, but if you have any musical inclinations whatsoever you can, again, do this in your sleep.

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH, LEON!

The last segment is Closing Argument, which I won't find a screenshot for because they're all spoilers. Basically, your job is to fill in a manga-style set of pages that represent exactly what happened. Some are already filled in, but you have to figure out the empty spaces. These are generally ok, but the biggest problem is the parts you can choose from are very small circles on the bottom, with pictures that are both tiny when compared to the panels and also somewhat abstract representations of what happened. This means that I found myself more fighting the battle of "what the hell is this bubble trying to convey?" rather than actually piecing the murder together. It was fun when it worked (and when it plays out it's actually really well done visually), but it does lead to some unwanted confusion.

I think that, in a whole, sums up the gameplay aspects of DanganRonpa: it's fun, but has unwanted confusion. I'm glad the trial elements are there otherwise there would be no skill-based gameplay bits in the game, but as a whole they feel relatively unpolished and, frankly, tacked in just so the game could have something interactive. It's an interesting contrast to Phoenix Wright (which fully embraced it was a visual novel and you just straight up present facts without any nonsense), and I really like the visual styles during the different minigames, but when they started hindering me actually presenting what I knew was a counterargument I got annoyed.

There are a few other minor niggles I have, too. To get presents you put coins into a capsule machine, but there's no option to just dump them all in there and get a hundred presents at once. You have to do them one at a time (putting in more coins just increases your chance of not getting a duplicate), which is absurdly tedious. Burning though a hundred tokens can take 10-15 minutes of your time just cranking the knob, which is no fun. Last minor thing is the map. It does let you teleport (hooray!) but the cursor isn't free flowing (boo!) which means sometimes it would move or go somewhere I didn't want it to. Not a biggie, but this (and a handful of other things I just won't mention) are little gameplay issues that probably wouldn't have taken long to address.

I'm glad you can actually walk around the school, even if there isn't much to see. 

 Graphically DanganRonpa looks great. It's an up-rezed version of a PSP game, but you wouldn't be able to tell playing it on the Vita. The game has a distinct sense of style, from its menus to its character art. Even the school itself, with its bold colors lighting the hallways and odd colored doors, is like something out of a strange nightmare. Special note must also be made of the trial sequences (especially NonStop Debate), where the camera spins around the circle of students and the visual style becomes heavily stylized. It looks really good!

Characters and objects in the 3D environments intentionally look like 2D cutouts being propped up. It's a style choice so I get it (since they're 2D drawings they decided to just not bother rendering them in 3D), and while at first I didn't like it, it grew on me and fit the game. What I really didn't like was the poor draw distance for objects, meaning people (and lights, which are the most noticeable as you move) pop in only when you get close. It makes looking for people to social link with a pain.

The few animated scenes (usually the executions) are delightfully done in a pseudo 2D/3D style. And I just realized I used "delightful" to describe executions. I'm probably on a list now.

The music is solid. It isn't exactly...I dunno...memorable like Phoenix Wright was, but most provide proper ambiance and all fit a neat style. It's mostly standard visual novel fair (again, just there as background noise), so it's all good.

The voice acting is decent. Almost all lines are spoken during the trials, which I appreciate. Out in the world, only a few key ones are ever said. Most are simply prefaced with a "reaction" audio clip (such as "Oh!" or "What?") to match the tone of the text. It's fine, save the few characters who just have them cussing as part of their clips. There's only so many "You son of a bitch!" you can get totally out of context before you get bored of it.

Oh yeah, I didn't mention it before, but there's plenty of f-bombs in this game to earn it is M rating. Just tossing that out there if you thought this game was for kids for some reason.

Living cutouts. How...nice?

So after all this jibber-jabber, what do I actually think about DanganRonpa: Trigger Happy Havoc? Well...I liked it. Really liked it. Liked it so much I stayed up late almost every night last week because I had to see what happened (hurting both my sleep schedule and my productivity at work...). The game is actually fairly long (think ~20 hours), but it certainly didn't feel it. The story is so well paced and the characters so entertaining, you can't help but get engrossed. They do well on their bizarre premise (and equally bizarre characters), and the trials are exhilarating and nailing the culprit satisfying.

