Spoilers for 999 and VLR
Introduction
Virtue's Last Reward is a deeply frustrating game not in a mechanical sense but in that it succeeds so well at first, using every clever trick in its narrative bag and keeping you on your toes for an impressive amount of hours and integrating its improved puzzles from its predecessor as well as its central "gimmick" of the meta narrative flowchart; only to ultimately collapse under the weight of a house of cards of its own making. Its frustrating because a game which fails due to overambition is still preferrable to one which fails because it had nothing interesting to say. Its frustrating because for all its faults it expands from 999 in ways that could have worked and would have made the game an all time classic in my book. Its frustrating because it almost clicked together, its a game akin to a man juggling 30 knives for 59 minutes and at the grand finish slipping on a banana peel and stabbing himself repeatedly. Its frustrating ultimately because even after it all its a game I want to love, especially knowing how it's successor turned out even if it was VLR which partly set it up for failure. Its hard to pinpoint exactly why and how VLR turned out this way or why I view it the way I do but I will try to explain as best I can.

Tough Act To Follow
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors was an adventure game/visual novel released for NintendoDS on the 10th of December 2009 in Japan[1]. Despite poor sales in said country it was localized by Aksys games for North America the next year on the 16th of November 2010[1]. It was unusual for Visual Novels at the time to be released in the west and even more unusual for 999 (I will use this shortened form of the title to refer to the game from now on) which sold better in the west than in its native Japan[2][3]. The combination of "escape the room" style puzzles and a dark, claustrophobic mystery story aboard a ship made for an excellent adventure game and its use of the DS's unique hardware for its final narrative "twist" worked wonderfully.

9 People are trapped inside a ship for unknown reasons, they have 9 hours to escape before it sinks. This involves choosing which (1 through 9) numbered doors to go through advancing deeper into the ship solving "escape sequences" which serve the double function of being satisfying to work out and exploring the various characters who accompany you along the way as the escape sequences have dialogue weaved in to make the 2 portions of the game really connect to each other. The idea for 999 came from a desire by Chunsoft to expand the audience of visual novels, in part to a more casual audience, and Uchikoshi proposed adding puzzles to attract the broader adventure game audience[4].

In keeping with the branching narrative structure, you can only choose 1 option from a list each run, giving weight to the choices especially given the length of each run which can last up to 4 or 5 hours give or take. Originally this was very much opaque in the DS version, although more recently its 8th gen ports include VLR's flowchart system for added QOL although along other changes make me view it as the inferior version, the convenience subtracts from the weight and the DS's hardware's added "twist" which is reworked in a way which was admittedly a good attempt but inevitably fails to recreate the magic of the originals'[5].

For all the various Sci-Fi elements present in the story like Morphogenetic Field theory, ICE-9 from Cat's Cradle, Soporil, Time travel etc it mostly wraps up neatly around a single core "twist" at the end and emotionally resonant character moment which satisfyingly resolves a (depends on how many bad endings you got) 10-15 hour story without many loose threads to pull on. By Uchikoshi's own admission, the game was always supposed to be a standalone entry but the positive reviews especially in the west resulted in a sequel being greenlit[6].

This is all to say, any follow-up to 999 was going to face an uphill struggle from word go and I think its worth reiterating how impressive it is that VLR almost manages to surpass 999. There are a few changes which are also attributable directly to 999's succeses and failures. One of the reasons for 999s poor japanese sales was its dark, horror-esque tone. As per Uchikoshi's own account, the target japanese audience did not buy the game primarily for this aspect and as such the execs at Spike Chunsoft told him to make the sequel lighter in tone[3]. In 999 the punishment for breaking the rules is being blown up by a bomb from inside one's own body, whereas in VLR its a more humane lethal injection with an anaesthetic. There is also a much more frequent presence of jokes and levity, not that 999 was completetly self serious but VLR really undermines itself at times with inappropriate "perv moments" and the like. One minute you are horrified to find a bomb or a corpse of a participant and the next the main character Sigma is asking to see Phi in a swimsuit. This should have perhaps been a warning sign of things to come because the later Uchikoshi series "AI: The Somnium Files" is 10 times worse in this aspect, with the very tension and danger of scenes deflated in favour of gags. This is however outside of the scope of this review so I will not mention it again.

A note on the title Virtue's Last Reward
Before proceeding I should quickly explain the title Virtue's Last Reward. In the original japanese the title could be read as either "good people die" or "I want to be a good person" which of course relates to the game's central themes and the prisoner's dilemma. In order to preserve both meanings, Ben Bateman of Aksys games explains the decision to combine 2 english idioms with similar meanings : "Virtue is its own reward" and "Gone to his last reward"(i.e to die)[7]. Personally, I think the fact that this needs to be explained to make sense kind of undermines the attempt, but I understand the unenviable position the translation team found themselves in.

A note on the usage of Visual Novel
I should also very quickly mention the usage of the term Visual Novel in this review. In an interview Uchikoshi explained that in Japan "there is no visual novel genre per say. With me personally when I made 999 and VLR these are not referred to as Visual Novels, they're referred to as actual adventure games. Whereas overseas they're referred to as Visual Novels".

The distinctions between adventure games and visual novel genres are controversial and hard to define, so for this review they will be used interchangeably when talking about the Zero Escape series in general.

Pace Yourself
VLR's strengths sit atop 3 pillars : the first of which is its pacing. I have played through VLR all the way through 3 times now. Even in this most recent playthrough in preparation for the write-up, a playthrough in which I was periodically taking notes whilst playing, VLR kept me hooked for almost its entire 30ish hour runtime. It was in part due to my familiarity with the story that I was able to discern some of the "tricks" and common techniques which are used to build tension as well as provide the appropriate down time to allow the various mysteries to stew just the right amount of time.

The flowchart which will be explored more in depth later on does much of the work to aid in this, as it starts off linearly with the tutorial sequence with Phi, setting up the initial mysteries of why and how we are here, why Phi seems to know us, how she can jump really high etc. The tutorial mirrors 999's initial escape room with a threat of death on a timer: a flooding room in 999 and a falling elevator in VLR. After we are briefly introduced to the other characters and Zero III explains the basic rules of the nonary game.

The dialogue alternates between characterising the cast and establishing the basic premise. A "slow" moment when we come out of the room to meet the rest of the participants is followed by an "exciting" moment of K carrying an unconscious Clover out of the elevator. New mysteries are dropped on us, who is K and why is he wearing a suit of armour, he's an amnesiac, is he lying about it? But before we can stew on it for too long Zero III begins the fairly long exposition scene setting the game up. Fortunately on subsequent runs this sequence can be skipped and before long the announcement of the Chromatic Doors open and ZeroIII leaves us to choose our first major divergence on the Flowchart. Even the slightly dry exposition scene cleverly omits the "penalty" until it can be used for maximum effect.

