For a good while now I have made it evident that I am huge fan of the Zero Escape games, I have persuaded many friends to play, go back to or even stream the game series and it easily sits within the echelon of GOATs for me, including my top 5 games here on backloggd.
AI: The Somnium Files, was a game I was very excited for - bought on launch (or thereabouts) and whilst it didn’t hit quite the right notes for me, I did thoroughly enjoy it.
Since then I’ve been chasing that Zero Escape level of enjoyment.
I started the Danganronpa series, which I feel off of for a combination of reasons. Watched more Japanese and Korean crime tv. The nearest anything has got to it was 2023’s Paranormasight.
So, why has it taken me so long to play nirvanA Initiative? Honestly, I have no good reason.
Sometimes games pass you by and for me wanting to pick it up after launch it took me a while before finding it at a price, I was happy to pay for an “old” game. Told you I had no good reason.
I’ll start here as I speak about the game by saying, I really enjoyed it. The first AI didn’t really stick with me, but this one has me much more excited to spread the good word and I think thanks to Uchikoshi pulling a few more Zero Escape style tricks, this game will be on I think about for a while.
AI 2 takes place in the same universe as the first, a near-future world with many similarities to our own but with some key differences in the jobs and technology our protagonists are involved with.
In this title we get a duo of protagonists in part due to Special Agent Kaname Date from the first title taking his holidays. Instead, we play as Kuroto Ryuki and the Date’s adopted daughter Mizuki. They’re job is the same as Date’s before, they work for “ABIS” the Advanced Brain Investigation Squad - in short they are police but also “Psyncers”.
If like me you enjoyed The Minority Report, with its precrime etc. you’ll enjoy AI’s main gimmick.
To put it simply the Somnium of the games’ title refers to a dreamscape, Somnium being Latin for dream after all. The agents can “psync” with someone to explore their dreams, see things from their past or unveil secrets they may be hiding.
The Somnium as a game device is genius before we even think about it mechanically.
It allows the game to give us very interesting and varied locations to explore that don’t need to make sense as they all follow dream logic.
Secondly, because these are dreams of an individual, we get the narrative device or unreliable narrators throughout as to how things may look or seem are from the dreamer’s perspective.
Without spoiling the plot or the many surprises this game has I can confidently say that these Somnium spaces will go places you do not expect, some fun, some dark, but all entertaining.
Within these different mechanics can be bought in and thrown away and the game itself can even slightly change its own themes and genre due to them.
The other main gimmick of the AI games are the AI-balls themselves.
Date’s partner Aiba returns in the left socket of Mizuki, while we are introduced to Tama - Ryuki’s partner.
These little AI robot-things give our main protagonists skills in the outside world, some things like zooms, video playback, x-ray vision and more to make them better detectives and give a great in-world reason to give the player lots of varied and interesting tools to solve things or simply engage with the story.
Within Somnium is where we control Aiba or Tama as they are the ones to physically (if we can call it that) navigate those dreamscapes.
Outside of the Somnium we also get VR sections, where the AI-ball can fully recreate a crime scene so that the detectives can check things without interference and in-game allow them to recreate what they conclude has happened to better understand it and show it to the person playing.
Where Somnium has its own rules and very strange, sometimes whacky interactions, the VR crime scenes feel a little more grounded and straight-faced… to a degree.
I say to a degree because one thing that I am not the biggest fan of but at times did enjoy is AI’s comedy. There’s a lot of gags, some great comedic dialogue and strange characters but the thing that typically puts me off is the weird-horniness that I have felt creeps far too often into any narrative based Japanese game.
The horniness is still here, you can see it straight off the bat with a lot of the character designs.
In the first title Date had a “porno-power” gag that at best made me smirk, which thankfully is mostly not here but that doesn’t stop many conversations leaning towards people being perverts or being accused of it.
Everyone is going to have a different line with how much of that type of comedy they will be ok with and the fact I mention it shows that I have a line but I would say this game rarely crossed it.
In fact it does many things that I was pleasantly surprised by, that being its handling of romance and also LGTBQ+ people.
I will also state clearly here that I don’t believe the horniness ever gets in the way of the many serious conversations and subject matters the game hits upon - which is a fear I have when playing something like this that I am enjoying.
