Danganronpa Vs. Ace Attorney: How to make meaningful changes

Pleaedon'tkillmeIlikebothgames

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Man, I really cannot get enough of Danganronpa, can I? If you follow me on Twitter (Wink wink nudge nudge) you'll know I've been obsessed with it ever since I started playing. I obsess with a reason, however. Now why is it that all the visual novels I play involving murder trials are so good?

Yes, ladies and gents, today I'm going to be examining and comparing Ace Attorney and Danganronpa, though not to say which one is better(not today anyway). That in mind, let's take a closer look at these, shall we?

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When it comes to these 2 games, comparisons may seem odd at first. One's a high school death game, the other's a law procedural. Though they share investigations and "trials, really even a passing glance at both would never have you making direct comparisons. Those who have played both also know just how different they actually are. So why even compare them?

Mainly because of the underlying gameplay loop, I feel. They both follow the same basic formula of the Setup-Investigation-Trial loop that repeats for 4-6 cases in each game. Each game takes the time to set up its own world, and more importantly, own tone.

Ace Attorney strives for a somewhat clinical tone in its story. Yeah, it's wacky and ridiculous a lot of the time, but when it comes to the cases you're rather... detached, in a word. You often don't have much emotional stake in them, and when you do it's usually a very special case indeed. It has at least a semblance of an orderly trial, with cross examinations and evidence presenting going back and forth. What happens in between is often, ah, insane, but fundamentally it is still a law procedural.

As for the other game in the ring, Danganronpa is the exact opposite, purely chaotic. There isn't any set procedure or process to go through. Cross examinations become debates with many participants. Your own life is on the line, alongside everyone else's. You interact with everyone constantly, and any one person could be a killer or victim. This is no law procedural, it's a psychotic death game.

Let's take a closer look at some individual elements, shall we?

Gameplay

Again, both games do share fundamental bases with the gameplay, being logic puzzles. They both give you a mystery, a bunch of clues, and tell you to work it out through deductive reasoning and step by step logic.

Ace Attorney takes this premise and puts it into a courtroom, perhaps the most fitting environment for such a gameplay idea. All the actual logic you need to employ is step by step and every cross examination has a single key contradiction in it. If you're not cross examining people you're using other gameplay mechanics, yes, but you're always looking for one single flaw, and matching the right piece of evidence with it. The actual gameplay actions you take are all simple button presses, with most of the actual difficulty mainly coming from the logic puzzles you need to mentally work through. 

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The gameplay of Danganronpa is a lot different, despite similar concepts. Danganronpa has you needing to actually physically aim your evidence at the weak points in arguments, desperately sorting through letters to form words, taking part in actual confrontations against others, and more. On top of all this, there are time limits that you need to stay under all the while. Another key difference compared to Ace Attorney is that you've never got a pile of evidence to sort through, and you'll only be given a few truth bullets (evidence) per round of debating.

(I'd put a Danganronpa screenshot here but I literally cannot find one without spoilers)

Danganronpa and Ace Attorney each have you solving logic puzzles in very different ways. The time limit in Danganronpa forces you to think fast with the few options you have, while a lack of time limit in Ace Attorney is offset by you having all of your evidence to use all the time. It's a slow and caculated approach, helped by simple button presses, where in Danganronpa the heated debates where everyone's lives are at stake are much better represented with you needing to get more physically involved. Speaking of...

Premise
You can't talk about comparing these games without talking about the premise. They're such a fundamental part of what gives them their identity and the basic idea is so tightly interwoven with every singe part of the game.

Ace Attorney is a law procedural, obviously. Everything's related to the courtroom. You invesigate and file away evidence, as the police mark things down and the prosecutors prepare witnesses. Everything has a way you need to go about it, a way to question witnesses, and a way you need to ensure a proper, well-run investigation.

Danganronpa is a lot more messy. You know every single murder victim and you know every single murderer, throwing the possibility of a clinical assessment of every case out of the window. It's a tense and emotional setup, and every single person involved with the case is a potential murderer. These are high school kids, and this isn't their job. Every investigation is sloppy and fast, with you having a personal stake (I.E living) in every trial.

The premise does a lot for the tone and motions of each story. Say in Danganronpa, each trial will have a lot of accusations throughout, since everyone wants a culprit found for the sake of their own lives. Ace Attorney stays realistic(ish) to trial format, and you're only allowed to make formal accusations when the time and evidence is right.

It manifests in the little things as well. The manner of the number of people on the stand at once makes Danganronpa more chaotic and Ace Attorney more confined. There's the threat of legal oversight on your actions in Ace Attorney, while anything goes in Danganronpa. Ace Attorney also stays static in trial format while Danganronpa whittles the cast down, slowly making the trials smaller.

Characters
Ok, so I think by this point we've got a general idea of how a core idea behind a game does not a similar game make. Logic is executed on and used in very different ways in a court and a murder school. For the last part of this examination, let's see how characters impact the core ideas and mechanics behind the game.

So Ace Attorney's characters are firmly rooted in the law procedural, once again. There are a lot of characters but for the reoccurring ones, the most important thing to note is that they do this for a living. It's their job, it's what they do every day. Every trial is met with a certain amount of familiarity and confidence. All the lawyers are usually divorced from the case emotionally, and approach it as such. Ace Attorney is mostly made up of an adult cast, as well. Things can get quite crazy overall, but there's always this veneer of professionalism and respect everyone shows. All this is a textbook law procedural, like I keep saying. The characters are shaped and molded to fit this approach.

I don't even know what you'd call Danganronpa on the other hand. Maybe a murder mystery death game? Is that even a genre?

Anyway, the characters in Danganronpa are all high school kids who really, really don't want to be stuck in this death trap. For the purposes of comparing it to Ace Attorney, this is what that change does:

- This is an abnormal situation for them
- They have no experience doing this
- There is no expectation of professionalism

It's not like the characters know what they're supposed to be doing or how. Every investigation and trial is filled with some level of bumbling around and mistakes. As a result, the pacing is a lot more inconsistent, speeding up and slowing down at will depending on how the characters are acting. Ace Attorney stays consistent due to the nature of the characters, Danganronpa adds to the tension by making everything inconsistent, in no small part due to the characters.

We also see how points 1 and 3 seep into every aspect of this game. People are panicking and unsure of what to do. Remember the last time you were in a situation foreign to you and you had no idea what to do? The abnormality to the characters informs how they present themselves and how you need to interpret them. Everyone has something to hide in Danganronpa, while it's really only ever the guilty parties that are maliciously hiding info.

It's truly interesting to see how 2 very different series can have 2 very different tones despite the core gameplay ideas being pretty much the same. I'd say it's a great example of how your idea for a story, or gameplay mechanic doesn't have to limit you in any what whatsoever.