A dense knot of mysteries providing a steady feed of intrigue as it unfurls, using a cycle of speculation and strong twists.

Its narrative puzzles are its greatest strength. The lock-and-key structure keeps the overall story beats paced well, giving the player space to hypothesize before catching the curveball. The puzzles range in difficulty, but broadly keep a consistent quality. Philosophically, it brings little to the table, and its emotional core is thin. That being said, it's hard to care when getting to the bottom of what's really happening is so engaging.

The presentation is strong, with excellent voice acting & music scoring every scene. The character visual design is notably up and down, with a few standouts, several middling, and two scantily-clad women that the game's protagonist makes an uncomfortable number of horny comments about (even if it seems like the reader should find most of them gross). The UI is also makes navigating the game's convoluted plot fairly seamless, though it could have offered more in remembering how each decision branch differs.

The ending's deluge of twists and exposition is harder to digest (both in its quantity and some of the suspension of disbelief it asks), but it by no means ends with a whimper. Fantastic game, though be sure to play the previous entry first.

[Played via the Nonary Games remaster/port]

I really enjoy this game. The story is crazy and longer than the previous one, the rooms are more challenging, and the characters all bring unique flare(even if I prefer the first cast overall). But the change to 3D sprites as opposed to the 2D ones used in the previous is disappointing and not as interesting to look at. While the first game did have big twists, I don't have any issue with any of those really. This one also has some twists that I felt were good and some had me rolling my eyes. It also doesn't really end as satisfyingly as the previous one and I felt a lot of this ending relies on you waiting till the next one to get some answers which the previous game had but wasn't as imperative. Still love this one for the most part though.

8.8/10

Personal Character Rankings
K- 8.8/10
Zero III(AKA Lagamorth, AKA The Bunny)- 8.8/10
Luna- 8.7/10
Tenmyouji- 8.5/10
Sigma- 8.3/10
Dio- 8.0/10
Phi- 7.6/10
Alice- 7.3/10
Quark- 7.2/10
Clover- 7.1/10
The Old Woman- 7.0/10

The first 18-ish hours of this game are very interesting if still flawed, the usual good old escape room gameplay mixed with a life or death game that forces people to make decisions... that's still good, a hint more contrived than 999 but that was inevitably going to happen unless they were going to do the exact same formula again, and the greater focus on the time-hopping was very enjoyable... It really did give a feeling of desperately scrambling around timelines to get out of this situation, while also building up to greater reveals, and that was the intention so good job!

Good job, but also that doesn't really matter, because after you do get out of those 18-ish hours, the game just stops being about that at all and instead turns into some wanky-ass bullshit about time travel- don't get me wrong it still makes sense (even though it bends over backwards to seem like it's not contrived as hell and ends up feeling all the more contrived for it), my issue is that it's just not what the story was about up until now- as long as there's some threat of death you could replace the AB Nonary Games with literally anything else and they'd still work. 999 had some contrivance but it actually had a successful emotional payoff to the story (not to mention its nonary game systems were core to the plot's workings), so I didn't mind, meanwhile this game has no payoff at all! I guess they ran out of budget but the last 3-ish hours of the game are all building up to the great conclusion that the game's been foreshadowing all along... and then it ends on a cliffhanger??? Apparently the conclusion's in the sequel but I just don't care, this sucks. VLR is a more than long enough game, there's no excuse for not at least making the cliffhanger satisfying in itself. Frankly there's no excuse for a cliffhanger at all but you take what you can get.