This is the structure that VLR follows at a micro and macro level. Despite being a branching narrative game there is a lot of overlap in the events, especially in the earlier sections of a branch. We make a decision whether it be in the AB game or escape sections and the consequences play out, a betray vote may lead to a character being angry at us for example. The game never dwells on them for long however.
An example would be in the Tenmyouji route choosing the Yellow Door first. During the first escape route in the infirmary the radical 6 pandemic is mentioned for the first time. Our characters and ourselves cannot quite believe its veracity, did a Pandemic really kill 100,000 people and we never heard about it? Is the nonary game a quarantine effort? Tenmyouji tries not to say anything of course and knowing the ending it makes sense why. The tension dissipates as we meet up with the others and realize how long it will take to open the next set of doors. In between rounds we explore some of the other rooms that other characters explored and even the one we did. These are very effective at creating down time for characters to interact, information to be exchanged and the pace to be slowed down a bit to give us a breather.

Before we can get too comfortable however, the doors to the AB rooms are opened and a corpse is discovered by the main characters. After all the implications that that brings are brought up, the characters are out of time and must vote, which depending on your decision will involve another series of dramatic consequences and interactions with the rest of the cast. After another "slow" round of character scenes Quark, a child tries to commit suicide due to the symptoms of radical 6 before he is sedated. Inmediately after however we have no time and must carry him through the next set of doors to the treatment center.

VLR then follows this structure pretty much the rest of the game. The various time limits given for each sequence of the game are a fairly genius excuse to move things along when you need to without appearing cheap in doing so (999 did a similar-ish thing with the 9 hour time limit, but characters telling you to stop your important conversations feels more blunt in that game due to the lack of information on the remaining time for most of the game). The "Locks" add some complications to the question of pacing as they are quite literally a stop and start affair, but even with those, our innate desire to see them unlocked and whichever events were kept away from us usually trumps the lack of a truly consistent run to follow through.

Quick Footnote : A lot of people dislike the whole "beeping dot" method of not having to animate or do foley work for characters walking around the facility but I think its fine for the most part. It creates the view of seeing a rat traverse a Maze or even that famous turret scene in Aliens. It is overdone though, I will admit.

Puzzles
The second pillar is the puzzles. The puzzles in VLR are just straight up better than in 999. They are not without a few stinkers but they are generally more enjoyable to solve, much more variety. Notably, since VLR was designed with a more global audience in mind, the puzzles feature more numbers, as they are mostly universal[8]. Much like in 999 these "escape the room" style puzzle sequences interweave character interactions, plot and a challenge, meshing story and gameplay together somewhat.

Taking the first 3 sequences as an example, the Crew Quarters introduce the idea of Schrodinger's Cat and we get some interactions with Alice. The Infirmary as mentioned previously shows us the article about the Radical 6 pandemic. The Lounge's puzzles are all about the solar eclipse taking place on the 31st of December 2028. These are all some of the most important stepping stones to the various "twists" that the plot takes before its conclusion and establishing them early on whilst solving riddles works well in my view.

This is merely speculation on my part, but I think some reviews must have complained about the ease of puzzles in 999 and the myriad hints dropped on the player by other characters which led the team to overhaul the puzzle gameplay. First of all, there is now a difficulty selection for each individual puzzle section: on hard, hints will be scarce and on easy other characters will all but tell you what's important and how the puzzle solution works. Its a nice feature to try and satisfy both those who are more in it for the story and those who appreciate meatier puzzles.
There is also the matter of the 2 passwords you can unlock in each puzzle room, one unlocks the door, ending the sequence and the other unlocks a series of "secret files" with more details on the plot, the various real life elements, developer notes etc. In theory this is a further tweak to difficulty based on personal preferrence but in practice a lot of the blue files are either easier to get than the escape password or sometimes kind of obtuse. Particular mention of secret file passwords I thought were annoying include infirmary and the infamous archives dice puzzle, the latter of which illustrates my point nicely.

You see in this puzzle you need to set dice on a specific spot. For the gold file, you must only place them in the correct spot based on their colour; there are 6 die of 3 different colours and you find a bookmark illustrating a sort of t-shaped pattern with the 6 coloured squares. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out. After you roll the dice to each spot you unlock the secret file password. The second solution involves a second bookmark in the same pattern with numbers on it, illustrating which side of the dice must be facing forward for this solution. However, this overlaps directly with the first, meaning what can (and did happen to me the first time) happen is you'll roll all the dice into their correct spot safe for the last, start trying to get the last dice in such a position as it can roll and be facing the right direction when its put into its correct position and if you miscalculate or accidentally put it there by accident (an easy thing to do because its isometric and the controls are fiddly as fuck) the puzzle will declare GOOD JOB YOU SOLVED IT! but because you already got the gold file you get nothing and the puzzle resets leaving you to do that shit again.

This would be fucked enough, if it weren't for the fact that they bring this puzzle back for the last, hardest puzzle room in the game : the Q room. I am not the biggest fan of Q room, mainly because it makes you play minesweeper which I hate. It also has 0 riddle type puzzles. Up until this point the puzzles felt like they struck a nice balance of inventory puzzles, pure logic/execution puzzles, riddles, etc. At the very least its not very long and is close to the climax of the game so it gets a pass.

Flowcharts and the VN Landscape
The third and final pillar is the metanarrative flowchart.
In a previous review of Harmony : The fall of Reverie[9] I mentioned how branching narrative seem to me to fall into 3 main categories : the opaque, the transparent and the metanarrative. Heaven's Vault would be opaque, it branches based on non or very lightly signposted decisions. Heavy Rain with its flowchart would be the transparent, its clear what decisions leads to what. And the metanarrative would be YU-NO and of course VLR; decisions are not only visible but the process of gaming the structure of the branching is an in universe canonical event. This is my entirely personal terminology however, and it does not neatly encapsulate all branching narratives, really it works more as a spectrum than a strictly discrete categorisation.

Flowcharts in VNs were already somewhat common before VLR[10]. VLR's "innovation" expanding upon previous work in Ever17 and Yu-No is making the flowchart help tell its story. As you advance through the various routes will lead you to either "Locks" or Game Overs. These locks are points at which your character needs information from a different route to proceed. In universe the main character Sigma and Phi can obtain information from other timelines based on the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, explained in excruciating detail during the game, in the archives.

This really is VLR's core and ultimately its double edged sword. The locks are an ingenious way for Uchikoshi to maintain some control of the game's pacing, as whilst we can choose to explore the branches in any order, making sure we have information from certain other routes ensures that certain reveals cannot occur before others. The final normal route of the game before the ending for example requires the passwords and locations to 4 different bombs, which each require a separate route of the Dio ending revealing his backstory and the organisation known as free the soul, the director's office (which itself has a lock requiring reading the book found in the laboratory), bomb 2 from lock 7 which also requires the dio ending and lock 5.
Its genuinely emotionally exciting to see and unlock these, a narrative "to be continued" drives you to do other routes and find the information which helps the game move forward. They are as I said a double edged sword because along with what was mentioned in the pacing section, stringing you along with countless mysteries, questions etc creates the unfortunate need to have to bring them all together in the end. VLR is an ungodly behemoth of moving parts, every set up and sci-fi concept are another challenge to try to tie together and it simply becomes impossible to pull off in the end. It also fully abandons the "route" dynamic of 999 and most VNs generally where a single "run" will start and begin before you can do another one.