Since people probably want a Phoenix Wright comparison, I'll toss this out there: I liked it better than the Phoenix Wright games I've beaten (which is just the first two, mind you). The pacing is brisker and the investigation and trial portions faster and funner. It's got a black sense of humor (unlike Phoenix, which thrives on it's charming goofiness) that works well with the story, and has quite a few "adult" jokes that caught me off guard. I still think the Phoenix Wright games are phenomenal, mind you, but DanganRonpa takes those ideas and streamlines them in all the right ways.

If you like a good, bleak story and enjoy deciphering mysteries, DanganRonpa is quite a good time. The somewhat lackluster minigames and overall strangeness may turn a few people off, but you came for the ride, and it's absolutely a ride worth taking.

Oh yeah, and just because I had to say it: no duh DanganRonpa is a game. Why is that even being brought into question? It's a game. QED.

Four out of five stars. 

It's the trial of the century. 

Five Nights at Freddy's

The Short

Pros
- This is technically a spiritual successor of Night Trap. Just...think about that for a moment
- Evokes a certain sense of uneasiness throughout, which then becomes genuine stress
- Does well at using it's limited controls to make you feel powerless, increasing the spooks
- Animatronic anything just gives me the jibbilies
- The jump scares are surprisingly decent
- Despite it's simple graphics, the ghetto feel actually works to the game's creepy benefit
- It's short length is a plus; it doesn't wear out it's welcome too badly

Cons
- Game usually ends up relying on jump scares after the first or second night
- Doesn't do as much as one would hope to mix up the formula
- Gameplay mechanics themselves are fairly simplistic
- Why would the guy come back after the first night?
- Seems a little too much "Made for YouTubers"

Nothing seems wrong, everything is fine. 

The Long

What a weird gaming world we live in. With the rise of YouTube Let's Players like PewDiePie, Game Grumps, and others, indie devs now have an outlet to reach millions of people should they be lucky enough to be chosen by one of these crazy game-playing behemoths. Whether you love them, hate them, or find them obnoxious and wonder what the big deal is, it's pretty certain the face of gaming exposure has changed, for better or for worse.

One of the things that made these Let's Players so prominent early on was their reactions to horror games. Played in the dark, eyes wide and headests on, people apparently got a kick out of watching other gamers totally freak out on camera in ways that were absolutely not made up or overexaggurated in any way. Games like Amnesia and Slender went from niche horror titles to cultural megahits, and other games that were easy for these YouTubers to react to (Surgeon Simulator, Happy Wheels, Flappy Bird) began to emerge to embrace this new market.

Now we have the latest in this low-budget, high on jump scares endeavor, Five Nights at Freddy's. While I don't want to say the developer went out of his way to make a game that YouTubers would play and promote (which is exactly what happened with this game), I will say that there wouldn't even be a market for this kind of game if the floodgates hadn't already been opened. Because, you see, this game is basically the Sega CD disasterpiece, Night Trap. Yeah. Really. That alone makes me want to love it.

But is it actually a good game? A bad game? And, more importantly, is it 2spooky4me? Well, fill out your job applications and stay away from Chuckie Cheese, because we're gonna find out.

This seems fine. Everything here is fine. 

The plot of the game is relatively simple. Starved for work, you take a five-day gig at Freddy's, a sort of Chuckie Cheese style pizza place for kids. The job seems simple enough: sit in a room as a night security guard from the hours of ten to six, and at the end of the week collect your $120. It's apparently in like 1987 or something because the cameras are all garbage and everything looks...well, like it's from 1987, which explains the $120 being actually worth it for this job. Only not really.

The first night out you get a phonecall that goes straight to your voicemail from someone who claims to have been the previous person working there. Apparently at night the animatronic creatures (there are four total, one being the titular "Freddy") are allowed to wander around on their own. No biggie, but if they manage to find you their screwed up programming will read you as an exoskeleton missing it's suit, and then stuff you into one of the spares they have lying around. Which wouldn't be a problem except bones and vital organs don't really mesh will with the complex machinery inside these things. So basically they'll kill you. What kind of freaking job is this?

THINGS ARE VERY QUICKLY BECOMING LESS FINE.

