Back to Hope's Peak Academy

NIS America has recently announced that they will be bringing the sequel to the recently localized Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc to North America and Europe.

Like its predecessor, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair will come out for the PS Vita and continues the murder mystery visual novel feel. Players once again become a high school student that finds himself in a strange life or death situation. Again, following suit from the previous title, the player will find him/herself flip-flopping between two gameplay modes. One has you talking with and interacting with the other students. Your goals here are to get to know them and find out whatever information you can. That’s because the other mode starts when a crime scene is discovered and you have to sleuth out what happened and who committed the crime. You do this by paying attention to who said what and trying to determine just who isn’t telling the truth.

Where Trigger Happy Havoc took place in Hope’s Peak Academy, Goodbye Despair has you and your classmates going on a fieldtrip to Jabberwock Island, a once popular tourist location that has become uninhabited yet remains oddly pristine. Just when everything seems to be going fine, the odd black and white teddy bear, Monokuma, returns to start the murderous game from the first title.

Since Hope’s Peak Academy is a school for the rare ultimate students, its attendees are few, but a couple of them include Ibuki, the hyperenergetic Ultimate Musician and Kazuichi, the Ultimate Mechanic with panic attacks.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair comes to North America on September 2nd and Europe on September 5th. The first game felt like an oddly bent Phoenix Wright title, and Goodbye Despair sounds like it promises to be even darker. If you aren’t sure exactly what to expect from Danganronpa 2, then our review of Trigger Happy Havoc might help answer a few questions.

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