With so many routes its impossible to not repeat many dialogues and sequences, even those which are tweaked slighlty. You can skip over them but with so many jumps and timelines the individual impact of the various nodes is greatly lessened. It becomes an almost sludge of melted down coins forming an indistinct pool of liquid. This does at least work at a metanarrative level in regards to the series protagonist : Akane. Its not just you, the player who is becoming desensitized to seeing their non-wizard friends be murdered and blown up in myriad ways, but also the Shifters themselves. Sigma does admittedly have Phi to keep him semi grounded but given her characterisation in the game, Akane comes off as a Dr Manhattan type, doomed by her cosmic powers to view the lives of ordinary humans as insignificant. This was, admittedly sort of the case in 999 but that had the emotional core of child Akane, before she set up a ridiculously complicated death game and engineered the murder of 3 people.

Uchikoshi's Writing Style and the Fourth Wall
Kotaro Uchikoshi started his career working for a company called KID, first as a 3D modeller for Pepsiman and later was approached to write scenario for Memories Off, which was a Bishoujo(japanese for "pretty girl", a subsection of VN focused on dating girls) game[11]. He was told by higher ups that he couldnt put sci-fi elements in it, that "if you dont have a cute girl showing up in the game it would not sell". Never 7 was then a dating sim with slight sci-fi elements which received praise : "so then, gradually, I could increase the Sci-Fi content and it just grew from that"[11].
Later on he joined Chunsoft, which was more focused on mystery and adventure games than dating sims. He was approached to join a team (the 999 team specifically) to write a story to be sold to a wider audience than the one Chunsoft usually sold to[4].

Throughout his career, Uchikoshi's writing style has followed certain constants. The most important two to note here would be his heavy use of sci-fi and real life elements (which will be explored more in depth later on in this review) and his "twist" first, back to front writing style. By his own admission :

"In general, I just start from the end and I work my way forward. For example, in 999, one of the biggest reveals was that they were not on a boat. So I would start from there and work my way back. For VLR, the end twist was that we were on the moon, so I would work from that"
I don't want to turn this already long write-up into a piece on Uchikoshi's entire career, in part because I have not yet played the infinity series; but his writing style stays so constant across the Zero Escape and AI games that I think its helpful to explore its impact.

Writing the twist first and working your way backwards certainly has its advantages as its probably almost mandatory if you're planning to have an ambitious structure like VLR and need to make sure all the various elements fit together without (major) plot holes or inconsistencies. You can then think about how to build up to the climax by spreading the various narrative elements necessary to accomplish this throughout the story. For example : in 999 its revealed at the end that Santa and June's bracelets were not in fact 3 and 6 respectively but 0 and 9, which means you then have to make sure than Akane and Santa always go through the same numbered doors so that the digital roots work out.

This method does, however, exacerbate the problem of introducing more mysteries and routes requiring more of an ultimate explanation. Part of it is that VLR has many more "twists" than 999 but part of it is that "they were actually not on a boat at all" is easier to pull off (we're never shown any windows and water does not fill the ship gradually) than "they were on the moon the whole time" for what I hope are obvious reasons, but they will be discussed in the endings section regardless. This method is also why I don't know if my arguments will be compelling regarding the ultimate failure of VLR's conclusion. On an "'objective'" level the story certainly explains itself, its just that on a subjective emotional reaction it ultimately falls flat, its like debating a very argumentative person on something, Uchikoshi can explain it all away but he can't make me think the explanation is ultimately satisfying.

Characters
Brief mention to the change from 2D sprites to 3D models : its fine, I think aesthetically the characters are fine and expressive enough. Kinu Nishimura's visual character designs are generally quite well realized and expressive.

I will echo SunlitSonata's sentiment that "The individual characters are stronger [in VLR] but 999's cast is better as an ensemble"[12]. I think Virtue's last reward has more compelling character moments but ultimately its cast is the victim of the scenario more than anything else. Tenmyouji's relationship to Quark and his backstory reveal is compelling but for most routes most of the time Quark is a non entity; more of a tool to create tension than a character as he disappears and collapses with comical frequency. It was disturbing and tense when he first tried to kill himself due to the effects of Radical 6 but by the 4th time its happened? White noise.

Clover and Alice's relationship is a highlight and Clover herself bears special mention because she's in both games and is infinitely more sympathetic and well written here. Even when she lashes out and/or does something bad its understandeable, as opposed to in 999 where she was seemingly only a bad day away(ok thats definitely an undertatement) from becoming a deranged axe murderer. Wisely, VLR decides to delegate all murder to a single character, although unlike Ace in 999, Dio is way more obviously the villain almost from word go, to the point that I was only surprised he wasn't a Red Herring. Unfortunately the game also demands Alice die horribly several times which again, becomes less impactful every time even if her backstory and personality are compelling.

A lot of character details are nicely foreshadowed in the puzzle sections themselves : e.g Tenmyouji knows about salvage, Dio's knowledge of DNA in the lab cause he's a clone, etc. A strength of the Flowchart is that the player always starts with Phi and then can only partner with either Tenmyouji, Alice or Luna for the first round which are the three core characters in terms of emotional investment and importance. They are also by definition the only 3 characters with runs in which you only partner up with them : obviously you cant choose to only partner with Dio for e.g if you can only partner with him starting from the second round.

There is a constant in both 999 and VLR of making character appearances be deceiving. Lotus' extravagant and fairly horny design masks her reveal to be a genius programmer who, well, just likes dressing like that which is valid in my eyes. K is another example, such a simple decision to have a character behind a mask who turns out to be a soft spoken but cunning nerd. Alice is an attempt at something similar but in this aspect ultimately falls flat because a) her retcon from 999 implies she was somehow dressed as a mummy when trying to infiltrate a secret compound in the middle of the nevada desert and b) her "twist" is basically a rehash of lotus, but as a CIA agent instead of a coder. Similarly Clover has the same concept here but her design makes Alice look conservatively dressed.

All of VLR's characters, even the evil ones come across as flawed and sympathetic and ultimately human; except ironically for Akane, the supposed heart of the franchise. Even when they ally or betray unexpectedly there is an effort to make their actions somewhat justifiable, even if its in part due to the slow doling out of information making their decisions not fully thought out with all of the truth in hand.

SciFi elements and Pseudoscience
Both 999 and VLR make heavy use of Sci-Fi concepts and pseudoscience. VLR also uses Game Theory and specifically The Prisoner's Dilemma as its central conceit. I was originally going to go in depth to how appropriately these are used but I've decided against it because ultimately the accuracy of the depiction and validity of these concepts is somewhat besides the point to whether or not they make for a good story and its way outside my expertise and the scope of this already long review to deal with such contentious topics of research.

I think the most important question about these elements is do they make a good story? For the most part I would say yes. The prisoner's dilemma is an interesting and appropriately ambiguous thought experiment, and as the basis for both a branching narrative based on binary decisions and the interactions with characters who you do not know much about and whose motivations can be vexingly hard to grasp at times it serves its purpose well.

