Like the last game,
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair puts a collection of students in an impossible life-or-death situation, where the only way out is to kill your classmates or prove them all guilty of murder.
Where the first Danganronpa title kept you confined to Hope's Peak Academy, Goodbye Despair brings its victims, I mean students, to a small tropical island chain. At first, it seems like the school trip is all about having fun, but when the crazed mechanical teddy-bear headmaster, Monokuma, appears and destroys the student's teacher, the field trip becomes a much more dangerous event.
In the last game, you played the Ultimate Lucky student who won a lottery to go to Hope's Peak, but this time, you aren't the lottery winner. Instead your character actually doesn't remember what his talent is. You quickly befriend this year's Ultimate Lucky student, who introduces you to the other 14 new freshmen. Among them is an Ultimate Cook, Mechanic, Gamer, Gymnast, Yakuza, Princess, Sword Fighter and a few more unusual talents. Of course, not everyone is who, or even what, he/she appears to be, and only by working your way through Monokuma's sadistic exercise can you figure out exactly what is going on.
I have to say, while I enjoyed the first game's story, I found Goodbye Despair's story to be an even rockier roller coaster that gets its hooks into you pretty early (before the epilogue is even over, actually). Not only does the story of the 16 kids trying to get off of Jabberwock Island pull you in, but the revelations about the world around these kids get leaked out at just the right pace to keep you wanting to know more.
Like before, the game is divided up into three segments: Daily Life, Deadly Life and Class Trial. During Daily Life, you walk around the small island chain talking to whomever you can in the hopes of learning as much about everyone as possible. Anything you gather during this part of the cycle becomes invaluable as you will get a good feel for who each character is and what they are doing. Deadly Life occurs when a body is discovered. It's here where you start to gather evidence about the death and determine who the guilty classmate might be. Finally, it's Class Trial time. Accusing the right classmate and convincing the rest of the group that you are right will either lead to you being right and the murderer being killed, or you being wrong and the killer being the only survivor.