Introduction

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is a game by Spike Chunsoft that started out on the PSP as a Japan-only release back in 2010. It saw a sequel in 2012, along with a couple iOS/Android spin-offs. In 2014, NIS America released an English localization of this game and its sequel on the Playstation Vita with higher resolution art assets, a few quality of life improvements and some new extra postgame content. I will be playing the Vita version.

The game is a visual novel first and foremost but during certain sequences, there will be court trials that contain minigames. That's where the active gameplay comes from when you aren't making story choices.

As for a general plot, without getting into spoilers too much, some people have described the game as a mix between Battle Royale and Phoenix Wright. Now, I haven't seen or read Battle Royale, nor played any of the Phoenix Wright games, so I'll have to take their word for it. What I can say though, is that 15 high school students are trapped in a location and must kill each other to leave. Murders will occur, and it's your job to investigate the murders to find the culprit through the aforementioned court trial all while trying to discover a way to escape this nightmare.

A fair warning to anyone following the LP that has not seen the game before: There are a LOT of spoilers for this game out there online. Fan art, comics, reviews, even the official game artwork can reveal endgame spoilers if you're not careful. Even the names of the individual tracks on the OST can be spoilers. I would recommend to anyone that hasn't seen the game before do not Google anything about this game series at all. You do so at your own risk. There is also a new game in the series that has been out in Japan for a year but has just received an English localization out around this time too so be extra-cautious not to read anything Danganronpa-related because there are no guarantees that this game won't be spoiled in some way. It is almost five years old after all.

Originally, this LP had a no spoilers policy but as it progressed it became clear that most of the readers are familiar with the game. Therefore, the spoiler policy has been changed to allow spoilers behind black bars JUST FOR THIS GAME ONLY. Do not post about spoilers for the sequels, light novels, comics or animation. Just keep it reasonable. As usual, for those of you who don't know the game yet, speculation is fine and encouraged.

If you want to discuss the series in general, there is a series megathread over in Games you can post in.

This will be a hybrid LP. The majority of the game will be done in screenshot format with soundtrack prompts, but during certain sequences I will be supplementing the updates with video. The class trials especially will have lots of videos to go with them because they are completely voice-acted and I feel like something is lost if you can't hear the characters talk during them. All video links will be behind Polsy links to avoid as many spoilers as possible and denoted with

emotes.

The game has a lot of spoken dialogue, as well as inner-thoughts and bolded words and phrases. As such, I'll be using normal, italicized and bolded text to represent those differences. When reading a conversation, if I have anything I need to say, I will preface my words with this image to let you know the game isn't talking at that moment:

I know there was another LP of this game years ago by orenronen that really gave exposure to this series on SA. In fact, his LP is where I learned of it. However, he LPed the original Japanese PSP release and translated it as he played the game. Now that we have both a Vita version and an official English localization, I felt like it would make for a good LP again. That, and I really enjoy this series and want to share that enjoyment with everyone else.

(spoilers) Orange Fluffy Sheep summarizes the Prologue and Chapter 1.
(spoilers) Kangra enlists some help spotting an inconsistency in Chapter 6's trial.

The Let's Play Archive

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

by FPzero

Introduction