There's some big flaws to the game even disregarding the baffling final act: biggest one of them is the... "humor", if one is to be charitable enough to call it that. To put it bluntly, about half the time a female character is on screen, either Sigma will act perverted towards them, sometimes to the level of near sexual harassment, and even more bafflingly sometimes the female characters will just spontaneously act in weirdly provocative ways to try to manipulate the MC- we're in a death game, lady, I don't care about seeing you in a swimsuit! You could see this as an attempt at flirting from them but spoilers, it ain't. It's a shame cause I think the cast is pretty good otherwise, maybe on the level of 999's, but every time one of those """""jokes""""" came up on screen I wanted to bash my head against a wall. 999 had some too but there was usually a punchline to them beyond "hehe, tiddy", and they weren't so prominent. I genuinely cannot fathom a grown man writing this shit, it feels like the sort of jokes you make when you're 14 and just learned what sex is. No- actually, it feels like the writer think this is genuinely not just funny, but also kind of hot. You can tell some of this shit was written one-handed and it's so, so cringe. Otherwise, the game is very intriguing, though there's still some stuff that feels put there for the sake of a twist, and Dio's character is really dumb. Also I'm not sure Uchikoshi actually knows how quantum physics work, just sayin'. Again I like this game's writing most of the time, it's just that it usually hovers at a nice 6.5-7 with occasional 8s, and sometimes dips into a raw 2/10; obviously the latter is going to be more memorable.

Anyways, the escape rooms are noticeably worse- I wasn't really sure if it was just me being bad (I am very much not puzzle-minded at all) but it seems to be an issue others share so... yeah, I guess. They're alright still. Also this is more funny than anything but almost every time the characters move around the screen cuts to a dot on a map showing their movement, and that cuts out to a door opening animation every time they run into one, so there's just entire minutes of walking around inserted pretty often in the game- it's not really a problem, but it is kind of baffling that they didn't think to make it faster. It isn't ever relevant it's just... why.

I do think the game while always rough is overall enjoyable enough for the first 3/4, and then you hit the conclusion and it falls apart completely, which is pretty disappointing. I have an overall positive opinion of it because most of it is strong but it doesn't stick the landing at all which sabotages it pretty hard.

i could not fucking WAIT to finish this game. everything is incredibly boring and absolutely none of the characters are likable, each and every one of them feel so fucking flat and one note. there literally needed to be less characters in this game period. uchikoshi cannot write them interestingly at all.

i never understood the point of zero jr. he is not in the game. and by far my worst gripe with this game is the DOOR ANIMATIONS. DO THEY NEED TO PLAY EVERY SINGLE TIME????

hated sigma, i do not care about womanizing characters enough to dislike them but holy shit he had no personality other than being really creepy. phi is the only somewhat interesting character but the way she overexplains basic concepts gets on my nerves. every conversation with a group of characters feels practically useless as they blatantly miss the point or you figure out whats going to happen 17 lines of conversation before they do.

friend recommended zero escape to me and i wish i just dropped this shit. what a pile of horseshit i celebrated once i didnt have to play anymore, my completionist mindset will kill me one day bc i started despising this game halfway through but i was in too deep.

Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, Ever17’s cousin

6 years and I finally finish this mess

Before I start this review I have to genuinely mention I am so sick of watching the same door animations and the map constantly showing you walk from A to Z a BILLION TIMES EVEN ON SKIP.

(-) Models, Lighting and Animations

Horrendous, ill-looking game and just completely confusing why they have an entire 2D sprite-set for the characters that matches the sprite aesthetics for the first game and then purposefully choose to never use it in favor of objectively uglier graphics. Literally BLOWS MY MIND. I originally started this game in Ramadan back in 2016-ish I believe and I remember just looking at the game back then gave me a headache, this is one of the ugliest games ever made.

Additionally, there is no concept of lighting everything is lit up exactly the same so there’s no depth of shadows or realistically any reason to even go out of their way to source 3D models for a story in which there’s such limited animations. Many times, there’s going to be a door or an elevator animation and you never see characters actually interacting with them, the doors open and close with default animations like old RE door animations.

The graphics of this game have aged like milk.

(-) Gameplay

The flow system is something I’ve supported in Uchikoshi games, it reduces walkthrough dependency that traditional VNs can have and it greatly streamlines the routing process the diehard VN enjoyers can probably have a court session on this topic I don’t really care, but what I do care about is the puzzle gameplay. It is bad. Holy SHIT is it bad. Oh, and I cheated like 40% of these I could not be fucked to care.

