Nine strangers awake to find themselves in an abandoned luxury cruise liner. Each of them has a watch strapped to their wrist with a number on it, 1–9. There are a variety of paths to access, but each of them is numbered 1–9. Each door can be opened only be a combination of people whose numbers add up to that door number. For instance, door 5 can be opened by person 1 and person 4 or person 2 and person 3. The decisions you make as to who goes through which door at what stage of the game influences the story and the ending, of which there are several. A mysterious man named Zero taunts them over the loudspeakers, asking archaic and inscrutable questions, laughing maniacally, and then disappearing. What’s his game???

This cast of characters, anime as they may be, is actually great. Each one of them, even your own player character Junpei, has well thought out backstories that are fed to you slowly over the course of the game. Each of them has distinct and visible motivations and goals and their decisions in the game reflect those goals. Seems like simple praise, but you’d be amazed how many ensemble casts lose the thread of what each character wants halfway through. Plus, each character is filled with inane and useless pseudo science facts that are fascinating. One of the key elements of this trilogy is that each character is weirdly knowledgeable about various pseudoscience fields and will launch into a lecture without warning.

It’s mostly a visual novel, but there is quite a lot of game in it as you solve the room puzzles and make difficult decisions on which door to take. The true ending is unexpected and twisty in the best ways and leads right into Virtue’s Last Reward. The whole thing takes maybe 8 hours max if you do all the endings, which you don’t need to on this one. Alternatively, watch a YouTube video of the plot summary and skip straight to Virtue’s Last Reward because it is sooo good.