Everything about this game is kinda perfect. Merges the investigation style gameplay of Ace Attorney with Uchikoshi's interests in artificial intelligence, conspiracy theories and science fiction.

☑ Incredible soundtrack
☑ Superb voice acting
☑ Beautifully rendered animation and cutscenes
☑ Innovative gameplay mechanics (somniums)
☑ Well-written, fascinating characters

A high budget game with nothing wasted. More games like this please!

A return to form for Uchikoshi! Writing is top notch and delivers just the right amount of normal detective intrigue balanced with a good amount of pseudo science, nanomachine technology, conspiracy theory junk. Characters are fun and the focus on some of the human stories behind them in certain routes can be get emotional. Story is fantastic and having a clean slate for Uchikoshi to write from feels to have done him a world of good.

If you love a good investigation mystery novel and don't mind/love some weird stuff thrown in as well, then this game bars no entry.

Wrapping the entire conceit of a game, its themes, motifs, and character names around wordplay with "ai" and its variants sure is a choice.

Being a Uchikoshi game, the usual warnings apply: crass sexual humor in abundance, sexualization of women (including teenagers), and eyebrow-rasing representation of queer folk. With that established:

I am continuously impressed by Uchikoshi's ability to write the most convoluted sci-fi murder mysteries imaginable, as well as by his ability to switch tones between comedy and horror on a whim without shattering the scene and characters in the process. Compared to the Nonary Games trilogy, the narrative here feels more grounded, at least early on and mainly due to its noir roots. The investigation is divided between conversation sequences, point-and-click interactions, and the titular somnium segments: memories that operate on dream logic, reenacted in the mind of a suspect. In them, a 6-minute timer advances as you move your character or interact with objects to unveil the truth the suspect might be hiding. These provide a nice change of pace from the VN segments, and are better integrated in the story than some of the escape sequences in the Nonary Games ever were. A few of these also act as the points in which the narrative bifurcates, since solving them in one of two ways provides Date, the main man, with different information and clues to follow.

Just like in the Nonary Games, there's a hierarchy of mysteries and hints, which means some endings need to be reached so their information can then be carried into other branches of the narrative. Unlike those other games, however, AI loads the early endings not with mysteries, but with fairly definitive resolutions for some secondary characters, to the detriment of the game's pacing. Simply put: the early endings are the most affective and showcase the strongest character writing to be found here, but this emotional core is then swallowed by the technobabble and exposition needed to keep up with the convoluted plot. As intrigue ramps up, the weaker characters take the spotlight, and the game loses itself for a bit. Fortunately, it manages to course-correct in time to stick the landing decently enough, with the bleaker route and the very final credits sequence as highlights. All-in-all, it's a return to form from Zero Time Dilemma, and it does manage to reach the heights of 999 and VLR, just not as often.

Now, where's the Mizuki-led sequel?

lol @ all the nerds in this review section saying they cried at this game's story.

the gameplay is outright terrible. it's trial-and-error mixed with a time limit where every action costs time. you're either going to be restarting a lot because the game expects you to make leaps in logic for every single dream sequence, or you'll just do what any normal person would do and use a guide. the game is poorly paced too, god damn is there just not enough dream sequences for a $60 game. you're going to be leaning on the "sit around and read dialogue" aspect of this game a lot, and even as someone who's played uchikoshi games, i found myself running out of patience.

the greatest sin is the story, hoo boy. the main character is pretty much unlikable and the plot is soaked with misogyny (unironically the main character gets super-human powers when he sniffs women's dirty laundry or thinks there's a porn magazine nearby) and the characters are flat. the plot has moments of intrigue that come very late and don't get properly explored in a way i'd expect from uchikoshi. anyone who tells you this game made them cry should not be trusted, their opinion is immediately invalidated.

I have played and enjoyed the ZE series, but this didn't quite hit the same spot for me. I'll preface this by saying that I definitely recommend playing it, but found that there was much that Uchikoshi left unexplored in the game. There was also a lot of content that could have easily been cut, and many routes seemed a bit pointless. Although entering dreams, the primary mode of gameplay, was quite enjoyable, other parts of gameplay mainly involved a combination of quick-time events, interrogation of suspects and point-and-click. The quick-time events could have been removed from the game altogether, since failing them just gives you a game over and they lack any actual challenge (although I do appreciate the humour that they added to the game). The point-and-click elements and interrogations were poorly-executed, because it was literally impossible to fail them — if you tried to submit clues that were irrelevant, you face literally no consequences because you're immediately told that "it doesn't seem right". This is in contrast to other games with similar mechanisms like the Ace Attorney series or LA Noire, in which bungling your objections or interrogations will cause you to lose "health" (AA) or affect achievements (LA Noire). In summary, while the story of the game is generally good and engaging, it still left quite a bit unexplored or underutilised while including elements that seemed a bit arbitrary, and might have worked better as a straight VN with dream sequence gameplay segments.

I have to admit, I’m a huge fan of the 'Zero Escape' and 'Danganronpa' franchises, so I might be a little biased, but I loved every second of this game. Each character has a sense of mystery around them, there’s a murder investigation going on, we visit some crazy dream worlds, and of course you can expect many-many mind-blowing plot twists. Unfortunately, the visuals are a bit lacking when it comes to environments, but I can guarantee that the story more than makes up for that.

'AI: The Somnium Files' might not be an instant cult-classic, but it’s still amazing, and a must-have for anyone who likes deep stories and murder mysteries. Oh, and let’s not forget about the terrible puns and dirty jokes! Seriously, who comes with all of these? :D