for decades gamers have pondered one of the world's most esoteric psychological dilemmas: "is war bad?"

i've never played haze or spec ops: the line, so i couldn't tell you for certain. but after running blindly through the cover of smoke and peripherally seeing my allies get split to shreds by machine guns and mortar strikes, i'm thinking it might be

turns out being historically accurate and recreating actual battles is enough to convey just how hellish war really is. top it off with simple-but-effective squad mechanics and weapons that can't hit shit unless your enemy's already pinned down - you've got a horror game in disguise

good stuff, randy pitchford. i'm sure you won't completely fall off in 4 more years - or masturbate to children

Most pertinent issues up front: 1) the translation of this game is super weird and, from what I can interpret, is quite literal to the Japanese text. 2) The text is chopped up into particles – oftentimes there’ll be three or four text bubbles per sentence – for no reason I can see, other than the Japanese text being that way (do Japanese teenagers all talk like William Shatner?)

The plot is your bog-standard “school club” and “scary rumour where a ghost girl shows up and kills you in real life if you meet these specific requirements” Japanese plotlines. I pretty much think everything about this game can be sorted by which cliché it is. That being said, I am a giant pussy, so I was scared by everything in this game and I did choose to not listen to the audio. Three times of having a ghost girl rasp 「誰でもいい」into my earholes was enough.

This game was the type of meh where it disappoints you to see it fall flat on its face, rather than provoking laughter.

Visual novels are often extremely long feeling. Reams and reams of text filling up dialogue boxes to seemingly justify their existence, after all, they are called visual novels. This isn't a complaint about reading however, I love reading. This is a compliment about understanding the need for such text at the expense of keeping your readers attention. Some games use 1000 words to convey 100 words worth of information. Less is sometimes more.

999 fully understands pacing in a way too many visual novels don't. The scenes are interesting, relevant and don't outstay their welcome before the escape room puzzles break up the change of pace. Honestly I think the game's fairly brief length and the way it's laid out in it's exposition to puzzle ratio is entirely to it's credit. The story was actually surprisingly engrossing as facts get revealed unraveling the mystery. I quite liked most of the characters even if some of the ridiculous obscure objects of knowledge some of them have conveniently are hilariously daft at times. It all fits together in a satisfying way once you unlock all the endings however.

The puzzles themselves are pretty good too. I got stumped by a couple briefly but they are balanced in a way that they tell you what needs doing without directly holding your hand I appreciated. I also appreciated that trying different routes gives you new puzzles in those locations but allows you to skip the old ones once you've beaten them. This is a game about rushing against time that also respects your time as a player in most cases.

Not what I expected going into it. Looking forward to the next game in the series.

+ Surprisingly interesting story and characters.
+ Pacing is excellent, good mix between story and puzzles.
+ Looks surprisingly good on PS4 visually.
+ unlocking alternate endings is a painless affair if you choose.