The entire plot revolves around the many worlds interpretation of Quantum mechanics, put simply, the properties of matter at its smallest level exist as a space of possibility which collapse into a single "solution" when observed. As with the explanation of Schrödinger's cat wherein a cat is both alive and dead until one opens the box[14]. This implies that there are many parallel worlds diverging from the movement of particles and any number of events like personal decisions of living beings.

In VLR this concept is used to explain the various timelines in the flowchart all existing simultaneously as well as why at points a character will vote ALLY or BETRAY based on your decision even though in theory they would have no way to know what you voted for.

The Prisoner's dilemma is a game theory thought experiment. The entire field of game theory is an attempt to study human decision making, its rationality and/or lack thereof. A usual wording of this prisoner's dilemma is that two prisoners are told by a cop that they can confess to their crimes and they'll go free, their partner will get 3 years however. If they both confess they both get 2 years and if they both stay silent they'll only get 1 year. The "dilemma" occurs because the collectively best decision is for both to stay silent (or cooperate/ally) yet individual rationality suggests confessing is the optimal play(or defect/betray). If the prisoner's accept this logic, however, they will inevitably end up losing individually as well by getting 2 years[13].

VLR's AB game is a modified version of this problem but with higher stakes, losing points via being betrayed can eventually result in your death and if someone reaches 9 points they can leave the facility through the number 9 door which will never open again. It adds a lot to the tragic nature of the character interactions in the AB game, characters who want to trust others but can't in part due to not knowing them enough, events during the game such as bombs being planted, murders and the overwhelming urge to escape the nonary game's nightmare as soon as possible. This is helped along with the slow dole out of information by ZeroIII like the penalty for having 0 points being death, the person you partner up with to go through the doors (and therefore the person with which you will spend some time getting to know a bit beforehand) being the same person you will be voting against during the AB game, etc.

It does feel cheap at times why certain characters will make each decision to vote in the way they do, basically cause we know they're going to choose both Ally and Betray seemingly arbitrarily. Thankfully even in those instances they usually have a somewhat justifiable reason for it, or at least one they can personally defend. I like how Dio tries to convince us that voting betray against someone who only had 1 point was justified, and how you almost buy the explanation.

Even if the attempt to make the decision to vote Ally or Betray have a ticking clock tension is undermined by having functionally unlimited time to make the call (and the game's explanation for why this is, is dumb) ; the decision itself remains surprisingly nerve wracking despite the repetition and aforementioned sludge problem.

Localisation
I would be remiss not to mention the localisation to 999 and VLR, probably a key factor in the games' popularity in the west. According to Ben Bateman and Nobara Noba Nakayama, the key translators for the project, their translation process involved an extensive e-mail back and forth, clarifying and reclarifying exact meanings and intentions behind certain segments and even the background research informing said segment[15].

There are a couple of details lost in translation like Zero III being a rabbit foreshadowing the moon twist due to japanese folklore asociating the two[16] and arguably the whole-ass meaning of the title unless youre intimately familiar with the combination of english language idioms or you've read the Ben Bateman interview where he tells us about it.

Famously, the entire localisation of 999 had to be put on hold when Nakayama discovered a key twist involved a japanese pun[17]. Basically the number 9 door is actually a Q. In japanese, 9 is pronounced Kyuu, hence the pun. It gets worked out in the end though. Infuriatingly, whilst doing research on this piece I came across a section of an interview Ben Bateman gave which I cannot for the life of me find again. It said that the use of third person for the narration/novel screen was a substitute for the twist in the japanese version hinging on some sort of play/subversion of japanese male and female pronouns. You will just have to trust me on that, I'm afraid.

Endings
Finally and appropriately we should discuss the main failing and ultimate reason why VLR fails to live up to 999 : the ending. Now I am generally not one to say that a bad ending "ruins" a story, but it can definitely make a story built on shaky foundations crumble in on itself, which is definitely the case with Virtue's Last Reward.

You see in 999 everything revolved around and wrapped around its ultimate "twist" which is that Akane built the Nonary Game both to punish the key players in Cradle Pharmaceuticals who organised the original game and save herself in the past/future. Everything else fit fairly neatly around this idea, the facility being a building in the desert and not a ship, the various participants, Ace's murders, and the metanarrative use of information from other routes. Even the slightly bullshit things like the convenience of Seven's amnesia ocurring and then reversing when needed, Zero's seeming knowledge of what Ace and others would do at every point etc being tidied up by the whole "Akane saw what would happen in the future and simply prepared accordingly". The problem, is that this is lightning in a bottle. In 999 this convenience of having seen the future can really only be used once and the denser you make the plot and its various twists the more this conceit has to carry upon its back an ungodly amount of bullshit. In VLR it mostly comes across as bullshit.

How did Akane know Tenmyouji would go to the moon when called? She saw it through the Morphogenetic Field. How did Zero, K and Luna know the passowords to Dio's Bombs? Morphogenetic Field. How did Akane know that everyone wouldn't just ally or that Sigma would make it to the director's office alone or that Alice would be able to decode a 25 digit prime factorisation or any of the countless fucking things that had to go right for her convoluted ass plan to move forward? Morphogenetic Field. It becomes akin to the Force in Star Wars or Hashirama Cells in Naruto, all purpose plot insulation.

Im tempted to dive into some general nitpicking here like why Dio carries a knife with the name of his super duper secret illuminati commando force on it, or how Sigma never touched his eye at any point or asked any of the people calling him old to clarify what they meant by that. But in all honesty Im not too bothered by those, truthfully.
The ending to VLR takes 2 whole hours of straight exposition after the final Q room puzzle, and I know because I timed it. Proportional to its total runtime its not inappropriate but its still way too much to not just become overwhelming. "You're helping a girl in the past from the future" is a lot easier to accept than "you were on the moon the whole time but didnt notice because you were infected with an infectious brain virus that lowers your brain's processing speed and also your consciousness is in the body of your 60 year old self and K was a clone of you which you created to send back in time to 2029 so you could then spend 45 years preparing this whole AB game to send yourself even further back in time to avert nuclear war and a global pandemic". The funny thing is, it almost works on me. Its so...audacious? Its like if Uchikoshi came up to me, said nothing, carefully took out my wallet from my trouser pocket and slowly walked away. I kind of respect it even if it falls on its face.

Despite Akane's insistence that the ends justifies the means, its almost comical how tone deaf it is to meet young Akane at the end with the game expecting us to feel some sort of positive emotion, knowing full well she's a machiavellian monster responsible for countless deaths. Tenmyouji deserves better. At least in 999 her young self was innocent and even her older self only put bombs in people who were evil and who she did not directly kill.
Ultimately VLR contains the gravest sin of any piece of fiction in my eye, in that its not even set in the most interesting period of its story. This is admittedly another problem derived from turning a standalone entry into a series - the more death games you make the more reasons you need to come up with for them to be held, especially if the reason isnt just the usual "for entertainment of the rich/punishment of the civillian population by a dystopian government". At the end of VLR what have you accomplished? You have made sure that a future event MIGHT occur and the world MIGHT be saved; which is just such a non-ending.