To step back into speaking about the protagonists, again without any major spoilers, the game has two characters because the main plot involves a story, the HB case, in which Ryuki and a younger Mizuki were involved with and the serial killer seems to return six years later - where we get to investigate as an older Mizuki (with Aiba).
The HB case is the Half Body murders. It is as strange as it sounds and leads you into meeting a vast array of people and friends from the past, including a failing comedian, children from an orphanage, gene-scientists and cult leaders.
If you enjoyed Zero Escape for its, let’s call it education, then you will enjoy this too as this game uses many different ideas, historical happenings and philosophies that you will feel you have to go down a wiki hole about them - thankfully the game itself also contains a file on trivia, a highlight for me as there are multiple pages that explain wrestling moves.
AI 2 isn’t without faults, thankfully most of these sit within the boring technical side of things.
I played this on Switch and had four separate crashes to Home. The game gave saves often and ZR allows you to fast forward so it never took too much time getting back to the point I was at but obviously it’s less than ideal and can really break the immersion.
The other two much smaller technical issues that can break immersion also are the characters, specifically their heads in the lower-third to show who is speaking would sometimes have glitchy things like bouncy or clipping strands of hair. The second is the frame rate, this game isn’t one where that matters greatly but either when showing videos, transitioning in and out of Somnium and sometimes when changing those talking heads - the game visibly chugs.
The other fault for me is that the combat sequences, while kind of fun are more often than expected, narratively play out almost the same every time and the QTEs are just crap.
They’re never too taxing but they also don’t have a great logic to when they do and don’t appear and really don’t add anything to the scenes except a chance to fail and have to repeat.
Admittedly you can change the difficulty but I simply don’t think it’s an element this game even needs.
Overall AI The Somnium Files: nirvanA Initiative is fantastic, especially so if you are Uchikoshi-pilled like me. It’s a great story, with amazing twists, wonderful characters and a believable if sometimes silly world that will make you think about it once you’re done.
It has a decent amount of in-game rewards and achievements if that is something you crave and come in at a reasonable playtime of 20 hours give or take a few depending on how quick you are to solve things and how much you want to dig.
Finally getting around to AI2 makes me feel good, as I look at the past and towards the future.
I look at the past and now consider even more heavily trying some of Kotaro Uchikoshi’s previous VN series, and I look forward to the future as this shows that Zero Escape was not a complete fluke and that we can get more of that same goodness I crave.
AI: The Somnium Files, was a game I was very excited for - bought on launch (or thereabouts) and whilst it didn’t hit quite the right notes for me, I did thoroughly enjoy it.
Since then I’ve been chasing that Zero Escape level of enjoyment.
I started the Danganronpa series, which I feel off of for a combination of reasons. Watched more Japanese and Korean crime tv. The nearest anything has got to it was 2023’s Paranormasight.
So, why has it taken me so long to play nirvanA Initiative? Honestly, I have no good reason.
Sometimes games pass you by and for me wanting to pick it up after launch it took me a while before finding it at a price, I was happy to pay for an “old” game. Told you I had no good reason.
I’ll start here as I speak about the game by saying, I really enjoyed it. The first AI didn’t really stick with me, but this one has me much more excited to spread the good word and I think thanks to Uchikoshi pulling a few more Zero Escape style tricks, this game will be on I think about for a while.
AI 2 takes place in the same universe as the first, a near-future world with many similarities to our own but with some key differences in the jobs and technology our protagonists are involved with.
In this title we get a duo of protagonists in part due to Special Agent Kaname Date from the first title taking his holidays. Instead, we play as Kuroto Ryuki and the Date’s adopted daughter Mizuki. They’re job is the same as Date’s before, they work for “ABIS” the Advanced Brain Investigation Squad - in short they are police but also “Psyncers”.
If like me you enjoyed The Minority Report, with its precrime etc. you’ll enjoy AI’s main gimmick.
To put it simply the Somnium of the games’ title refers to a dreamscape, Somnium being Latin for dream after all. The agents can “psync” with someone to explore their dreams, see things from their past or unveil secrets they may be hiding.
The Somnium as a game device is genius before we even think about it mechanically.
It allows the game to give us very interesting and varied locations to explore that don’t need to make sense as they all follow dream logic.
Secondly, because these are dreams of an individual, we get the narrative device or unreliable narrators throughout as to how things may look or seem are from the dreamer’s perspective.
Without spoiling the plot or the many surprises this game has I can confidently say that these Somnium spaces will go places you do not expect, some fun, some dark, but all entertaining.
