some dialogues are too annoying and cringe, a protoganist who loves porn magazines is sometimes unbearable and his AI support Aiba sometimes uses this weakness against him and these scenes are too cringe… but story is still fun because dream and detective concepts are cleverly mixed and it makes you think about what will happen in the future so i felt satisfied with story

the gameplay is good for a Visual Novel, the somnium is the most enjoyable place in the game, i describe the somnium shortly by saying, the somnium is a place where we reveal people’s secrets, there are mental locks and we unlock this mental locks in the six minutes… if people don’t be honest with us, we reveal their secrets by the hard way, honestly i love that concept, it's a easy solution.

AI: The Somnium Files is about a guy with an AI for an eye, and he goes into a somnium and there are files involved.

It bears some similarities to the Zero Escape series, which was made by the same devs, but is in a completely different universe and features a new cast of characters.

The gameplay of Ai is similar to Zero Escape, in that it's mostly a visual novel with puzzle sections. The puzzles in this one are not very hard to solve, but there are a few things that make them more interesting. First of all, each puzzle takes place in a different character's "dream world"(This is where the "somnium" in the title comes from), gives them all pretty distinct and interesting scenery. All of the puzzles are on a timer as well, which seems annoying at first, but by doing certain actions in the dream you can get "Timies", which decrease the amount of time your actions take. It gives you a little more to think about, balancing your time with the Timies you have while you work on figuring out the solution to the puzzle, so it's not as straightforward as interacting with random stuff in the room until you get it right.

The biggest issue I have with this game is the pacing of the story. The writing is pretty good, and most of the characters are actually quite likeable, but it feels like the plot kind of goes nowhere for half of the routes. It's set up at the beginning as a murder mystery, but you don't find out very much about the murder until way later on. The "investigation" mostly consists of going to places on a map, and talking to people who usually don't have any important information for you, and then the next plot beat happens. Like I said, the character writing is not bad, but it's kind of a bummer that the last two routes are the most interesting. I thought the resolutions to the mysteries were fine, and the ending was pretty satisfying all things considered.

I definitely enjoyed Ai quite a bit, but I don't think it's as good as some of this team's other work. If the story were a little more focused, and maybe with a different route structure, I think this could be a really great game.

AI: The Somnium Files is a visual novel, written by Uchikoshi of Zero Escape fame. While I have... complex feelings on that series, I tried to go into this game with an open mind.
Where AI excels is it's storytelling. Now, that might be pretty obvious considering it's a visual novel, but the way the characters are connected in multi-faceted ways you only see particular sides of and then start to unravel is brilliant. Being a mystery VN, I can say that this game delivers on that front. The moment to moment writing, however, is a little more mixed. AI can transition to being very clever with its jokes to having eye rollers in a very short moment's notice. I think it's mostly good, but when it's bad, it's bad. This is especially poignant during the QTE action scenes, to which exactly 0 of them are taken seriously at all. This destroys the tension, and there's not even more than one joke there. Yes, Date, we get it. You're addicted to porn.
As it pertains to the Somniums, I think they're all terrible gameplay wise. Trial and error gameplay just isn't fun. I get that's part of the idea since dreams do not work on normal logic-- but it's just annoying for the player. They are very much carried by their themes. Some of the best ones in the game really did make me feel something despite the garbage gameplay. However, that can't save them as a whole-- a lot of the time I felt myself wishing this was just a kinetic visual novel. They bring the game down by a lot for me.
Ultimately, AI is a great game held back by the poor gameplay and moments where I wonder what the hell Uchikoshi was thinking when writing them. It is most definitely worth playing for the excellent overarching plot, but there's more to be desired.

Incredibly happy with this one. An expertly written detective story about brain-jumpin' and shit. I've never felt as much anxiety as I have playing this game, and that is entirely because of how well it is designed and how well it intersects the gameplay and the narrative. The story is unpredictable, with me thinking I had it so many times, but never quite having it down - the story changes and twists so dramatically that I was always questioning what I knew, and when it all came together, I was sat there seeing it all make perfect sense. But I was still shocked! Every character is great, and the game really loves to get into this grounded noir aesthetic, especially early on, that makes the game just a blast to play. My biggest problem with the game is unfortunately when it just teeters on the edge of being too anime for it's own good - idols, excessive jokes about porno mags and really fucking strong 12 year old girls are everywhere! It's a minor complaint, but I like the more grounded noir stuff more. My favorite route was Ota's, had me crying in the fucking club! Add a fantastic soundtrack on top, and you've got an instant classic. Give this one a go whenever it's on sale.

amazing game, one of the best visual novels i have played. the story and characters are top notch and i love how many routes/endings there are, each route is very different with doing each one makes you learn a new thing about the mystery of the game. it's all pretty awesome, and i was always interested to see what's gonna happen next. there really is not much bad i can say about, just a few small issues, i thought the lip sync was kinda eh, how they moved their mouth was kinda goofy also everytime iris did her dance my ears would bleed because of iris singing like wtf. other than those small issues, this is a fantastic visual novel that i would recommend to anyone who's interested in visual novels. and you play as a detective meaning this game is peak as hell.

