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Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair is a murder mystery visual novel. You play as a high school student trapped on a tropical island with over a dozen other students. In order to leave, a student must kill another without being discovered during the class trial.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Catchy music with an experimental sound
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.
Pro Engaging murder investigations and class trials
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.
Once you figure out the correct culprit, you then get to watch as the murderer gets punished in a creative and twisted way. But if you get it wrong, it's game over for you.
Pro Fascinating premise of pitting characters against each other to break them psychologically
Danganronpa 2 has a wacky but intriguing setup: stranding a dozen or so students in an island 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.
Cons
Con Spoils the first Danganronpa game right at the start
Be careful if you decide to play this game before Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, the first installment. There are spoilers right off the bat, mostly involving certain characters from the first game. This technically is a standalone game since you don't need to know any information from Trigger Happy Havoc, but just in case you end up liking the series, it helps to start fresh from the first entry.