75/100

I can't lie, I had a pretty great time playing this game, but I didn't feel very satisfied with the true ending. The build up was great, and some routes were incredibly well written, but the point is that there were just too many routes, with a lot of them feeling very rushed and similar to one another. A lot of subplots and questions that end up in giving forced answers that I feel were kinda thrown in just to close all the parenthesis they opened.

Even if I believe the finale could have been a better pay off for 20+ hours of gameplay, this stands just a tiny bit lower than 999 for me. The AB game setting was super engaging as well as the characters dynamics, and I can't say I didn't appreciate all the little QoL improvements from 999.

Even if certainly flawed, I truly enjoyed both the Zero Escape games, and would reccomend everyone to check them out!

I feel alone in this take but this is such a disappointing sequel to 999. Let's start by what we can see at first sight: the graphics. While its predecessor had mostly timeless visuals, here they replace the great drawings of the characters with ugly, lifeless 3D models that at most have three poses and no changes to their facial expressions. The setting is also changed from a memorable cruise ship to a grey and dull facility that is really painful to the eye. As for the pacing, VLR takes the perfect length of 999 and triples it, and it makes this game drag like hell. It is also sold as a non-linear story with ten main endings, but you have to do them in a specific order or else you are locked in the last third of the storyline you're playing, so when you come back to it you have to hope to remember what was going on, and with ten different freaking endings that's a hard thing to do. The story also pisses me off, not only is it extremely complex, but despite being set in a mostly grounded universe (as established by its predecessor) it now introduces androids, clones and the fucking end of humanity? I'm sorry I hate this game. Its only saving grace are the puzzle rooms but that doesn't save it for me at all.

I... am not sure how I feel about this one. It's not as good as 999, at least in my opinion, but I actually really enjoyed the story once the characters felt more fleshed out...? But, at the same time, I've heard ZTD is a companion game to this one, so I'll certainly give that one a shot once I'm finished thinking on it. I think the story did make sense but also my head is kind of sore from thinking and I feel like it was... a bit anticlimactic at some points. I liked the setups for the twists but everything pales in comparison to the masterpiece that is the first game. Who knows, maybe I only feel this lukewarm because it's expanding on a formula I've now had experience with. Dunno. Whatevs. Also, maybe it's just me but Clover felt a bit OOC in this one. It bothered me.

People say Zero Escape and Uchikoshi fell off on ZTD but nah, the cracks were already showing here.

Probably the ugliest looking VN out there. Even ignoring the downgrade in art style from the previous game the 3D models here make RWBY look like a pixar film, and the upscaled resolutions from the re-releases don't make it any better. I don't ask for much when it comes to the visuals on the visual novel department but if you're gonna put me through 20+ hour long reads the least I expect is for it to not look like shit.

Story wise it feels like a borderline parody of 999, guess people complained on how cryptic some of the puzzles were on the first game so they dumbed it down for the babbies who think Professor Layton's 3DS games are difficult. It does nothing that the first one already didn't do better in terms of character dynamics or themes, and you're basically playing a longer version of it with more branching paths that amount to the same endings with slight variations, route locks and unskippable transitions for when you are moving around on the map.

All of that timewasting of arguing semantics for a gotcha cliffhanger ending that shows the trilogy had no idea how to wrap itself up because it clearly didn't have enough material to be a trilogy. Part of me feels that the ending was omitted here because Uchikoshi didn't feel like writing one and hoped that he could wave it away by saying "Whoops, third game wasn't greenlit! Sorry, guess I don't have to explain shit!"

Lo and behold, the third game got greenlit, and we all know how that turned out. Some stones are better left unturned.