At some point I had to mention the elephant in the room of ZTD but in all honesty ZTD being the way it is (though personally I love it, its one of the funniest games Ive ever played, the decisions are so baffling they wrap around to being amusing) is all the more damning to VLR being so overstuffed its loose ends spilled over into the entry which was supposed to properly conclude it all with yet another death game.

I suspect that VLR's original ending might have been a better one, though Uchikoshi's description of it isnt exactly extensive, it seems that due to the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake it was changed to be a bit less dramatic: "what happens is that all human kind is destroyed, nobody survives. At this point someone goes back to the past and the original ending was to go back to the past, change a little bit so the future is saved, and then it finishes. However this felt crisp and sudden. So what we did is we added a lot of content to say that you, by going back and working in the past to change the future, thanks to your efforts there is some hope. To give it a more positive nuance"[11].
After a bit more digging I found a different interview explaining the 4th Wall breaking "?" section at the very end of the game which I feel I should post here in full because its fairly enlightening :

"It’s actually metafiction written through the viewpoint of higher realities/dimensions, and has no connection to the chronology of the official storyline. The official story of VLR ended with young Sigma witnessing the explosion of the antimatter reactors from the Crash Keys base on April 13, 2029.

But the tragic 2011 Tohoku earthquake, which claimed 20,000 lives, occurred during voice recording, and we began to wonder “was it appropriate to end the story of VLR like this? Should we add a scenario which brought more hope?” This brought about the addition of “Another Time End.” The Japanese version didn’t include voices in this scene because the script was written after the completion of voice recording. However, during the process of adding this scene, I made two regrettable errors which caused even more confusion. The first was adding voices to the English version “Another Time End.” The second was putting the “Another Time End” right below “Phi End” on the flowchart. I did not incorporate what happened in that ending when working on ZTD. The reason behind that was because there was no assurance that everybody saw this ending. Some players only finished the escape rooms on easy mode. I wanted to be sure that they too would enjoy the story of ZTD.

People will probably wonder if what happened in “Another Time End” was all fake and whether I was deceiving the players. This is far from the truth. You said “My guess was it was the player” and that is correct. I wrote the script for this part with “?” being the player, and put some fragment of the player’s involvement in ZTD. This is the reason I made it appear that the player is capable of using an ability similar to Delta’s mind hack. But please don’t consider this to be the ultimate answer. The reason I don’t want everyone to see this as the only answer is because I’ve come across a number of interesting theories in forums which I do not want to deny. Maybe the character who was making the decisions in the Decision Game was the one who was participating in the game, or perhaps it’s Delta, or even the player. There are many ways of interpreting it, and I hope each fan will decide which fits best for them personally.
I’d also like to discuss Kyle. As mentioned before, “Another Time End” is metafiction, meaning the comment made by old Akane where she is speaking to the player himself is also metafiction. During this scene she said, “He (Kyle) was thrown out when you entered. Right now – in a manner of speaking – he has arrived at December 25th, 2028. His consciousness has gone into a body from that time.” The year we are currently in is 2016 and not 2028. That’s my answer towards Kyle"[18].

Now, if you go through the "?" section it starts to make more sense the impact from the earthquake in regards to Tenmyouji's extensive speech about the survivors of a tragedy having lives worth living and undoing that would be unfair to their efforts in making the most out of a bad situation. This is already like the 3rd time I have seen a behind the scenes japanese game development story mention the Tohoku Earthquake and its impact as a key turning point/inspiration in a project, I can intuit that this is a deeply scarring and generation defining event in the Japanese collective consciousness so I will not pretend to know if the original ending would have been poorly received. I will however say that not robbing Tenmyouji of his past and accepting that their lives were worth living and undoing it would be wrong does pretty seriously undermine investment in saving the world at all. Why do we even care about the lives of millions if we have let die countless people in other timelines. This is sort of an issue with multiverses and many worlds interpretation in fiction.
Similarly, if VLR had ended instead with Sigma jumping directly to 2028 and stopping the nukes/pandemic through something quick or even off screen I think it would have been a much better ending, although our timeline would have been robbed of the masterpiece of Zero Time Dilemma.

To be Continued...
The title of this section is in jest, the review ends here. Hopefully this overlong essay has gone some way in explaining why I find VLR equally compelling and frustrating, and perhaps you have learned a thing or two about the behind the scenes of the game.
If I were less lazy I would have gone more in depth on the visual design especially the environment and why I find Rhizome 9 less compelling than building Q to explore and Im kicking myself that I didnt mention the excellent soundtrack, especially morphogenetic sorrow and bluebird lamentation but this has gone for long enough I feel like. Maybe one day I'll mention these in a review of Zero Time Dilemma or Ever 17 when I finally play it.
I will reiterate that I still like VLR and its a game I desperately want to love for what it does well and what it tries to do with a story only really possible in videogame form or perhaps the world's thickest, 1000 page choose your own adventure which somehow locks you in an escape room periodically.

Bibliography
1. https://www.igdb.com/games/zero-escape-nine-hours-nine-persons-nine-doors
2. https://twitter.com/Uchikoshi_Eng/status/433998278393217024
3. https://zeroescape.fandom.com/wiki/Answers#71_2
4. https://www.vg247.com/inside-the-genesis-of-virtues-last-reward-and-the-challenges-of-visual-novels
5. https://store.steampowered.com/app/477740/Zero_Escape_The_Nonary_Games/
6. https://www.siliconera.com/zero-escape-3-takes-place-on-mars-and-will-make-you-question-philosophies/
7. https://www.siliconera.com/the-thinking-behind-the-title-zero-escape-virtues-last-reward/
8. https://www.siliconera.com/999-and-virtues-last-reward-creator-chats-about-suspenseful-visual-novels/
9. https://www.backloggd.com/u/LordDarias/review/820433/
10. https://vndb.org/g991
11. The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers ISBN 9781500229306
12. https://www.backloggd.com/u/SunlitSonata/review/236571/
13. https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/ap-microeconomics/imperfect-competition/oligopoly-and-game-theory/v/prisoners-dilemma-and-nash-equilibrium
14. https://www.universetoday.com/113900/parallel-universes-and-the-many-worlds-theory/
15. https://www.ign.com/articles/2013/04/22/down-the-rabbit-hole-the-narrative-genius-of-virtues-last-reward
16. https://www.gamesradar.com/zero-escape-past-present-and-future/
17. https://www.gonintendo.com/stories/212144-aksys-discusses-the-challenges-of-localizing-visual-novels
18. https://www.siliconera.com/spoiler-filled-interview-zero-time-dilemmas-director/
Bonus : https://www.gamereactor.eu/too-kyo-too-crazy-an-interview-with-kotaro-uchikoshi/ Don't cry Uchikoshi-san, Cage is a fraud, you're better.

bloat turns to rot

i will preface this by saying i genuinely, for the most part, had a pretty enjoyable time with this game. it was very funny at moments and some characters are really good.

aside from that? eh.

the puzzles are a major step down from 999. where 999 felt it encouraged you to think and figure things out and try different options, VLR says you must do it My way, that is the Only solution. i figured out puzzles ahead of time, but because i had not done one specific unrelated thing, to get some kind of dialogue, despite everything else being in place, the puzzle goes unsolvable. it also has puzzles that expect insane amounts from the player, and to have outside knowledge of so many things. god bless anyone who played this game on the 3ds with no internet, i would not have been able to get through it.

