Danganronpa 1-2 Reload

Release Date: October 10, 2013

Adventure, thriller, detective, package, visual novel, arcade elements, PlayStation exclusive, singleplayer

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A suite of two refreshed and improved parts of the popular visual novel adventure series that were released on PSP in 2010 and 2012. In both titles, players take on the role of a high school student who tries to find the perpetrators of murders committed in his class, imprisoned in a secluded place by the sadistic headmaster of the school.

Danganronpa 1-2 Reload is a set of two parts of Japan's popular visual novel adventure series. This package includes games that were originally released on PSP in 2010 and 2012. The developer of originals and their ports is Japanese studio Spike Chunsoft, which has a lot of experience with similar productions. His visual novel 999 containing logical elements: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors was also released in the West and was very well received by both gamers and reviewers. Conversion introduces a new control model and increases the resolution and quality of film interrupts and graphics.

Both games present a similar story. Their protagonists are teenage boys starting their studies in an elite secondary school. It only accepts candidates with incredible achievements in various, often strange fields of interest and specialization. In the first part, the protagonist and his class are unexpectedly imprisoned in a school building. The protagonist of the second installment cannot get out of the tropical island, which was the destination of the trip. Two groups quickly find out from the mouths of an electronically controlled mascot, who introduces herself as the director of the academy, that in order to get out of the trap, they have to murder a colleague so that they are not caught by the others. Otherwise they will spend the rest of their lives away from family and friends.

The gameplay model resembles the popular Ace Attorney series. Like many other standard visual novel actions, we see the action from the first person's perspective and follow the dialogues of the characters displayed on the screen, accompanied by two-dimensional portraits of the speakers. All locations are presented in three dimensions, although we cannot move around them freely. Each chapter of the game is divided into phases. In the first one, we talk to the students of our choice, building relationships with them and thus gaining special skills useful in investigations. In the second, there is murder and we move to the crime scene. We can then obtain witnesses' testimonies and collect evidence. In the last one, there is a process in which all students have to appoint a murderer together. Everyone presents their own arguments and theories, and the player, thanks to the collected evidence, has the opportunity to use a skillful mini-game to oppose the conclusions that have been expressed. If the murderer is chosen correctly, he is sentenced to death by a judge in a trial that is already mentioned as a mascot.

Graphic design is extremely colorful and surreal despite the rather gloomy subject matter of the game. The character designs are heavily exaggerated and caricatured. As already mentioned, the title combines three-dimensional backgrounds with two-dimensional static portraits of the characters.

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Last updated on August 14, 2015

Videos and Screens

[0:30] Danganronpa 1-2 Reload PS4 version trailer