Throw darts to make a score of 91, connect voltage paths to generate 120V, move dice around, move ice around, move jellyfish around, Uchikoshi why don’t you fucking move your ass around and get a new job. Often times you have to remember a numerical pattern or combination (many times you are tasked with making calculations on the fly), its BAD gameplay, AI Somnium seems like the logical next step for Uchikoshi considering how the “puzzles” are far more intuitive and original

There’s an in-game explanation (spoilers) for the puzzles that allow the MC to be better at jumping between timelines and interacting with the 4th dimension and I was like shut the fuck UP its just there to fill airtime

Additionally there’s straight up quality of life stuff missing from the game, whenever you end a route if you accidentally click a box on the flow map (which WILL happen trust me), you can’t zoom out of it, so you are forced to press the return button, which means having to REWATCH sigma get gassed in his car 1 billion times. Other times when you use an item instead of putting the next item in your item-list in your hand you have to go to the menu physically and do it. In the crew quarters if you input the green password first you can get locked out of the room from entering the blue password afterwards…. Like WHAT? There’s a dice puzzle in the archives and both blue and green passwords have the same pattern the colored dice are supposed to be in, but the green password requires them to have a specific number facing upwards, the issue is if you fuck up just ONE die but get the pattern right it will consider it as you trying to get the blue password again and reset the dice. AMAZING.

BAD. -9999/10. Reason to not touch these games with a 10 meter pole.

(+) Soundtrack

I like some of the OSTs

(+) Story(i): Nonary/Ambidex Game (not the puzzles lol):

The Nonary game in 999 based its character grouping on numbers on the watch which was an extremely cool concept and I wish they continued it in this game, but the Ambidex game is also very interesting in its own right.

I like the idea of pairing based on colors or complementary colors, the dynamic between characters who don’t like each other being forced to pair up is a lot of fun, the watch switching colors after voting, the pair/solo combination of watches, a representative from each color being forced to vote or all people belonging to the color being penalized, it felt very different for Uchikoshi’s writing and I wish he added a few more layers to this to make it even more complicated and fun.

The real meat is definitely in the voting. I LOVE the voting concept, the only issue is that the game has so many repeating events in each route that the voting rarely ever changes too drastically, there’s also this weird mix of characters acting out-of-character for some BS reason in a few routes (the Bad Endings).

I do think Uchikoshi strictly put the entire voting aspect in because he just read about the prisoner’s dilemma and wanted to have it in the game but even the bland as fuck cast of characters have some cool friction with one another, expanding on the “bland” cast later in the review.

(-/+) Story(ii): The Overall Plot (Spoilers)

I’ll start this by saying this is probably the 2nd most ambitious writing I’ve seen from Uchikoshi since R11, and similarly to R11 there’s some insane flops but similarly intriguing developments that really stick with you, the time stuff is exactly like Ever17’s time loop where there’s a system that’s at play and you have to force the future (as already experienced) to happen in a certain way in order for everyone to live.

After reading this type of story for so damn long I’ve grown extremely tired, its not a good explanation to say “We do XYZ exactly so that time keeps looping”, I’ll give an example: Zero Jr. does not NEED to exist at all in this game the game rules can be relayed by literally anyone else, but the game needs a Monokuma substitute despite not even being a sadistic killing game (much like 999). Additionally, this stupid bunny does not exist for 95% of the game. Oh, but Sigma goes to the past he has to learn advanced AI to make this specific bunny for this game because grandfather paradox logic. TIRED. TIRED WRITING.

I like the idea that he really went there for some twists, but it also feels like the plot exists to serve the twists. The thing about Radical 6 and how it works EXACTLY with the gravity in order to fool the reader feels extremely contrived, even when you see Phi jumping around you’d imagine she herself would come to the moon conclusion but she doesn’t, and anyone would to a certain degree find the physical world to be a bit strange in its interactions, had there been consistent enough foreshadowing I would have loved it, or in Alex’s criticism if Uchikoshi just made it so that the facility supported earth gravity it wouldn’t feel stupid.

Another weird thing Uchikoshi does to hide this twist is straight up make the Moon a brown desert, WHY? Anyways the twist was really obvious to me even though he tries extra hard to throw you off with the lunar eclipse article.