The way to prevent yourself from being brutally murdered by these straight up freakin' creepy animatronics is to either keep an eye on them (as they are aware when you are watching them over the cameras) and, in case of an emergency, close one of two doors leading to your office. The big trick is that doing anything (even just sitting with the light on) drains your very limited supply of power. Pulling up the cameras, switching cameras, and even having the light that flickers on and off in the dark hallway outside the open door drains the power just a bit. Closing the doors in particular is a massive power hog, which means you have to keep them open as long as possible unless you want to be out of power at 5 AM and at the mercy of these things.

Like I said, Night Trap. You can't leave the office; the only controls you have are deciding when to look through the cameras (which have pretty crappy, usually black-and-white picture, and one room doesn't even have visual just sound) and when to shut the doors. As part of the trick, there are blind spots between the rooms closest to you and your actual room, which means you'd best be putting the camera interface away (which takes up the full screen) and checking the space just outside your doors (which is just a flickering light in the pitch darkness) unless some freaking robot duck sneaks in when you aren't looking and turns you into a mobile Mickey Mouse.

I REGRET EVERYTHING!

The various characters have a variety of nuances that you have to learn quickly. Most will only move when you aren't looking, but there isn't enough power to keep an eye on them at all times. One just sort of wanders, heading for you then giving up and moving around a bit. The other can teleport (yeah, not fair), though the game gives a faint audio cue when it's about to happen. Freddy...I don't know what he does, just kind of lumbers about and makes me upset. The worst is the creepy wolf guy (see above) who is normally hiding behind a stage curtain. But if you don't look at the curtain (or, inversely, look at it too much) he'll suddenly burst free and make a beeline straight for you (the only character you can see moving on camera). He'll pound on the door for a while (or murder you, again, see above) before retreating and the process cycles again. Having it trigger on both "too much" and "too little" was a clever idea, meaning you are constantly stressed out.

And hoo boy, this game is super stressful. The limited vision, the constant worrying about power, the characters that move erratically and then stand perfectly still when caught on camera (or in your field of vision, standing outside the door before they come in to get you) all compiles to a massive, stressful bundle of fun. With so much stuff to manage and the constant fear of getting jumped or missing someone, the game thrives on making things miserable. The worst is having to, on occasion, switch off the cameras because you know you're draining too much power, meaning you are sitting there for one, two, three painful seconds wondering if they're coming for you. And when you do run out of power? Well, they don't come straight for you, but you bet when you hear that little musical jingle, Freddy is coming. He's coming to getcha.

You stay there, rabbit. No tricks! Tricks are for kids!

So the big question is this: is this game actually, genuinely scary? I'll preface my answer with the usual that comes with spooky stuff: your mileage may vary. The game doesn't rely on blood or gore to provide it's scares, and I commend it for it. The creepy atmosphere, voicemails, and dead silence save the hum of your fan and the click of switching cameras are more than enough to unsettle. However, after a while (usually around day three), it stopped being scary and was just stressful (but in a good way).

The main reason for this is twofold. The first is the game is extremely reliant on jump scares. Now, it's jump scares are actually pretty dang good, especially when you are playing the game the first time. There's a massive beginner's trap on day two that I won't spoil, but needless to say if you don't listen to the voice mail very intently, you are gonna have a bad time. Nothing is worse than the long pause when the power is out and you see Freddy's eyes glowing, and it's 5 AM which means it just might, might roll over and you'll win. The screen grows dark and...

Well, either a massive scream of horror as Freddy encompasses the screen taking you, or the 6 AM rolls over. Either way, you're gonna jump.

You really are a prima donna, aren't you?

There are other jump scare tricks. The fox, as mentioned, can make it from his stage to you in just a few seconds, often resulting in a frantic button press for the door (or a screaming yell as he bursts in to murder you). Other characters can sneak into the room while you are looking at the cameras, and the game is evil in that they will wait for you to lower the interface at your own discretion before attacking. It's a clever trick that makes you scared to to just about anything.

But at it's core, all these things are just what I said before: jump scares. That's the main crux. They are very obviously jump scares too, because the sounds they make are horrifically loud compared to the rest of the game and sound worse than Nazgul screams. Like the rest of the game, they evoke overwhelming stress, and usually cause a pretty good jump and a cuss word.

The issue is that eventually jump scares get old. After the fifth or sixth time of getting jumped, getting caught off guard is less frightening and more just stressful and annoying. Once you learn the audio cues that they're in the room when your camera is up, you can expect the "scare" before raising the camera. Is it still startling to have a sudden burst of noise pierce the silence? Yeah, but that's startling, not scary.