Within these different mechanics can be bought in and thrown away and the game itself can even slightly change its own themes and genre due to them.
The other main gimmick of the AI games are the AI-balls themselves.
Date’s partner Aiba returns in the left socket of Mizuki, while we are introduced to Tama - Ryuki’s partner.
These little AI robot-things give our main protagonists skills in the outside world, some things like zooms, video playback, x-ray vision and more to make them better detectives and give a great in-world reason to give the player lots of varied and interesting tools to solve things or simply engage with the story.
Within Somnium is where we control Aiba or Tama as they are the ones to physically (if we can call it that) navigate those dreamscapes.
Outside of the Somnium we also get VR sections, where the AI-ball can fully recreate a crime scene so that the detectives can check things without interference and in-game allow them to recreate what they conclude has happened to better understand it and show it to the person playing.
Where Somnium has its own rules and very strange, sometimes whacky interactions, the VR crime scenes feel a little more grounded and straight-faced… to a degree.
I say to a degree because one thing that I am not the biggest fan of but at times did enjoy is AI’s comedy. There’s a lot of gags, some great comedic dialogue and strange characters but the thing that typically puts me off is the weird-horniness that I have felt creeps far too often into any narrative based Japanese game.
The horniness is still here, you can see it straight off the bat with a lot of the character designs.
In the first title Date had a “porno-power” gag that at best made me smirk, which thankfully is mostly not here but that doesn’t stop many conversations leaning towards people being perverts or being accused of it.
Everyone is going to have a different line with how much of that type of comedy they will be ok with and the fact I mention it shows that I have a line but I would say this game rarely crossed it.
In fact it does many things that I was pleasantly surprised by, that being its handling of romance and also LGTBQ+ people.
I will also state clearly here that I don’t believe the horniness ever gets in the way of the many serious conversations and subject matters the game hits upon - which is a fear I have when playing something like this that I am enjoying.
To step back into speaking about the protagonists, again without any major spoilers, the game has two characters because the main plot involves a story, the HB case, in which Ryuki and a younger Mizuki were involved with and the serial killer seems to return six years later - where we get to investigate as an older Mizuki (with Aiba).
The HB case is the Half Body murders. It is as strange as it sounds and leads you into meeting a vast array of people and friends from the past, including a failing comedian, children from an orphanage, gene-scientists and cult leaders.
If you enjoyed Zero Escape for its, let’s call it education, then you will enjoy this too as this game uses many different ideas, historical happenings and philosophies that you will feel you have to go down a wiki hole about them - thankfully the game itself also contains a file on trivia, a highlight for me as there are multiple pages that explain wrestling moves.
AI 2 isn’t without faults, thankfully most of these sit within the boring technical side of things.
I played this on Switch and had four separate crashes to Home. The game gave saves often and ZR allows you to fast forward so it never took too much time getting back to the point I was at but obviously it’s less than ideal and can really break the immersion.
The other two much smaller technical issues that can break immersion also are the characters, specifically their heads in the lower-third to show who is speaking would sometimes have glitchy things like bouncy or clipping strands of hair. The second is the frame rate, this game isn’t one where that matters greatly but either when showing videos, transitioning in and out of Somnium and sometimes when changing those talking heads - the game visibly chugs.
The other fault for me is that the combat sequences, while kind of fun are more often than expected, narratively play out almost the same every time and the QTEs are just crap.
They’re never too taxing but they also don’t have a great logic to when they do and don’t appear and really don’t add anything to the scenes except a chance to fail and have to repeat.
Admittedly you can change the difficulty but I simply don’t think it’s an element this game even needs.
Overall AI The Somnium Files: nirvanA Initiative is fantastic, especially so if you are Uchikoshi-pilled like me. It’s a great story, with amazing twists, wonderful characters and a believable if sometimes silly world that will make you think about it once you’re done.
It has a decent amount of in-game rewards and achievements if that is something you crave and come in at a reasonable playtime of 20 hours give or take a few depending on how quick you are to solve things and how much you want to dig.
Finally getting around to AI2 makes me feel good, as I look at the past and towards the future.
I look at the past and now consider even more heavily trying some of Kotaro Uchikoshi’s previous VN series, and I look forward to the future as this shows that Zero Escape was not a complete fluke and that we can get more of that same goodness I crave.