Danganronpa V3 continues the same style of gameplay as the first two Danganronpa games, which is split into Daily Life, Deadly Life, and Class Trial segments.
Daily Life and Deadly Life[edit]
During Daily Life, players interact with other characters and progress through the story until coming across a murder and entering the Deadly Life, during which they must gather evidence for use in the Class Trial. Roaming around the world and interacting with objects during both Daily Life and Deadly Life will yield experience points for the player. Experience points are used to level up and with each level players obtain more skill points which enable the player to equip skills to help with Class Trials.
Class Trials[edit]
Like in previous games, Class Trials largely revolve around the Non-Stop Debate, in which characters discuss the case, with the player required to use Truth Bullets containing evidence against highlighted statements determining whether someone is lying or telling the truth. During Non-Stop debates that appear to have no clear contradictions, players can now use Lie Bullets to break the conversation with a False Counter. Returning from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair are Rebuttal Showdowns, in which the player must debate with a specific character in order to reach a contradiction.
Danganronpa V3 adds new gameplay elements to the Class Trials. Mass Panic Debates involve multiple characters talking over each other, making finding the correct statement harder, while Debate Scrums have groups of characters argue against each other, requiring the player to use statements from their side against the other side's statements. New mini-games are also added. Hangman's Gambit Ver. 3.0 requires players to use light to pick out letters spelling out an answer. Mind Mine is a puzzle game requiring players to remove colored blocks in order to reveal an illustration. Finally, Psyche Taxi sees players driving a car, collecting letters for a question that they must then answer.
Other modes[edit]
As in the previous games, there are also various modes outside the main game. The Death Road of Despair minigame is accessible by visiting the area under the manhole in the school: it is a platform game intentionally designed with a very high difficulty level, in which all 16 students try to escape the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles while trying to evade bombs, traps and holes. After finishing the main game, other modes are unlocked. Salmon Team Mode is an alternate mode similar to School Mode and Island Mode in the previous games, in which Monokuma decides to cancel the killing game and turn it into a dating reality show, allowing players to bond with the other characters. There are also two brand-new modes. The first one, Ultimate Talent Development Plan, has the player choosing any character from Danganronpa V3 (or from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, after unlocking their cards) and advancing in an 8-bit game board representing their school life at Hope's Peak Academy while they increase their skills and interact with other characters. After completing this mode for the first time, a new mode is unlocked, Despair Dungeon: Monokuma's Test, where the player uses the characters developed in Ultimate Talent Development Plan to stop a horde of Monokuma creatures unleashed by the Monokuma Kubs in an 8-bit turn-based RPG game. The monsters and gameplay from Despair Dungeon are references to Chunsoft's previous works, Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer and the Dragon Quest series.