As a self-proclaimed expert on ducks, I can say with a 98% certainty that they don't have teeth.

The second issue is the lack of variety. The game basically plays all it's cards on the third day: you are introduced to all the characters, and you can start learning their patterns. Beyond that it's just the difficulty ramping up: the AI gets smarter, and...well, that's it actually. There isn't really any dramatic changes to formula. It would have been cool if after a few days they started cutting the wires on certain cameras, or using decoys to distract you. Maybe mix up their movement patterns a bit, or introduce a few more animatronics into the mix (or even put you in a different building). The game's brevity is it's strength in this regard (only five days and a bonus, extra hard sixth day if you hate yourself) seeing as I'd say it still maintains it's spooky atmosphere up until the end of day three, but then it stops being really scary and more of a game you are playing, and in that regard it's about as exciting as playing Night Trap. Which is not very exciting at all.

So, in a way, this game is a perfect fit for this generation of "horror" fans. People who like quick jumps and rapid fire scares, that aren't really satisfied with slow burns unless they quickly result in ramped up jump scares (or gore splatter). It's less "horror" and more "thriller" (or "suspenseful"), as the slow burn followed by the sudden, rapid release, then followed by the slow burn again is pretty much a staple of how to create smart tension within horror games (see P.T. or Silent Hill 2 for good examples of this). But I will commend it in that it starts as a spooky slow burn: the first two days are genuinely unsettling, even if you do manage to not get jump scared. It's just too bad it couldn't keep that momentum going.

Nothing to see here. That's good, right? Please? I want my mommie...

Graphically the game does wonders with it's obvious low budget. The entire game is pretty much a still shot with a camera fuzzy VHS filter put over it, with random layers of when the beasties are there put on top of it to spook you out. What really works is their details in lighting; they're really good at taking a dark scene (like the one above) and then slyly sneaking a dark shadow that wasn't there before, or some glowing eyes peeking out of a corner. Some are more obvious (as you can see from the screenshots earlier in the review), but considering this isn't even as complex as, say, the FMV filled Night Trap, I have to hand it to them: they did a whole lot with next to nothing.

The only real animations are when you are assaulted and the freaking nightmare-fuel running fox (who runs like Crash Bandacoot, which if you think of that makes him way less scary). Their animations are really janky and the models fairly low-budget up close, but it fits both the theme of the animatronics and the fact that this game looks like a game from the late 90s/early 2000s. It has that "3D is just getting started on PCs so we're gonna pre-render everything" look like from the Fallout games, and I actually kind of love it for it. It's a throwback to a graphical style that nobody ever throws back to (thank goodness they didn't make this game with pixel art), and one I have a lot of nostalgia for. I'd like to see it done more (famous last words here...).

Crash Bandacoot is coming for your babies. 

Not gonna lie: I went into this game fully expecting to be an elitest reviewing jerkbag and give it a low score because I thought it was just pandering YouTube bait. Hey, at least I'm being honest here.

But after playing through it, my opinion changed to one of genuine reverence to this developer. Is this game scary like a Hitchcock movie or other classic horror games? Maybe at the beginning, but not really. The gameplay is intentionally overly difficult (what is this place powered on, double-a's?) as well as extremely simplistic, the graphics are mostly static images, and it's riddled with jump scares. But despite all that, they managed to create a fun, genuinely unsettling horror game, that takes a relatively untapped formula and uses it very effectively to do exactly what it sets out to do. 

It isn't too long, and doesn't really outstay it's welcome (any longer and I'd have griped about how the gameplay gets stressfully tedious). It's scares early on are genuine and downright unnerving, and the style is one I really enjoyed.

But perhaps the biggest catch? It released at only $5. That's insane. Truly, I find it hard to believe. 

Ok, I'm done, that's enough heart attacks for today. 

Will I play this game again? Probably not. Not because it spooked me (which it did, at least at first), but mostly because this game is so damned stressful I can feel myself losing my hair. But will I recommend it to a friend so they'll have a hellish 2-3 hours for the low low price of $5? Abso-freaking-loutly. 

Nice work, Scott Cawthorn. Eat up all that free YouTube marketing. You totally deserve it.

Four out of five nights at Freddy's. 

Now excuse me while I never, ever play this damn game again.