the characters range from pretty interesting to not wanting them to be on my screen, which is another step down from 999, in which everyone is great. using each character as a way to define endings also means that some get 'was that it?' endings, and some get the most overblown bloated ridiculous eye-rolling endings ever. i think if about 6 plot elements were taken out of this game it would have been hugely better.

the lack of personality from the player character compared to the vibrant insanity of Junpei in 999 is a shame, but ig they had reasons for it. the change from beautiful 2d sprites to the 3d models also somehow gives them a little less personality and removes the beautiful feel of 999. but i also saw dio being pinned down several times so thats nice.

the games own internal logic leads itself to fall apart, and i've yet to have any sort of feeling of satisfaction from finishing the game, which really just felt like an entire setup for the third game, which i don't want to play yet, because i am recovering from this game, which made me feel like the lowly termite i am, incapable of understanding uchikoshi's mind as i am not a higher being, which is a shame.

anyway yeah, still want to play ztd, still enjoyed 999 a lot, this just really was the schrodingers cats we made along the way

Haven’t gone back to this game for months & you know what I just…kinda don’t want to.

999 was excellent. This game is just ugly as hell & nowhere near as interesting I’m afraid.

Sorry Uchikoshi but I think this one will remain unfinished.

A: Ally

Zero Escape as a franchise has always held a special place in my heart, and almost all of that weight rests exclusively on the shoulders of 999, the first entry in the series. Virtue's Last Reward takes all of what was present in the previous title and amps it way up, resulting in a story with higher concepts, significantly greater stakes, and truly wild twists and turns that can be almost impossible to predict.

I love some of the character writing here. Sigma and Phi make for a great pairing and bounce off of one another really well. They trade the idiot ball back and forth every now and then, mostly just for comic relief, but they shine together when the situation demands that they be completely serious. Dio is a strongly written bastard who deserves every bad thing that could possibly happen to him, and Luna is so precious and sweet that ever picking betray against her feels like a knife between the ribs. They're charming, and it should be enough to keep you going all the way through to the end.

The environment designs are unique, and there's plenty of establishing shots and iconic escape room designs that will make sure you're very familiar with the layout of the building by the time you're done. You'll never be hurting for varied puzzle designs, as almost nothing is used the same way twice. Everyone is going to walk away from this with one room that stood out to them as being especially good. I liked the GAULEM Bay and the Director's Office quite a bit, but it would be hard to argue with anyone who said another escape sequence was their favorite.

Between the characters, the heightened narrative, and the escape rooms, there's a lot about Virtue's Last Reward to like. I'm glad to have seen it through to the end.

B: Betray

Zero Escape as a franchise has always held a special place in my heart, and almost all of that weight rests exclusively on the shoulders of 999, the first entry in the series. Virtue's Last Reward feels like a flanderization of what was present in the previous title, turning a small-stakes science fiction death game into a hilariously overinflated narrative with twists and turns that make almost zero sense and come out of nowhere.

I hate some of the character writing here. Phi and Sigma (mostly Phi) are established to be these brilliant puzzle-solvers and logicians, and then they have moments where they see what's obviously a mirrored name and assume that it's some esoteric series of numbers instead. Clover has been changed from an energetic-yet-conniving character into an impulsive ditz who can't read and has somehow bumbled her way into being a member of an international anti-terrorist group. Zero III and his squeal-y voice are so obviously meant to be an expy of Monokuma from Danganronpa that it hurts. It's frustrating, and it made me have to put the game down a few times until I could come back to it later.

The game never stops repeating map sequences and establishing shots, regardless of how many times you've already seen the exact same ones. You're allowed to skip past some, but not others. The puzzles are incredibly hit-and-miss, and the compulsion with making every single one unique leads to some of them feeling like they're really scrambling for fresh ideas. Everyone is going to walk away from this with one room that stood out to them as being especially bad. I really disliked the Archives and anything else that forced me to do that fucking dice rolling puzzle, but it would be hard to argue with anyone who said another escape sequence was their most hated.

Between the characters, the heightened narrative, and the escape rooms, there's a lot about Virtue's Last Reward to dislike. What an incredibly stupid ending.

This game has very high highs, and very low lows. The story expands upon what 999 built upon, and uses the timeline mechanic to its fullest here, the problem is the story will just go off the deep end far too many times, and slow moments are not fun. There are plenty of cool revelations, but certain routes are super similar, and you'll see the exact same things with small alterations. Some plot twists are just straight up bad, and have several reasons for why they could not work.

The puzzles are really fun, the characters are great (mostly), and is a nice successor to 999, but at times, the story doesn't know when to quit.

I really cannot sell this game hard enough. It is so good. It is so good I want to scream. We have full motion characters and voice acting now for the visual novel parts. The music is out of a slasher movie. We have 9 more anime friends to meet, each more knowledgeable about stupid pseudoscience than the last. We have way better fully 3D puzzles now and each of them are designed around escaping. The theme of escape is packed tightly into every facet of this game. Get out!

The pitch for this one is similar: 9 strangers wake up in a futuristic facility full of robots, laboratories, and other crazy technology. Each one has a watch strapped to their wrist, but this time with a color: red, blue, and green. Combining these colors and their respective people in different ways results in the three Chromatic Door colors, Cyan, Yellow, and Magenta. So this time, if you want a team to go through the magenta door, you’ll need to send a blue and a red person. And it’s all being orchestrated by an AI rabbit called Zero Jr. He’s much more like Monokuma from the Danganronpa games, but less fun and more murdery.

The real kicker is the AB game. You will choose to either ally or betray other teams in isolated chambers in a crazy situation based on the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Every time you cross through doors and team up, your team has to rely on the other teams to not Betray them. Betraying a team that allied with you loses them life points (BP) and gains you a hefty few, getting you just a bit closer to having enough to escape. With all these choices (who you ally/betray and who you team up with when), there’s a lot of different paths, right?

Don’t get too comfortable allying with everyone, because you will play through over 30 instances of this game before you are done, each one of them drastically different from the others. You will experience every single outcome that could happen. Don’t worry though, you can skip around timelines and through conversations with the press of a button. You will see every character you love ripped to pieces in one timeline, become a bloodthirsty killer in another, and sacrifice their life for someone they barely know in yet another. It’s absolute madness that destroys all sense of the linear value of time. And it is sheer brilliance.

One last thing is that many paths of the game are blocked until you learn something from another timeline, like a code or password, that lets you move forward. Timeline A stops at scene 12 and the scene ends with a pass code lock. Luckily, timeline F scene 4 has a pass code that you can use to unlock it. This opens you up to Timeline A Scene 13 which gives you access to the pattern needed to solve the sun puzzle in Timeline X scene 9. Etc, etc. It’s so good, man. Play it. It is a literal masterpiece that I truly think could not be any better.