As my first foray into the VN genre, I was pleasantly surprised by AI: The Somnium Files. It mixes dark humor with quirky characters, and clever writing. Comedy is extremely difficult to write, especially in video games, but AI does a great job inserting these jokes into situations where it is so baffling that you can't help but laugh.

I think the main way I can describe this experience is: "Nah there's no way they're gonna do this....what." Uchikoshi is great at subverting expectations, both in plot twists and simple character dialogue. He constantly has the player on a string throughout the game, and despite this being a branching storylines game with different endings, he always manages to tell the full story to every player.

That was very fun! I really liked the Somniums themselves the most because of the way they were designed. The Somniums also perfectly display the two halves of AI: The Somnium files which is Crime drama mixing light-hearted humor. The Psychological sense and strange design vibe in these somniums also go super hard.

The split between the more light-hearted comedy and full-on human drama might turn some people off. I thought this double-edged nature made the game more interesting and unique.

The route structure is used nicely too. Slowly uncovering different facets of the story through the use of these split-up routes made it even more enjoyable for when things came together.


Curious as to what the sequel is going to be like.
Don't have much else to say, i had a good time. Aiba <3

This game is such a mess, and it makes me sad because it has a lot of charm and great ideas.

Unlike Uchikoshi's previous titles, this presents itself as a "detective game", but it is so in name only. Investigating the murders takes a backseat to the rest of the game for some reason, and when it does focus on it, it does with such little tension, just to drop one or two pieces of evidence of you, the characters will stay silent for a second and nothing will be addressed until the end of the game. This kind of setup is only possible if there's a source of tension, like in all Zero Escape games. There's 0 tension for 90% of this game.
There's no deduction involved in the actual gameplay or sense to the flow of the investigation. Every time you're left to free roam, you'll find almost nothing of interest for the whole section. This makes it feel like most of the game is just filler to reach the final twist of the story.

The runtime filler is also assisted by the route system, which I wonder if Uchikoshi put in the game just because he felt he had to instead of the game benefitting at all from it. It's just used to repeat information and replay situations to fill the runtime. Also, unlike in the Zero Escape series, it is never formally explained aside from some characters mentioning parallel universes. Aside from the endgame routes, every other route has a character focus, which would be good if they didn't ditch the murder mystery entirely.

Characters are really hit or miss. I liked Mizuki a lot, but I couldn't like Iris at all for how much they shove her in the game. I also like Aiba but she has no arc at all so I didn't care much about her. Everyone else is boring or unlikable.
And then we get to Date. I really like him too, but he was written inconsistently as fuck. The irresistible need for Uchikoshi (and almost every japanese mystery vn writer while we're at it) to insert sex jokes every 3 lines of dialogue fucked Date's character hard, and the game as a whole while we're at it. There was quite a bit of that too in the Zero Escape games but it feels like there's NOTHING here but that. This and the slapstick action scenes make the game's tone terribly inconsistent and it suffers hard from it.

Somniums are a cool concept and I liked the time management dynamic. However, they are very badly thought out: they are designed as metaphors for the characters psyches, so they are meant as foreshadowing first, and everything else after. This results in the player having no idea of what the line of reasoning in each somnium is, so the only way to advance is trial and error, which meshes terribly with the time management thing. These sections are basically the only interactive part of the game, so they making no sense to the player is pretty bad. Investigating somniums also makes no sense for the characters, because it almost never helps the investigation in any way.

On the artistic side, I'll say I love Yusuke Kozaki's character designs for this game, and that some somniums look cool. The music is a bit underwhelming, which is pretty sad considering most of these kind of games have banger soundtracks.

To finish off, I'll talk about the story. This game lives and dies by its final twist. Everything in the game is a setup for it. Everything after it only rides on said twist. It's not a particularly interesting twist or it is hard to see it coming. It's convoluted, but actually tame for Uchikoshi's standards. The last 5 hours of the game are okay-ish, but they are so to the expense of the rest of the game.


I was so disappointed on this game that I started thinking fondly of Danganronpa games and Zero Time Dilemma. And if that isn't a bad sign, I don't know what is.