This game is so good guys don't listen to anyone else this game is amazing and I'm not joking.
Amazing cast of characters, incredible music, excellent story.
This game looks ugly because it had the budget of a bag of chips and was rushed to all hell but the new characters are great.
There's a lot of missed plot threads from VLR but this is still a pretty eerie conclusion to the franchise. Delta, the Religious Fanatic, Phi's origins, Sean, Mira and Eric, Sigma's timeline age, Diana is a baddie, Junpei listens to Three Days Grace, its all so good

ZTD is a fascinating and ambitious swing for the fences. It's kind of a miss? But it's a wonderful miss. If 999 is a VN with meta elements and VLR is a riff on 999 taken to extremity, ZTD is a complete decomposition of the format.

It almost entirely eschews any imposed narrative structure for its first several hours, which makes it easy to bounce off it like I originally did. Its last act is more linear, which is both boon and bane, but the central narrative is effective enough, on balance.

The main problem is just that the puzzles aren't terribly interesting, and as a result feel like busywork. I was never stumped during them that I can recall, and I'm a stupid manlet. As such, despite being the shortest of the trilogy in my playthrough (-9.5hrs) it felt like much more of a slog than either VLR or 999, neither one of which I would call hard per se but which felt better-balanced.

Downgrade from 999/VLR but still a solid game in it's own right and a miracle it came out at all, one of my most anticipated games at the time, gets a bit grimdark/edgelord with some of the paths you end up going down to the point of absurdity but I was still engaged throughout still has solid puzzles but the presentation and voice acting is a bit of a downgrade in comparision to it's predesacer, overall really happy with how this series ending other then one group that feels like it didnt get fully wrapped up, was not a fan of most if not all of the new characters, Q's path was definitely my least favorite, With Carlos' being may favorite due to my attachment to the 999 cast, definitely worth playing to see how this all wraps up but maybe not the best to start with if you are new to the series

8/10

"My motives are... complex"

Yeah, this game is ridiculous. It's funny how such a small detail as the fact that you can't click through the dialogue and have to play a game which is 90% fucking movie 10% game ruins it completely.

I got a lot of complains about this. I hate the "Decision Game" mechanic; it is dumb and has no charm at all, instead of super cool and original mechanics like the digital roots and the goated AB Game, this game just makes you take completely random decisions, there's nothing solid. I also think the groups mechanic is awful, like, one of the most interesting parts about the last two games is the fact that you see nine amazing characters interact with each other, and the fact that you restrain that almost 95% is just lame to me. It's ridiculous how the entirety of the soundtrack is fucking recycled, but at least they recycled two incredible soundtracks so eh.

But of course, the main dish of this game is that its story serves as the conclusion of the Zero Escape saga. Oh my god. How do I freaking begin.

This game's story is awful and I hate it from every point I see it. It is pointless, the plot twists are stupid and the way the narrative jumps from one place to another makes the game so convoluted and hard to understand for no reason. I hate it. The fact that this game was made as a conclusion for the Radical-6 infection and that topic is almost inexistent in this game is ridiculous. The conclusion of the story is super unsatisfying and overall almost every ending lacks substance and just comes out of nowhere. (Almost) all the characters I loved become extremely stupid in this game and the new ones are just unsufferable as well. I fucking hate Junpei and Akane in this game, and Mira and Eric are also kind of stupid. The D Team is the only one that's good overall but just because of how hard Phi and Sigma carry, cause I hate Diana as well.

Yeah, this is kinda what I was expecting with this game but still, they could've done so much better man... 999 and VLR are masterpieces, how did they fuck up this bad... If it wasn't for that fucking snail this game could've been good I swear...

gosh. i have a million things i could say about this game, but i'll keep it fairly brief. (or at least, i have MUCH more i could say)

this game is so fucking insane. there's SO MUCH going on here, from the hilariously shitty animations, to the environments that look like they were rendered on my car's key fob, to the out of nowhere over the top plot twists. there's also SO MUCH about this game that i dislike. some reveals make things in other games uncomfortable, and some character personality changes are undesirable. it's not all bad for me though. i had a much more emotional experience playing this game compared to VLR. while i do still think VLR is better than ZTD, i enjoy the character moments in this game far more. also, the characters in this one are so much less gross personality-wise, and i didn't feel absolutely disgusted by random sexual harassment like i did in VLR. of course, there are still characters in this game i dislike. overall, even if the directions personalities go in and everything feel haphazard and arbitrary, i will not lie that i sobbed several times in this game and don't feel cheated out of enjoying those moments.

the structure of the game is cool!!! no notes there. at the start of playing the game i was like "oh fuck this is,,, yeah, huh.." but as i kept going, it makes sense why the game is like this (fragments, etc).

i think ZTD had really big shoes to fill after VLR. that's not to say that VLR was a masterpiece that can't be topped (because i do not hold that opinion), but because the scope of the Zero Escape series grew so goddamn much with VLR. you could argue that the whole series after 999 doesn't really "have a point" in more ways than one. but, at the same time, i think there's not really much else you can do to rectify everything. instead, we get a absolutely nutty bonkers game that had me saying "oh my fuck i love this game" to "oh my fuck i hate this game" every other hour.

puzzles are fine. that's it. they're fine. not enough of them, tho. i finished all of the puzzles like halfway through my playtime. worst puzzle design of the series for sure, but nothing is egregious.

i'm glad i played it, and i still had a good time, despite the numerous issues i have. i was consistently excited to play this game, even if i could tell that it kiiiinda sucks. zero escape is over. what the fuck.

🐌oops!