I think Danganronpa 1 was a fantastic starting point. There was the novelty of its unique premise and setting. There was the compelling, multi-layered mystery unravelled throughout the game. And then the open-ended ending, where it was up to the audience to decide what the true nature of the world was, and how it didn't really matter because the point was that the characters decided to venture into their future no matter what.
I think it's after DR1 that the series starts to go downhill for me. Instead of treating this more as an anthology series—which I think is what should have happened—the creators decided to have each entry in the series closely tied to each other. DR2 decides to expand on the truth behind the "Ultimate Despair" and the outside world. It made for a great twist, but it also lead to a redundant mastermind and more unnecessary expansion of the outside world with the "Future Foundation."
Following this are the largely derided Another Episode and Danganronpa 3. What both of these had in common are their primary focus on world building and trying to flesh out aspects of Danganronpa which honestly did not need to be addressed. It's often stated that DR3 retroactively ruins and even contradicts important DR2 twists, and I tend to agree. Another Episode at least had an interesting cliffhanger, which also results in disappointment with how it just fizzles out in DR3.
And then is V3, which I think is the culmination of all the series' flaws. Every Danganronpa "killing game" since DR1 had obvious parallels, intentional or otherwise. Similar characters, similar cases, similar twists. But what the series tried to do is to use those obvious parallels as a jumping off point to subvert what you previously knew. Sometimes it worked (Makoto Naegi to Nagito Komaeda). Sometimes it didn't (the number of a case giving you an overview of what would happen).
What DR53 tries to do is put all of that together, and twist it into a "gotcha," ultimate ending, where it explains that the redundancy is inherent to the format and that it's also what the audience wants to see. It gives the ultimate explanation for how this world works, and the ultimate justification for why these killing games exist. It attempts to explain everything; the entire concept of "Danganronpa."
I think the fact that the series pushed itself into that corner, and only by the third mainline game, is pretty much the crux of my argument against how they went about things. The positive I have with the V3 ending is that, if they ever decide to make another game, they'll have to disassociate it from everything concerning the Danganronpa world which was established until now... right?
I haven't talked about the gameplay mishaps every single Danganronpa game somehow repeats over and over again either, but that's beside the overall plot.
tl;dr: The Danganronpa series lacked ambition, deciding to continuously build off of what came before instead of cutting the old stuff out to make each entry truly unique. I think this is a series which could have had something truly new to discover in each game, but decided instead to rely on superficial twists and subversions from what came before until the very end. It focused on the "world at large" so much when it could have instead have focused on unique circumstances behind each killing game without worrying so much about the "why."
I think it's after DR1 that the series starts to go downhill for me. Instead of treating this more as an anthology series—which I think is what should have happened—the creators decided to have each entry in the series closely tied to each other. DR2 decides to expand on the truth behind the "Ultimate Despair" and the outside world. It made for a great twist, but it also lead to a redundant mastermind and more unnecessary expansion of the outside world with the "Future Foundation."
Following this are the largely derided Another Episode and Danganronpa 3. What both of these had in common are their primary focus on world building and trying to flesh out aspects of Danganronpa which honestly did not need to be addressed. It's often stated that DR3 retroactively ruins and even contradicts important DR2 twists, and I tend to agree. Another Episode at least had an interesting cliffhanger, which also results in disappointment with how it just fizzles out in DR3.
And then is V3, which I think is the culmination of all the series' flaws. Every Danganronpa "killing game" since DR1 had obvious parallels, intentional or otherwise. Similar characters, similar cases, similar twists. But what the series tried to do is to use those obvious parallels as a jumping off point to subvert what you previously knew. Sometimes it worked (Makoto Naegi to Nagito Komaeda). Sometimes it didn't (the number of a case giving you an overview of what would happen).
What DR53 tries to do is put all of that together, and twist it into a "gotcha," ultimate ending, where it explains that the redundancy is inherent to the format and that it's also what the audience wants to see. It gives the ultimate explanation for how this world works, and the ultimate justification for why these killing games exist. It attempts to explain everything; the entire concept of "Danganronpa."
I think the fact that the series pushed itself into that corner, and only by the third mainline game, is pretty much the crux of my argument against how they went about things. The positive I have with the V3 ending is that, if they ever decide to make another game, they'll have to disassociate it from everything concerning the Danganronpa world which was established until now... right?
I haven't talked about the gameplay mishaps every single Danganronpa game somehow repeats over and over again either, but that's beside the overall plot.
tl;dr: The Danganronpa series lacked ambition, deciding to continuously build off of what came before instead of cutting the old stuff out to make each entry truly unique. I think this is a series which could have had something truly new to discover in each game, but decided instead to rely on superficial twists and subversions from what came before until the very end. It focused on the "world at large" so much when it could have instead have focused on unique circumstances behind each killing game without worrying so much about the "why."