It feels mean to compare this to its predecessor but Virtue's Last Reward just doesn't have the sheer joy and thrill that Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors had. Its lore simultaneously wants to develop and exacerbate the insanity that 999 spent slowly unspooling, but it doesn't want to approach that level of multifaceted storytelling with nearly the same drama or heightened sense of panic. When I learned of a new element within the story, I didn't feel as strong of a sense of bewilderment or clairvoyance-level realization, but rather a sense of mild satisfaction. That's the thing that gets me about this game, I suppose: It works, but it doesn't tug at my emotions as much as 999 did. The chaos is ramped up but it just doesn't feel as urgent or interesting.

The character drama in particular is maybe my biggest gripe with the game overall. Every conversation is considerably longer and more quippy at the cost of information density, there's this sense of irreverence that feels extremely out of place. Of course, you could blame this on the advent of the Danganronpa franchise and its mockery in the face of certain death, but that series has its moments to refrain from indulging in its hypersexuality and humor in service of a bigger idea that climbs towards a hostile thriller screenplay. Additionally, the irreverence is used to help build onto the dread—were it not for Monokuma's complete and utter disregard for his subjects' lives, there'd be less panic among them.

The characters in VLR, on the other hand, are poised to joke and shove corny banter in nearly every conversation given enough time, such that it stands to kill a lot of the intensity that the holistic story builds. I would much rather a short, important conversation than a long one that stands to remove any given amount goodwill I have for the main characters. This lack of brevity is also not helped by the gargantuan amount of time that it takes between various novel segments, showcasing a very annoying dot moving across the map for every single possible migration of the characters. At a certain point in my playthrough, I started scheduling for these intermissions and texting friends over actually trying to remain immersed with a medium that ejected me from immersion to begin with.

That's not to say it's a bad game, far from it—once again in no small part to the thoughtful escape room design employed with a similar (but not exact same) grace as its predecessor. The increase in difficulty is something I rather appreciate, even if it comes at the cost of breaking immersion sometimes. I especially appreciate the safe system, though it has its drawbacks with certain room-end puzzles. The broader story itself, divorced from being attached to the game and the individual writing choices I dislike, is excellent scaffolding around the original lore that 999 set up. It's just a shame that this story had to shake out this way, because as a game it fails to excite me beyond its lore and individual chambers.

EDIT, 23-MARCH-2024:

My neglect to mention the very casual misogyny present in this game is starting to bug me greatly, so allow me to comment on the reality that Sigma and the rest of the characters either are victims or enablers of horrific womanizing. In a shocking departure from 999's relatively minute jokes about sexuality that are unimportant, minor facets of individual characters only appearing once or twice, Virtue's Last Reward takes the bold move to make Sigma a sexual harasser. In every possible route, he is poised to interact with at least one of the female characters with a variety of dehumanizing and, frankly, horrible sex pestery. He even remarks that Clover (who in VLR is small and skinny but an adult) is seemingly jailbait.

Misogynist characters are not inherently detrimental to a story if it is done with the tact and angling that it deserves. I hold the idea that depiction is not necessarily endorsement of the depicted. However, VLR's main character being an incessantly horny poon-hound who can be led to do just about anything with the promise of someone's panties getting stripped off is so irritating after 20 hours of playing the game that it ceases to be worthwhile as a facet of a character worth exploring. There is no benefit to it in this story.

Que completa loucura foi essa que eu acabei de presenciar? Virtue's Last Reward é a sequência direta do 999, um jogo que é um mix de Visual Novel com Escape the Room. Ambos são obras do Kotaro Uchikoshi, um gênio que também fez AI: The Somnium Files, um jogo que está entre os melhores que já joguei na minha vida. Assim que joguei o mesmo fui buscar os outros jogos que ele fez, já que tudo que esse cara usa em suas narrativas são coisas que eu simplesmente adoro: Mistérios e plot-twists completamente insanos e mirabolantes, e o cara faz isso como ninguém.

O jogo tem vários finais como era de se esperar, só que dessa vez é necessário fazer 8 deles numa sequência específica pra liberar o true ending, já que as rotas são travadas no momento mais conveniente possível envolvendo alguma informação que esteja em outra rota, mas por sorte o jogo tem um sistema de Flowchart bem competente, podendo voltar a qualquer momento do jogo quando quiser. Cara... os puzzles desse jogo são muito, mas muito difíceis, o 999 não chega nem perto. Não sei se foi porque eu fui burro mas estão entre os mais difíceis que já vi, dúvido que alguém não tenha olhado ao menos uma vez na net em algum momento, eu mesmo que sou extremamente orgulhoso pra ver guias tive que apelar em alguns momentos pois já tinha dado uma pausa no jogo duas vezes por ter travado, afinal sinceramente, eu estava aqui pelo plot, e tava doido pra prosseguir e acabava ficando mais de uma hora travado em uma sala, mas pra quem quer puzzles genuinamente desafiadores esse pode ser um ponto atrativo. Os gráficos 3D são estranhos a primeira vista mas acostuma, eu não sou daqueles que ficam de nitpicking com isso e pude aproveitar do mesmo jeito. A trilha é ótima, com muitas faixas atmosféricas e de suspense. Não é algo que você vai pegar pra escutar fora do jogo, mas dentro dele funciona muito bem. O cast é mais divisivo que o do 999, eu particularmente gostei e o fato de você se sentir genuinamente irritado com alguns deles é completamente intencional. Sigma é um protagonista sensacional.

Por fim tudo valeu a pena, o nível de qualidade se mantém ao seu antecessor, entregando uma história genuinamente engajante e de cair o queixo, os twists são completamente insanos, com muito foreshadowing e pra quem gosta dessas loucuras igual eu vai estar em casa, o jeito que o Uchikoshi consegue segurar os mistérios e suspense no ar até o literal último segundo é absurdo, ainda estou tentando me recuperar daquele final, são tantos sentimentos misturados, surpresa, choque, tristeza, confusão que eu não consigo nem organizar meus pensamentos, e isso é maravilhoso. Agora é esperar a oportunidade de jogar o último jogo que fecha a trilogia, Zero Time Dilemma, um jogo bem polêmico e confesso que estou com medo de me decepcionar já que o terreno foi preparado pra ele. Como não tenho ele no meu alcance no momento o que resta é esperar (num certo serviço de assinatura...) Jogão que eu recomendo fortemente seja pra quem gosta de mistério, suspense ou Sci-Fi, também sendo uma boa pedida pra quem quer ingressar em Visual Novels, mas claro, começando pelo seu antecessor.

Man I really wanted to like this but jesus christ this just feels silly a lot of the time
30 hours of regugitating similar scenes, bad models, constant map transition scenes, bad effects, hit or miss puzzles just for the last 5 or 10 hours to have actual things happen isnt worth it. 999's structure made for a super enjoyable and fairly clever trip down alternative paths (with some pseudoscience) fun but the way this game attempts to accomplish that is obnoxious it feels like a good chunk of the game is just meandering through similar scenes to maybe get 1 or 2 useful pieces of information only for it to reach a final point in which its nothing but a nonstop of new, complex information to process. After a certain point in the final stretch I seriously wondered why this even really needed to be made? It's got some neat character moments, some puzzles are alright, its at least fairly forgiving with some QoL features (the flow chart/skip button). By the end the game gets interesting but would I say it's really worth the constant back-and-forth of the previous 30 hours, not really. Also god this game looks ugly like really, like christ this game would go up a point if I didnt have to stare at models that looked worse than mid-aughts gmod videos.

