finished story: march 29
all achievements: april 1

stuck between rating it 4 or 4 1/2 but i really enjoyed playing this
story reveal was satisfying unlike some certain other games and the characters are all wonderful
the mystery stays interesting to the end and all the hints they drop along the way without outright revealing the Thing are really neat

mizuki, aiba, and date are my favorites for sure and the dynamic between each of them was what i enjoyed the most
very very sweet :< mizuki route had my favorite resolution too

did not mind the comedic tone although it is a little jarring when youre in an ultra serious situation near the end of a route and aiba is like date you motherfucker and dates like ^w^ lollllllllll but i have a bigger bone to pick with this game than that

qte sequences are funny but odd and not really tense
i didnt enjoy the somniums at first compared to the puzzles of ZE but i gradually warmed up to them, mostly for their very surreal atmosphere

well animated in a way that looks nice and doesnt take you out of the game but there are some clipping issues sometimes and the dance is just a liiiiittle awkward but its fine, the game looks good overall
played with jp voices and they were fantastic but many people seem to like the english dub too so maybe ill check that out at some point

onto my big huge enormous issue that actively holds back my enjoyment of the game. how fucking creepy every man is to iris

sometimes i didnt mind date being horny because it was kinda funny but every time it involved iris i just rolled my eyes so far back into my head it was bad
i really like iris. shes a sweet character, her being a streamer and an idol is fun, and shes a big nerd into the occult and conspiracy theories partially to cope
shes such a major character and most things male characters say about her are the most disgusting creepy shit

i know shes an idol and the obsessive love is just the way that these things go but the way this actually drives the story forward with kumakura and ota is maddening !!!!!!!!!!
SHES 18!!!!!!!! we dont need to hear these grown ass men be insanely horny for her and its never ever ever ever funny! i know thats what its supposed to be, comedy, but it fucking sucks!!!!

the thing i hated the most was them making date continue to be creepy as fuck towards her even after they both knew what their previous relationship was!!!!!
i know date regards himself as a different person from falco but i think it sucks to write him thinking of her like that anyways and it upsets me immensely

anyways. the rest of it was good and fun and the jokes were funny for the most part but that is such an enormous issue for me thats such a major part of the game that prevents me from liking it fully

felt just as empty finishing this as i did vlr

even though i enjoyed the majority of this game way more (more enjoyable puzzles and less repetitive) the tail end of it is so........... so............. Bad
like zero escape games quality to me hinges on the twist it forms itself around Duh but it can make or break the game entirely as seen with 999 and vlr for me

not that the rest of the plot was perfect because i hated the story presented in vlr anyways but i was having a moderately good time before sigma and diana fucked in the pod and had babies and then it all totally went downhill, all i could do is laugh at how ridiculous it was

the twist that delta was with q-team the entire time is so stupid i dont care how much it was hinted at, it just felt so so silly for them to suddenly just start acknowledging him

and the rest of the story with brother and sigma and diana and phi and all and mind hack and the snail and shifting and mira and. Whatever man it was just not fun to sit through. just like vlr i was desperately trying to get to the end to get things over with it was like pulling teeth

i didnt really have a problem with the flowchart system like yeah it was odd but it was preferable to vlr's incredibly repetitive system, though it certainly does take some of the impact away when you dont have that feeling of replaying through segments as much as you did in that game

the worst part of this game that has nothing to do with the story or characters is the absolutely abysmal animation
it looked so so bad and completely sucked the immersion and soul out of any scene trying to be emotional
i understand they had a small budget but i think it wouldve been just as okay if they kept the visual novel presentation and stuck with sprites or hell even still images that would have 1000% more life than these cutscenes did

the jarring art style change isnt terrible but much less preferable to the nonary games art style for sure. certainly doesnt help the bad animation at all or look all that great in the 3d models (carlos, diana, and akane especially) but the promotional and key art is really really great, creates a much better atmosphere than whatever is actually going on ingame though i do have qualms with how odd some female characters look in comparison to the male ones

i really really missed the whole Novel aspect. the writing and description were really good and added an extra layer of immersion and closeness to the characters that this game certainly lacks

highlights of this game are the puzzles, sigmas muscles, c team's dynamic, and the cool doll/figure portraits for each character that was really neat

999: march 10 - march 12, 5/5
fun, charming, intriguing, and really well written!!!! everything wrapped together so nicely. i had so many questions throughout the game and was hanging on every word, and every time the characters went into some shit like Well have you heard of i was like oh fuck here we go
like the science and anecdotes all feel random but theyre so fascinating and elevate the story of the game
created an almost scary atmosphere for me every time it happened

loved the characters so much and thought they had so much personality, wish lotus's design was different and that there werent as many perverted jokes but hey what can you do. i like the rest quite a bit.

i was enjoying the game a lot already but when the true ending hit and the game revealed its hand i fell completely in love
though i wish akane and junpeis relationship was presented a little nicer bc its really heavy on the cheese early on to the point that its almost insufferable but the ending changed my mind about them almost completely. love prevails and love is all powerful
the whole story is really good overall and i think hongou's motivation makes a lot of sense!!!! dude is fucked up!!!!!!!

