In some ways it's better than 999 but in some it's worse.
The characters are pretty memorable, I was afraid it'd be staler than the eccentric personalities of the first game but it remains. A plus is that our new main character, Sigma, doesn't talk. (Well, he does, but he has no audible dialogue so he's not as annoying.) It carries over that problem from the last one too where they overexplain things like it's a children's game but it's rated M otherwise. Visually, it switches the 2D sprites with 3D models, which can be considered a downgrade in some ways but it's easier to navigate the rooms though with proper 3D environments versus simulated for the DS (it's the 3DS now) but it's put on this nice collection on the PC so it looks smoother and cleaner.
The one complaint I have about the port in general is that it could've cut some things out. I imagine the transition scenes were made to mask loading screens but we don't need them anymore and they're more tedious than Resident Evil's. While not as often, they take longer because they'll go somewhere and it shows them as a blinking dot on the map and the route they're taking (not that it matters most of the time, when it does matter, they reiterate the sequence anyway) but they'll show them going across an entire floor, go to the elevator, stop, show them pressing the button, the elevator comes, wait for the elevator to descend, beep, open doors again, back to map, show them moving to their destination again, it's just meaningless. And there's a skip but it's only for stuff you've seen before (in any route) so it usually doesn't include the transitions and when it does, it needs to be activated before it starts because it doesn't give you the option during.
And also (...) they have a tendency to (...) whenever (...) there isn't anybody (...) saying anything and (...) they'll show it (...) for each character. There were some parts where my experience was an error but I couldn't find proof of others being that way. Gaulem Bay for example, there are rows of (nonspoiling here) "lights" that some are on and some are off and you use that pattern to activate a puzzle, however, mine spelled out something different than what it was supposed to, I double and triple checked in game even after I looked up the result and the same answer got back to me every time.
All that remained was the ending. Would I find the outcome better than the last one? Because the other one reached a little too far in terms of what you could've predicted with the face thing. Well...this ending isn't much better. I actually had this game pegged as "great", I even accepted as far as the Phi ending and would've given it a 3.5/5 but it was afterwards that reversed everything.
It's like Meet the Robinsons but not as a good thing. It takes the time to explain every aspect of it and it's boring, because it's a large infodump and exposition for the next entry in the series...as an ending. So yeah, it seems like it's going to be a complete package but it's not a complete story, while 999 was at least contained enough to seem satisfying. And I mean it really threw the kitchen sink at you too. It has the regular endings and then two hidden ones before credits roll but then two more after credits roll so it never really knows when to stop either. People complain about Kingdom Hearts but that's nothing, this is the real menace, overcomplicating and recontextualizing everything. Kingdom Hearts explains its way over a whole series of games, that's people's only problem and it's an outdated problem now that all the games can be bought in one package for the same system but imagine taking the plot and obscurities of those games and doing it all at once at the end of just one game. "Imagine a cat. Imagine a truck. Imagine a line. This is my name. This is my actual name. This is what I am. This is what I actually am. Let's review our history. Just use E = mc2. Imagine the relationship between classical mechanics and modern physics"....You think I'm joking? You think I just pulled all those out of my ass?!
The characters are pretty memorable, I was afraid it'd be staler than the eccentric personalities of the first game but it remains. A plus is that our new main character, Sigma, doesn't talk. (Well, he does, but he has no audible dialogue so he's not as annoying.) It carries over that problem from the last one too where they overexplain things like it's a children's game but it's rated M otherwise. Visually, it switches the 2D sprites with 3D models, which can be considered a downgrade in some ways but it's easier to navigate the rooms though with proper 3D environments versus simulated for the DS (it's the 3DS now) but it's put on this nice collection on the PC so it looks smoother and cleaner.
The one complaint I have about the port in general is that it could've cut some things out. I imagine the transition scenes were made to mask loading screens but we don't need them anymore and they're more tedious than Resident Evil's. While not as often, they take longer because they'll go somewhere and it shows them as a blinking dot on the map and the route they're taking (not that it matters most of the time, when it does matter, they reiterate the sequence anyway) but they'll show them going across an entire floor, go to the elevator, stop, show them pressing the button, the elevator comes, wait for the elevator to descend, beep, open doors again, back to map, show them moving to their destination again, it's just meaningless. And there's a skip but it's only for stuff you've seen before (in any route) so it usually doesn't include the transitions and when it does, it needs to be activated before it starts because it doesn't give you the option during.
And also (...) they have a tendency to (...) whenever (...) there isn't anybody (...) saying anything and (...) they'll show it (...) for each character. There were some parts where my experience was an error but I couldn't find proof of others being that way. Gaulem Bay for example, there are rows of (nonspoiling here) "lights" that some are on and some are off and you use that pattern to activate a puzzle, however, mine spelled out something different than what it was supposed to, I double and triple checked in game even after I looked up the result and the same answer got back to me every time.
All that remained was the ending. Would I find the outcome better than the last one? Because the other one reached a little too far in terms of what you could've predicted with the face thing. Well...this ending isn't much better. I actually had this game pegged as "great", I even accepted as far as the Phi ending and would've given it a 3.5/5 but it was afterwards that reversed everything.
It's like Meet the Robinsons but not as a good thing. It takes the time to explain every aspect of it and it's boring, because it's a large infodump and exposition for the next entry in the series...as an ending. So yeah, it seems like it's going to be a complete package but it's not a complete story, while 999 was at least contained enough to seem satisfying. And I mean it really threw the kitchen sink at you too. It has the regular endings and then two hidden ones before credits roll but then two more after credits roll so it never really knows when to stop either. People complain about Kingdom Hearts but that's nothing, this is the real menace, overcomplicating and recontextualizing everything. Kingdom Hearts explains its way over a whole series of games, that's people's only problem and it's an outdated problem now that all the games can be bought in one package for the same system but imagine taking the plot and obscurities of those games and doing it all at once at the end of just one game. "Imagine a cat. Imagine a truck. Imagine a line. This is my name. This is my actual name. This is what I am. This is what I actually am. Let's review our history. Just use E = mc2. Imagine the relationship between classical mechanics and modern physics"....You think I'm joking? You think I just pulled all those out of my ass?!