Reviews from

in the past


Great visual novel and the start of an awesome series. The premise was compelling from the start and the game provided a great cast of characters to observe and enjoy. Gradually figuring things out and connecting the dots was enjoyable, but the real highlight was the main revelation that leads to the true ending. Seeing that come to fruition blew my mind. Lowpoints of the game were the puzzles; they were pretty basic and uninteresting.

A monumental work, and one that, perhaps more than any other game, uses its medium to deliver a profound and emotionally overwhelming conclusion. Quite possibly the zenith of unity between hardware and narrative. A must play.

I don't remember a single thing about this except that it was good.

Puzzles hurt my brain, but for Spike it's worth it


Truly one of my favorite series and games of all time... One of the most gripping stories I've ever read. I couldn't put it down, I had to know what would happen next! I laughed, cried, and everything in between reading this 😭.

Tô usando esse pq não zerei VLR e nem sei se vou, e o bundle é os dois jogos

Não tem muito o que falar
Se tu entender inglês e curtir joguinhos de Escape Room, vá jogar imediatamente 999
É uma experiência única que apesar de ser limitada em seu remaster(o OG era de DS e quanto tu mais joga mais entende da necessidade de duas telas) vai trazer aquela satisfação de resolver o verdadeiro quebra cabeça que nunca fora as sessões de point and click mas a narrativa intrínseca baseada em rotas e como tudo se conecta impecavelmente, é mágico a mistureba de pseudociências com o plot geral e sua conclusão

Zero Escape 999 presenta una premisa muy básica sobre la que construye una de las tramas más complejas y bien ligadas que he visto nunca en el medio audiovisual.
Crea un misterio que se va desenvolviendo poco a poco a medida que el jugador avanza, ofreciéndole piezas para resolver el rompecabezas al mismo tiempo que le presenta nuevas intrigas y giros de guión.

Todas estas piezas acaban encajando y cada pequeño detalle cobra sentido, sin que queden cabos sueltos ni respuestas insatisfactorias, que es uno de los principales problemas que solemos encontrar en narrativas complejas y basadas en el misterio como esta.

Las secciones narrativas se van alternando con puzzles que el jugador debe resolver para seguir avanzando en la trama. Estos personalmente me parecieron perfectos a nivel de dificultad, en muchos casos eran interesantes pero nunca llegaban a ser demasiado difíciles. Lo que me pareció más destacable y sorprendente sobre estos es su gran homogeneidad con la trama, siendo muchas veces utilizados para contar al jugador partes de la historia, en algunos casos llegando a tener una importancia enorme en esta. Puede que un amante de los juegos de puzzles los encontrase demasiado fáciles, pero en mi caso, que suelo evitar este género, este enfoque me pareció ideal.

Por otro lado, encontramos un grupo de personajes con una profundidad sorprendente. A medida que avanzas y los vas conociendo mejor tu percepción sobre ellos irá cambiando así como lo harán las relaciones entre personajes a medida que estos evolucionen.
Esto en gran parte es gracias a un muy buen guión, al que se suma un doblaje(en inglés) que, exceptueando algunos momentos concretos, deja poco que desear. El guión combina un tono dramático con momentos humorísticos puntuales, que ayudan a fortalecer las relaciones entre personajes y la empatía que sientes por ellos, sin llegar a quitar peso o dramatismo a la difícil situación en la que estos se encuentran.
En general tengo dificultades para empatizar e involucrarme emocionalmente con historias en medios audiovisuales y, aunque este juego no fué una excepción, ya que en la mayoría de momentos emocionales no pude conectar, hubo momentos en los que llegué a generar empatía y emociones hacia los personajes que se encontraban en pantalla y su situación, cosa que para mí ya es mucho.

Yo he jugado la versión nueva porteada para PC que ofrece herramientas muy útiles y que han mejorado mi experiencia de juego como la Flow chart, por las que estoy agradecido. Aún así, el cambio del True ending respecto a la versión DS hace que el final llegue mucho menos de lo que lo habría hecho en la consola de Nintendo. La forma en la que se integró la narrativa del juego con el hardware de la consola para crear ese final me parece absolutamente brillante y me entristece no haber podido experimentarlo de primera mano.

En mi caso encontré el ending de la DS porque me quedó alguna duda respecto al final y había algo que no llegaba a convencerme, sobretodo en comparación con la precisión en la que el juego explicaba la narrativa y presentaba cada descubrimiento al jugador, había algo del final que me fallaba. Finalmente todo acabó cobrando sentido al ver el ending original que ofrecía la DS, con el que se entendía mucho mejor el final y redondeaba una experiencia sorprendente e impactante, sacando el máximo jugo a las herramientas ofrecidas por el medio del videojuego.

Escape Zero 999 me ha parecido un juego excelente, ofreciendo probablemente la trama que más me ha sorprendido e intrigado nunca en un videojuego y ligándola a la perfección. Esto sumado a un muy buen guión con personajes muy bien construidos y un sistema de puzzles integrado de forma excelente con la narrativa ha conseguido crear una experiencia muy positiva y recomendable. Lo único de lo que me arrepiento es de no haber podido experimentar el ending de la DS, que me parece absolutamente brillante y habría augmentado el impacto del final de forma muy significativa.

