Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc has a wacky but intriguing setup: locking a dozen or so students in a school together, and forcing them to kill each other in order to be allowed to leave. The twist is that the murderer can only leave if they are not discovered during a class trial. It's really messed up to watch the lengths the school's "headmaster" goes to in their efforts to drive the students insane and force them to kill their friends. At the same time, you get to know a lot about these individuals in seeing just how far they go to scheme and murder each other, all while attempting to cover up their tracks so as to not get found out.

Once a group of students discovers a dead body, the "headmaster" declares that it's time for the investigation period. This leads you to a series of events where you search around the crime scene and any other relevant locations in a point-and-click style to find clues about the murder.

After collecting all of the evidence, you then move to a courtroom where you have to sort through your classmates' lies and biases to solve the mystery. Every phrase your classmates say show up on the screen as text, and it's up to you to use your "truth bullets", meaning your clues from the investigation, to shoot down anyone's lies or falsehoods to move the trial forward. There are also a few other mini-games that help you figure out the facts, like a cool rhythm game where you have to shoot someone's lies on-screen in-time with the beat.

Your closing argument has you put together the missing pieces of a comic book that shows the whole murder and cover-up, from start to finish, using pieces of evidence you uncovered, letting you see everything that used to be unclear. You then get to watch as the murderer gets punished in a creative and twisted way.

There's a great variety of characters here, each with their own quirks and specialties. Every student is a prodigy, or an Ultimate something, such as the Ultimate Programmer, the Ultimate Fashionista, the Ultimate Clairvoyant, the Ultimate Affluent Prodigy, and plenty more. And the so-called headmaster is a talking stuffed bear named Monokuma who delights in driving the students crazy enough to murder each other.

You can get to know the students as your friends by hanging out with them on your free time and giving them gifts. A lot of them have over-the-top, outrageous personalities that make them fun to be around, and their banter during cutscenes can be pretty hilarious sometimes with the way they argue and snipe at each other. Their specialties tie into the murder mysteries in interesting ways as well, so it's worth it to keep track of what everyone's best at.

Right from the title screen, all the artful details in the game really pop out at you. The colorful UI, the style of text during class trials, and the quirky but interesting character designs are all unique and pleasing to the eye. The cast all have such different hair and eye colors, helping you tell everyone apart and remember who they are. Everything looks amazing and quite impressive.

The soundtrack is addictive to listen to and doesn't get old. It's a good mix of different sounds, like pop, rock, trip-hop, and electronica, put together to make songs that don't really sound like any single genre. Even though it doesn't sound all that familiar, the tracks somehow manage to fit every single situation quite well. You won't hear anything like it outside of this game series.