Danganronpa Ultra Despair Girls is, in my estimation, a total failure. Now, don't get me wrong; it's still a fine game, but where it stands in the Danganronpa series, I can't call it anything but a failure. Why, and why am I still recommending it? Well, the answer to that involves the plot, which spoils Danganronpa 1, and to a lesser extent DR2, so this review will lead to spoilers inevitably. First, let's talk gameplay; the good stuff, the stuff that makes me still recommend it.
The PC port is lovely, for starters. Coming up from the vita, the crisp, stylish anime art style benefits it. Second, the game itself isn't bad. While the pacing is dashed often by unending dialogue segments, the core gameplay is surprisingly strong. It is a simplified take on RE4 or Dead Space, with over the shoulder stationary aiming at hordes of evil Monokuma robots. Nail one in the weakpoint, and your next shot is charged up. Couple this with some alright enemy and shot-type variety and you have a solid foundation. The boss fights, too are actually really good, all giant robots piloted by your enemies: The Warriors of Hope. Easily the best boss battles in this subgenre since Dead Space 1. Some of the middle ones are a bit dull but in general they have fun gimmicks and make use of the limitations of the RE4 style really well without relying on RE4-style QTEs. In fact, the main reason I bought this again after clearing it on Vita was to relive a couple of those boss fights. There is not much challenge, though. Your resources are plentiful and the enemies aren't much trouble to handle if you're good. In addition, you have a separate meter for your partner, the inimitable Toko from Danganronpa 1, who is literally invincible and summoning her turns it into a simple hack and slash tinged with her own unique madness. If you do not know why Toko is invincible or how nutty she is, you ought to play Danganronpa 1.
The game's pacing stays solid throughout, even if the psychedelic visuals native to the franchise are pretty frontloaded and drop off quick. Breaking up the flow are regular puzzle rooms, where you are meant to hack the enemy robots and use their behavioral quirks to clear the room without being seen, with a modest reward and a slightly greater reward of not having to fight the enemies within. There are a few clever puzzles of a more traditional sense, too. This is no Metal Gear game where the last act may as well be one continuous cutscene and swimming minigame. For all the talking, DR:UDG still expects you to play the game too.
So what's my problem with Ultra Despair Girls? It's the plot. It's a monumental failure on two levels, as a story and as a Danganronpa followup.
Where it sits in the DR franchise, UDG is Spike's first attempt to explain what was purposefully left a mystery in Danganronpa 1 (And despite Danganronpa 2 watering down a lot of 1's impact, it still did not touch what UDG is based in.). UDG is our first look at the despair-controlled world posited by the villain of Danganronpa 1. And UDG fails utterly at depicting that, instead depicting an untouched by despair city overrun by what is essentially a robo-zombie apocalypse. What a disappointment, a complete failure of imagination! And, if not this, if not showing us what survivors of the despair cataclysm have to go through, what the hell point is there of having a shootan Danganronpa side game? This is why I call it an absolute failure. For all the good of the mechanics, it had one job. We were all hyped for that one job it took on, maybe not intentionally, but by virtue of what DR1 and 2 set up for it.* In Spike's defense, the despair world posited by 1 was mostly interesting because it was not explained. Only just enough hints were dropped to give us the impression of what we needed to understand about it. Without a truly exceptional writer, there is no way to give such a world justice in video game form. Even after Danganronpa 2 almost reduced it to super-powered teens yelling hope and despair and throwing hope kamehamehas and despair genki damas back and forth, some of that mystery was still ready to be revealed here.
Instead, the story revolves around some truly nauseating villains, the Warriors of Hope. You meet them in the game's unending prologue and each scene they are in seems even longer than that. A group of evil little kids who ramble on and on and on about the abuses they have suffered with such gleeful, repetitive, drawn out abandon that it feels like Yoko Taro did the writing for most of the scenes they show up in. The irony of cute giggling little kids laughing about the insane evil acts they are committing and had been commited against them wears thin so fast and the game doesn't figure that out until about the halfway mark. There's just nothing interesting about them beyond the Taro-esque shock value of them screaming their pathologies constantly and all they manage to do is deny this game any good villains to speak of. (I guess Nagito shows up for no reason and he kinda counts as a decent villain but once again his role is just "whatever the author needs to get out of this plothole, with HOPE as the reason.") To make matters worse, for an entire city to be laid low by little kids, we need survivors who are dumb enough to be outsmarted by little kids, and boy those show up in spades. An entire arc of the game involves survivors yelling at each other over why they are/aren't fighting back enough, despite that their enemy is a merciless robot army and all the survivors have between them are fists and chair legs. The story is an utter mess. And the ending tries to recall the crazy trap/gambit of the final showdown in DR1 and the pale imitation that was in DR2, but this one is just terrible. You just end up wishing everyone would take off their idiot hats and let us get on with the grand finale. The only thing the story does well in the relationship between Toko and Komaru. It's a little silly, as DR writing tends to be, but the eventual warming up, nerdy chatter, and gal-pal banter between the two are the only fun you are going to have following this miserable story. Whenever the story cutscenes were just them, it was often a good time. Heck, it was downright heartwarming watching those two become friends after a while.
In the end, I still recommend DR:UDG. I hate the story, but the gameplay is pretty strong, even if it takes a bit of a backseat to the story. The shooting is fun, the Toko switch gameplay is fun even if the hack and slash she does is terrible and only acceptable because it is a 15 second long super move and not anything you are playing seriously. This leaves it in an awkward position, as it can only appeal to Danganronpa fans, who love that series story, and you absolutely should not play this if you have not played DR1 and 2. But I still think it is good enough as an RE4 clone to recommend on the strength of gameplay alone.
*In fact, UDG is such a failure that the one-two punch of DR2 and UDG have completely killed any interest I have in the Danganronpa franchise. Which is a shame; neither are bad games in any sense beyond their story beats, but what the hell else do you come to Danganronpa for? All the best waifus are dead.