All being said I do find it funny that he explained the JUMP OF ALL THINGS. I thought its just because the game is fucking ugly as shit. Anyways.

Another example of contrived explanations is how Sigma doesn’t realize he’s old, he specifically has cybernetic limbs so that he can’t tell his age, but on several puzzle rooms you can encounter a mirror and it genuinely feels like ludonarrative dissonance.

Additionally, the puzzle rooms themselves always get solved but you’d encounter some roadblocks like Tenmyouji having to use a picture of a girl to open the door (how the hell would they solve it if he didn’t conveniently have that? Oh nvm grandfather paradox there’s no WAY they’d get stuck XDDDDDD nice writing Uchikoshi). Unlike the moon twist, THIS one has a lot of foreshadowing and dialogue that directly references your age, which I really liked.
Even when I criticize the existence of these twist and how the plot is based around the moon and the old man twist, I still think these twists are a fun read, I like the idea Uchikoshi was going for despite the wobbly execution. I HATED the overarching plot for 999 and I think Uchikoshi just does a way better job in VLR with some ambitious twists.

Similarly to 999 and other Uchikoshi games, however, it is very clear he CANNOT kill a single character, and for that reason I don’t even think he should write these <trapped in a life or death game> Visual Novels because he wants his stories to be contrived paradoxical pacifistic muck. It was so obvious to me Akane would be alive later because Uchikoshi just does this all the time, what is the POINT of a game that can kill you if it claims no victims? If the point is the game exists because it exists in the future that needs to come to be, then it could have been ANY game or event, nothing necessitates that it needs to be a life or death game despite the shitty explanation that it boosts your consciousness to the 4th dimension or whatever.

(-/+) Story(iii): Endings (Spoilers)

(+) K Ending:
There’s other portion of the stories I liked, I enjoyed K’s route where he kills Dio (funnily enough Dio manages to escape quite a lot in the game as opposed to Sigma since he gets apprehended almost immediately for slighting someone during the voting etc), his entire route is completed while you both are dying and I also liked the clone reveal, although again there’s very little explanation given for why this is even done in the first place with a special K true ending that is now apparently non-canon. I suppose this is handled in ZTD which I never want to play.

(+) Luna Ending:
This one was a lot of fun, it has some cool reveals with a sappy emotional ending which doesn’t feel all too bad. I liked how Uchikoshi rationalized all of the murders even though extremely contrived story telling with the “Sayaka Maizono” number twist (it genuinely makes no sense how blood would copy thigh to thigh its not like thick ink, also Dio is strangely opposed to killing them himself, but whatever it was fun)

(-) Quark Ending:
This is a non-ending actually Quark is just here for the SAKE OF IT HE GENUINELY HAS NO REASON TO BE IN THE GAME

(-) Tenmyouji Ending:
“I love my grandpa” that’s the ending Uchikoshi you are so jobless

(-/+) Dio Ending:
Because of the horrible graphics I thought this ending was actually extremely creepy, even though I was very adamant on the fact that they were on the moon it was still creepy the way they made it so that it looks like a wasteland. I’m neutral on this ending since I hate the stupid cult plot.

(-/+) Phi Ending:
Not necessarily a Phi ending but ehh I’ve already discussed at length how much I dislike this paradoxical pacifistic storytelling in ZE games

(-/+) Sigma Ending:
Its just there to explain the sperm in your arms

(-/+) Alice Ending:
Enjoy manually decoding shit anyways it’s a fine ending

(-/+) Clover Ending:
I thought everyone killing themselves was cool but also how the fuck does Radical 6 even spread, additionally isn’t everyone sick with this disease? Then why are only Quark and Alice affected in each route? I was so confused about this.

(-) Bad Endings:
With a minor exception of the Luna Ending which felt like it at least had some variety with her escaping with Quark, all the Endings are the same where sometimes someone will escape leaving you all behind or you would have the ability to escape but everyone restrains you, I thought it would have been very smart to have a variety of creepy Bad Ends and seems like an extremely missed opportunity.