Finalmente sugiero seguir el siguiente orden de rutas para llegar a los los endings en un orden específico y conseguir así la mejor experiencia de juego posible. Sugiero hacer una primera run sin seguir la guía y luego hacer las demás en orden saltándose la ruta que ya se ha seguido en la primera run.
Guide
Get the endings in this order. Note that endings 1 and 6 have "Special Instructions" (as listed below) that need to be followed to obtain them.
Door 4, Door 7, Door 1; follow special instructions listed below
Door 5, Door 8, Door 1
Door 4, Door 8, Door 6
Door 4 or 5, Door 3, Door 2
Door 5, Door 8, Door 6
True Ending - Same as #1
Special Instructions
In order to achieve Endings 1 and 6, you have to make specific story decisions. All of these prompts must be followed; if any of them aren't, you will default to Ending #2.
During the cabin sequence in Door 4, a character will offer you a bookmark. Accept it.
During the freezer sequence in Door 4, a character will offer to tell you a story about ice-9. Hear the story (select the "It did strike Junpei as rather odd" choice.)
During the first puzzle room in Door 7, you will be offered the opportunity to tell a character about ice-9. Tell them.
During the second puzzle room in Door 7, you will be offered the opportunity to give a character the bookmark. Give it to them.

[ Story: 9/9 | Gameplay: 9/9 | OST: 9/9 ]

I um...I just like...I'm...holy shit.

I played the game every time light goes out on my country.

This review contains spoilers

easily the best ZeroEscape

This review contains spoilers

Hikayesi ve karakterlerini beğendim. Ayrıca odaları çözmek bazen kolay da olsa eğlenceliydi.

this shaped me as a person when i was 11

Haha Junpei, we are going to die in 9 hours.

one of my fave games of all time, would highly recommend it to anyone who exists ever

Still the best chunsoft novel to this day

One of the best visual novels ever made.


While more simplistic than some current puzzle/visual novels, the way this game lets you make choices and intertwine the different paths makes it quite an intriguing read. I also think most of the puzzles are quite strong in this one, though I did find most of them a bit easy.

This review contains spoilers

The story really hooked me, and the intricate sci-fi mystery thriller plot made the game engrossing enough to overlook some of the more frustrating gameplay mechanics.

The escape room gameplay is a great complement to the visual novel segments. Even though there's a huge amount of dialogue and narration in the game, it rarely feels like a slog to read through.

Where the game does become a slog is in finding all of its alternate endings. After obtaining one of the common "bad" endings, you are sent back to the beginning with painfully scant guidance as to how to proceed. While you might enjoy exploring new scenarios on your 2nd (or maybe 3rd) route, eventually you'll get tired of holding down the right D-pad for 2 hours only to be rewarded with the same unsatisfying non-sequitur endings. There's also no guidance on which of the many decisions available to you will impact the ending. Most of them don't.

Strangely, the game does include two handy "preview" videos that give clues on how to unlock the full story, but these videos only become available after they would have been most useful. The solution here, as many have pointed out, would have been a flowchart mechanic, which would allow you to skip between completed scenarios in order to find new paths (I see they implemented this feature in the remake).

While the localisation and writing was generally top-notch, there were a couple of things that bugged me.

The first was the characters' truly excessive swearing (I blame the localisers!). It is hilarious to see these characters swearing at each other CONSTANTLY, even when it doesn't fit the tone ("You Old Bitch! Fuck!!"). I laughed out loud when, during a dramatic, major story moment, our protagonist blurted out "What the shit!". Truly an iconic line that will be remembered for generations. While it's sometimes clunky, I do appreciate the writers trying to go for a more "adult" tone to match the subject matter. This game probably goes toe-to-toe with Chinatown Wars for edgiest game on Nintendo DS (Anyone wanna deal some heroin?).

Less endearing is the way the characters' sexist or objectifying harassment of women is played for laughs. Back in 2009, dialogue about looking up a female characters' skirt as she walks up the stairs, or asking female characters to repeatedly say "it's really hard" was seen as "lewd" or the writers having a "dirty mind". Now, it just makes the male characters seem creepy. My strong suspicion is that this some of this stuff was shoehorned in by the localisers who were struggling to replace Japanese specific puns and gags.

While this review contains more criticism than praise, that's only because everything else about 999 is EXCELLENT. The character artwork and animations are great. The music nails the atmosphere and tension. The 3D environments are high quality. The puzzles are rarely frustrating and often quite satisfying (I say this as someone who usually sucks at puzzles-- Professor Layton probably shortened my lifespan).

From what I've read about the remake, it seems like the DS version is superior. If you're on the fence about 999, I would definitely recommend you give it a shot. Try and avoid plot spoilers and just go in blind.

That being said, don't be afraid to use google to find all the endings. Or, if you're so inclined, use some "morphic resonance" and download the information directly into your brain.