puzzles were really really fun i have to say the cargo hold was my favorite to do and figure out but the digital root system as a whole was so fucking fun as the thing the puzzles shaped themselves around. solid, dependable, and wraps into the story well too!!

the way the gameplay as a whole wraps into the story with the replays, door choices, and novel/adventure mode is so well done too and im sure its even better in the ds version

good aesthetic, really nice 3d visuals that feel creepy like a 3d adventure game from the 90s
good and catchy music, wasnt crazy but it was a nice backdrop to the whole game
fantastic voice work (JP) as well

doesnt outstay its welcome with the replay factor and wraps up quickly and nicely

i hope what im writing gets across how much i loved this game

vlr: march 12 - march 16, 2/5
i wanted to like this game much more than i did so so bad
i couldnt help comparing it to 999 bc vlr is its own game (although connected) but 999 just did everything vlr was going for so so so so much better

the need to replay to get information for other endings was one thing and i liked it at first, loved it in 999, but you have to do it so goddamn much in this game its ridiculous
i understand its essential to the story but fuck i dont even like the story!!!!!!!!! so many things and events repeat just for a few lines to be different and it gets tiring having to skip through so so much
999 does the same obviously but way less than vlr just bc it has less branches
not to mention
the fucking door/travel animations i was seriously so frustrated with being forced to watch these it had to have made up like half of my playtime
AND the shots of the room from different angles you had to watch almost every time you entered a room! sometimes even between dialogue!
sure theyre fast forwardable! but if i timed it incorrectly i was shit out of luck

it was still fun and i was deeply interested in what the truth was, what the actual story was, but as it went on, i really felt like i was pushing myself to get there. like i didnt want to keep going but i had to to find out what the fuck was going on
and it was not even a little satisfying and didnt feel at all as good as learning 999's true story

i have this problem with plots where it bothers me if things "get too big." if the scale of a problem gets too big and it advances rapidly from endangering a small set of people to endangering humanity, stuff like that
that was probably a big part of my issues with vlr's story and why i didnt enjoy it at all really
and just the sheer amount of things it takes for them to resolve it/try to resolve it
the amount of time travel in 999? perfect. loved that
the amount of time travel in vlr? too much man cmon

i liked the themes it was going for and the scientific elements it had and explained as much as its hard for me to wrap my head around quantum physics but i feel like nothing worked together at all
sure maybe the whole story objectively makes sense in conjunction with its themes but to me it felt like a pile of slop barely held together with glue. i just did not like it and the explanation in the true ending was kind of maddening with everything that kept getting tacked on

the whole "we had to recreate what we saw of the future to fulfill it" thing was crazy in 999 but really good
it is completely fucking ridiculous in vlr
radical-6 as a whole to me is so 30923ut4y93uwifjkwfn fucking stupid i dont wanna talk about it

i felt like 999 revealed its story much more steadily than vlr
while you hear the same set of information over and over throughout many of vlr's branches with maybe an added scientific/philosophical concept here and there
maybe objectively vlr did the same things as 999 and presented its plot and ideas in the exact same way but it really didnt feel like that to me, it felt like an utter mess that i was simply forced to understand in contrast to the seamless way that 999s story and scientific concepts weave together

i did like individual things! i really really love luna! she has to be my favorite part of this game by far, and her story is just really sweet. oh i just realized in her ending she basically died in the arms of her creator my life is ruined

occasional good writing and descriptions, i liked the voices of characters and how they interacted with sigma
i like sigmas personality a lot actually even with his pervertedness 🙄🙄 hes fun, not that different from junpei but you get to see him way way less for obvious reasons so hes not as compelling

the characters from the previous game it wraps into this one was. interesting but i think the best thing we got out of it was learning that snake plays the harp and has a weirdly devoted fan following
i do like clover n alice, tenmyouji to a lesser extent but whatever, i dont really like their presence in the game and what it does to both games plots

i think the characters as a whole are just weaker
i do like them! but theyre weaker than 999s cast
dio is just unlikable even before u find out anything about who he really is and i think he puts a damper on everything
the replay factor and the AB game as a whole weakened the bond i couldve had with these characters just because of the nature of betrayal and all
its purposeful of course but it only made me like most of them less overall even after being provided their backstory
zero jr. is also annoying !!!! i do not like these sorts of silly animal mascots for masterminds

puzzles were not as fun to me
more difficult and frustrating even with their specifications but whatever im probably just bad, 999 did spoon feed u most solutions
visuals are fine, obviously less likeable than 999s sprites but the 3d models dont look bad or anything
music was fine but im struggling to remember because of just how many times trepidation was played

despite this review just being almost all criticism i liked the game 70% of the time playing it i think
but just as 999s true story made me love it, vlr's true story almost ruins it for me
whatever man. onto zero time dilemma, maybe itll give me that satisfaction