(-) Characters

Horrible, Uchikoshi has never been good at banter its very clear from his games (now his protagonist is just a straight up pervert so funny guys) but yeah I felt like the cast of characters was extremely fucking bland and the voting game made them interesting if anything. Zero Jr. the rabbit wasn’t even a mainstay like nigga is the bunny there for merch? Shut the FUCK up.

Dio could have been an interesting dude but he’s so in-your-face evil that it felt like Uchikoshi wanted to hang a billboard on his body that read “I’M THE BAD GUY”, and even then there’s a fun way of doing that but Uchikoshi missed so hard. Clover was annoying straight up, Quark deserves to be boiled. Tenmyouji’s entire personality was “where is Quark”, Alice’s personality is being betrayed the first round and then killing herself, Phi is good especially with the lack of explanation about her origins but then you have Sigma making perverted jokes at her that ruin everything.

(-) Conclusion

I don’t like ZE games, puzzles are shitty browser games that have never been the appeal and I genuinely don’t get why Uchikoshi bothers framing these as survival-type games when he always saves everyone. Its annoying storytelling which I don’t enjoy, additionally I’m sick of the grandfather paradox storytelling methodology and I’m glad at the very least with AI Somnium he did not return to this format because he KEEPS writing them with the very purpose of making everyone survive. Kill one person for stakes, Uchikoshi, and not just the bad guys. With a horrendous cast of characters, dated garbage archaic gameplay elements, horrible graphics, an ambitious but extremely contrived story, I do not recommend this game to a single other person. I don’t like ZE and I think it’s the gutter of the trapped-in-a-facility games.

This game takes way too long to get interesting, every single character is unlikable. ESPECIALLY compared to the cast of the prior title.
The biggest offender: Boring. I was so bored for a majority of the game.
This goes for the story AND gameplay.
They will explain the bracelets and "BP" and the chromatic doors over and over and over and over. The game will hammer in every little detail over and over. You start getting the gist of how the game works and start questioning why they need to repeat themselves SO MUCH.
You will watch the same hallway walk, the same doors, entering the same elevator CONSTANTLY. There is a total of 1-hour of traversing via the map screen and there is nothing you can do to speed it up. Agonizing.

I'd say the ratio for fun to annoying puzzles is 1:9. Some puzzles were as simple as "write down this text string and then enter it later" or "count how many things are in the bin and enter said number into a keypad."
Others had you doing sliding puzzles or click-one-tile-to-transform-the-tiles-around-it. AKA ones where the game doesn't give you any hint and it's just about doing it via trial and error. Time stuck will vary.
The inventory screen is mid. It gets bloated pretty quick and cycling through stuff is just slow.
The easy mode switch for puzzle rooms goes from "zero help at all" to "flat-out gives you answers to puzzles." The penalty for switching to easy doesn't even make sense. Once you have the secret file safe code, just go back in and enter it again while in "hard mode" (the code doesn't change between difficulties.) Bizarre choice.

The story... No spoilers from me but uh-
I did not really care? There's so many branching paths and """endings"""" that the whole experience blends together into this mush. You will see the same plot points repeated over and over with slight variations being who's with you. and because it's technically "new dialogue" you can't skip it.

The game cheats its audience by having a pretty interesting ending. I can see why there are fans of this title and why this game is currently sitting at 4 stars average. A good ending will leave people happy. I'm sorry. I do not forgive the other 25 hours of SLOP I endured. This game got on my nerves. Never want to revisit this one ever again. ZTD time.

as a story this shit is pretty good. as a game though this shit is pretty mid. luckily, this is a visual novel so the game part matters less. the puzzles were very fun to solve and probably my favorite part of the game. definitely worked my brain. the scene reuse though is so ass. killed the pacing so much which in turn really messed with the flow of the story. ive not heard great things about the sequel which makes me disappointed a bit with how this game ended.

Even though we technically spent more time with these characters most of them failed to be as appealing as the 999 cast. There's just a certain charm lacking I feel. The OST also mostly feels reused which does take away a bit of uniqueness. Even with the downsides, the plot twists and reveals do manage to continuously hook you back in which im happy is the case. Overall, a good recommendation from Tony.