This game and 999 I think perfectly balance out each other's flaws.

999 has the starker intentional atmosphere, but this one feels noticeably more uncanny.

This game has 999 beat on puzzle complexity but feels like you're trudging through it far slower.

The individual characters are stronger here but 999's cast is better as an ensemble.

The alternate endings aren't as scary but are far wilder and contribute better to expanding out the plot.

Everything in VLR is much better signposted when trying to get the true end but it blue balls you way more in the process of trying to wrap your head around it.

The dub here is better fit with the dialogue as it was planned further from the start rather than being inserted after two other games. The castings stand out a lot starker for their characters

To sum up, The Nonary Collection is a cool compilation and both games are worth playing. Just not one after another, you'll get fatigued for sure.

“I gotta get outta here!!” - That absurdly buff fish from SpongeBob, SpongeBob SquarePants, Season 2. Ep. 19/39b (2001)

There’s alway been a magical absurdity to the scene that proceeds this quote. The rumbling quake that comes from the creatures steps. To Plankton’s manically and violently introducing who might be SpongeBob’s opponent, almost like some sort of biblical monstrosity. The thing is—unless you’re a child, or just comically unaware, you know that it’s the setup for some sort of joke. The terrifyingly buff fish crashes through the wall only to give a pathetic whine and reveal the truth; that Plankton’s borderline insane ranting was all for Patrick Star. Expectations are shattered, the whole room starts laughing, backflips are performed, your brother starts proposing to his girlfriend in the light of such absurd humour. In the light of such humor though, we find that the threat posed is still in effect, just not by the gigantic fish, but by Patrick.

None of this is to try and make SpongeBob sound like some sort of epic ala the writings of poet Virgil. The point of this is to show how I feel about VLR.

Before I continue that line of thought, I want to go into some partially related aspects of VLR.

VLR starts off similar in an off-hand way to 999, a brief slideshow of text and events shows our main character being treated with the classic #9 order of white gas, kidnapping, and a large side of fries. The beginning is devoted to putting us in our first puzzle room and introducing us to our characters. Now for all intents and purposes—VLR does completely well in this regard. But in comparison to 999, one of my favorite introductions to a game—it falls short. This introduction puts one issue with this game, and one thing I love about it.

That issue being that, it seems like most characters are the complete same from the get go to the end, the only answer to them missing is their motivation. The characters in 999 feel more dynamic, like actual people. The characters in VLR feel like an unchanging checklist of personality traits. I found myself missing how human the characters in 999 felt. That being said I greatly enjoy the characters in VLR. I was particularly drawn to Luna. I just hardly got the feeling of “wow! I love this character!” or “wow that was a great character moment”. I think the issue with this is lack of flavor text, particularly in puzzle rooms. This is especially saddening when you remember that there are returning characters are they’re not as good as their 999 counterparts.

BUT, this introduction just really sells how sharp most of the rest of the game is. I find that in all three starting routes once you get past the first AB game, VLR really shows how sharp it can be, because frankly—the plot of VLR is one of the most interesting and well executed ideas for a plot. It’s constantly information after information, questions, theories, it’s all so wild. There’s something around every corner to surprise the player and to have them rethink what they know. The ideas behind this game are incredibly carefully considered…for the most part.

Before I get into that I want to take a brief stint into gameplay and graphics - Yes, this game is ugly. The models for characters are bland when our side to side with the key art. Some expressions are oftentimes underutilized while some are lost in translation. There’s a bug that makes Clover smile all the darn time. Environments are dull, and that’s fine. 999 looked dull, but it was also dull and uncomfortable, gross, it made my nipples honestly hard, was that goosebumps, or did I just enjoy the art that much? The comfort zones of human’s are fickle, but I’m pretty sure they don’t extent far enough to talk about my nipples for a paragraph. Going back—VLR’s environments were just dull. Except for a couple of puzzle rooms, notably the garden and the rec room. As for the gameplay, it’s fine, more difficult than 999 control wise, but nothing to complain about. I actually enjoy the puzzles here more than 999 for the most part.

Back to the SpongeBob example…

Out of the gate, VLR has something to live up to. It comes off the tail of the utterly fantastic 999; a game that was able to answer it’s biggest questions in a concise and in a way, logical by the standards set up. Not only that, VLR hardly ever strays away from giving the player new tidbits of information, and big questions to be solved, it sets itself up for big answers and big expectations. Much like that SpongeBob scene.

The answers the player gets is akin to Patrick, still significant in its own right, but anti-climatic. After the emotionally touching and potent ending of 999, I expected for something as half as effective. The ending we get in VLR is good, it answers all that we need to know then pushes us along to the credits. It’s a “woop, there you go, here’s the answer to everything you’ve spent 30 hours wondering.” It’s made worse by the fact the ending relies on the sequel, Zero Time Dilemma, to be worth it, and reviews of ZTD are not great. This ending experience isn’t as bad as some make it out to be. But…it didn’t win me over. I just wish it left me off feeling like I experienced something great. I know that it’s about the journey, not the destination, but in this case the destination raises itself to be as big as the journey, but it never is so.

That’s all I have to share on VLR, I want to give this game a few more words someday, but for mostly spoiler free, this works by me. This is a great game, worth your playthrough, please play 999 first though.

I give this game a

siggggggggggggggggy…
phidoooooooooooooooo…
what are you kids doing over there?
we’re about to announce the results! Out of 10

VLR is, as the title suggests, a game about virtue... and its rewards. Well, I guess they can't all have super self-descriptive titles like 999.

Anyway, if you've played 999 you should probably know what to expect from this one. The story plays out in a VN-style presentation, you make choices, and then solve puzzles to escape from a room. Most of the puzzles this time around are actually a bit harder than in the first game. Also, each room now has two passwords: one to get the key to the exit, and one that gives you a secret file with bits of extra information. The secret files range from actually interesting to stuff you already knew, or that is going to be explained by the story right after you leave the room. Still, it's a cool mechanic that makes you think of alternate solutions to the puzzles.

The story flowchart is also upgraded from the original game. Every choice will move you to a different branch, which means there are a lot more different endings this time. However, instead of a handful of bad endings and then a true end, like in 999, you have nine character endings, and 15 more bad endings. This results in a total of 24 possible endings, with a surprising amount of variety. This also means that going for every ending would take a very long time, so just do the main nine if you're not up for that.

The story is compelling early on because of how many questions it presents. All of those questions get answered by the end, making for a satisfying ending, but I can't help but feel 999's story was a lot more focused, and had a better cast of characters. VLR has a lot of crazy plot twists, which can be a positive or a negative for some people.

Overall, VLR exceeded my expectations but it's hard for me to say I prefer it over the first game. They're both great games and have different strengths and weaknesses compared to each other.

Now I can't wait to suffer when I play Zero Time Dilemma.