major spoilers for the first AI:TSF game as well as this one, discussion of "secret" nil number/ryuki diverge ending, 999 spoilers ig if you havent played/finished it

overall i want to say i didnt like it but i really really enjoyed like 80% of the time i spent playing it
its very similar to how i felt about vlr compared to 999
i was deeply interested until all the twists started getting revealed and i hit the real ending sequence and then i just wanted it to be over
high highs but extremely low lows

gameplay is overall better to me than the first game for sure
i had so so much more fun with the somniums this time (especially the later ones) and each of their unique mechanics, tearer's was a fucking blast to do
the vr segments were really fun as well, i just really liked how this game was a bit more puzzley than the first

some investigation segments with moving from place to place were a bit tedious especially when it gave you a ton of places to go to all at once but this is super minor and negligible
i couldve done without the qte segments completely though because i didnt like them at all in the first game in the first place and it totally dragged down the ending sequence. adds nothing

i noticed that some dialogue options would immediately skip you to the next scene and make you unable to select the other ones and it made me a little bit sad cause i wanted to make sure i covered everything and saw every bit of writing, i dont remember the dialogue being like that in the last game because it let you/wanted you to exhaust every dialogue option mostly

where this game falls short compared to aitsf is its story and cast. like ive said before for ZE, because uchikoshi leans so heavily on his twists (apparently he starts with the twist and writes the rest from there???), they can really make or break the story and the one in aini completely breaks it. i wouldnt say it ruined the game for me but i didnt really like or enjoy the twist at all

at first when they introduce it with mama breaking the fourth wall i was like oooooh this is cool esp with how it weaved the themes in but the way the game progressed after that, the more i thought about it, the way it justified and explained this twist, i ended up completely hating it

bibi being the biggest part of this spoils her character a lot for me. i wanted to like her but ? turns out shes not really different from mizuki date bc we spent a major amount of the game playing her and shes actually mizuki date's clone and she was boss's daughter the whole time and

it just feels really really silly and really dumb. its a twist that wasnt really hinted at (to me) and is entirely based on pulling the wool over the player's eyes and the trust they have in the timeline which sounds really cool in words like this i realize but the execution was really really bad

bibis existence as a whole and mizuki being adopted had a similar effect on the first game's story as vlr did on 999 in that it kinda retroactively ruins it and takes away the impact it had in certain plot points
of course i can still appreciate them individually as separate games and basically ignore this (because it also. doesnt really matter) but it just kinda sucks

as does uru and his connection to so sejima which felt pointless and just a way for them to tie things back into the first game in a way that doesnt really impact anything or have a significant meaning

the whole cast, new and old, suffers as a whole because of this timeline organization and the way theyre presented to us
i feel like we spent way way less time with the new characters compared to the supporting cast in the last game and because aini is also actively balancing the new characters while also having almost every single old character around (something something why nurse/chinpei da bus driver all of da sudden), the new characters feel terribly weak and not all that likable

theyre fine. of course i like some of them but theyre just overall weak
especially with the way almost all of them are shoved right alongside the existing cast with assurances that theyve known each other for years and are good friends which did not play well with me at all (gen especially)
i know thats basically what they did with the first game but that was the first game this is the sequel so it comes off much worse

the character that gets this the worst is ryuki because hes one of our protagonists but he gets sidelined pretty much after you finish his "side" in the timeline
i really really liked him (tama to a lesser extent but shes fine) but as soon as i was really subscribing to him as a protagonist (even w his kinda weak backstory), the game plops bibi/mizuki into my lap and forces me to play
i wish so badly he got to be developed more

he and tama are very much victims of this retconning "we were here all along actually" thing but because youre playing as him, it cancels out the jarring effect a bit
his bond with tama is not developed nearly as much as date and aibas though (or even mizuki and aibas) so it guts this relationship they expected me to care a lot about

the older characters suffer because theyre basically the same, presented alongside the new cast when their story is done? it feels like theyre just there for the players to ooh and aah at. i cant say i was all that excited to see ota or moma again but they sure are there. iris too even but shes a sweetie pie so i can forgive
boss and pewter exempt bc they work there but i do wish pewter got a little something more bc i like him

but the most major characters from the previous cast's stories just feel like they get ruined
like what do you mean date lost his memory again and wandered around for SIX YEARS what do you mean hes wearing a silicon mask
what do you mean mizuki grew up to be an abis agent and have all this responsibility and that she has a clone and oh sorry that part of the story wasnt mizuki that was bibi. Very different characters

man it felt like they wanted you to like bibi and mizuki's bond so much by the end. theyre clones, theyre tied together, theyre sisters
but i cant say i liked it much at all
a lot of the new character relationships i didnt like at all outside of ryukis

i warmed up to lien and kizuna by the end but the way theyre introduced is abysmal and amame and gen's relationship just straight up sucks
like whats an uchikoshi game without men being creepy towards barely legal high schoolers right
its one thing to have amane and gen be in love, its another thing to have him acknowledge it as him trying to treat her as a father treats his daughter before that
the perverted jokes do not get any better surrounding these characters either. i guess tama livens it up a little aiming some things at ryuki but for the large majority it still surrounds the made to be attractive women (IRIS IS NEVER FREED!!!!!!!!!!) and it is just as unfunny as it was in the first game
tama is probably the biggest pervert joke source in this game but things even come from aiba and mizuki/bibi which just felt like they were making the jokes for the sake of it
i didnt like it

shoma and komeji as a family are cool and i liked the way it added to the main plot. amame's late addition to it is whatever i didnt really care for it but her being a big sister to shoma is sweet

the true ending sequence is absolutely abysmal and had none of the tension the last game's had
qtes were a slog, the action came off as corny rather than cool, and the epilogue didnt feel good. the fake out ryuki death into them trapping him in a gift box to surprise mizuki and bibi was so dumb and just some shit to stir up melodrama
the credits dance party is good as always though... always fun :]

but what i did really like and felt was a very strong part of the game was the pseudoscience, arg elements, and main philosophical concept they presented with naix along with the way they tie this to the structure of games themselves
the idea that reality is a simulation, there are glitches in the world that reveal its true nature and we must widen the seams to escape and achieve moksha
that fucking rules. its fantastic motivation and its an insanely interesting and scary idea
the story around naix and tearer isnt all that bad even, just the way they tied everything together with most every other character was

i was a bit hesitant at first with the introduction of naix considering what iris said about them in the last game but they are fucking incredible in this game and thats thanks in part to tokikos character
mysterious, off-putting, but has a deeply interesting and sad backstory

it comes off as a bit silly and outrageous that an organization that is so deluded somehow got so powerful and is involved in these hb killings

but it becomes much more sinister when youre confronted with the possibility that theyre completely right

by far my favorite part of the game was the ryuki diverge ending you got through the nil number
this ending pretty much overshadowed the true ending for me because its so damn good and takes these concepts and wraps them up perfectly

it was fucking terrifying frankly
im a total wuss but ive always been afraid of video game glitches, errors, whatever happens when things go wrong
and to have this game play on that in the exact perfect way with the distorted music and models and having you as ryuki move out of bounds to find tokiko was so fucking cool

i absolutely adored the way the game broke the fourth wall to convey this idea of reality being a simulation by using these inherently game-y rules and addressing the player directly

in the very first playable sequence the game speaks to the player directly to ask if spoilers from the previous game are okay
i brushed this off as a little fun and silly thing but i had no idea what that would lead up to

its so so scary. especially knowing that ryuki now has to be aware of this truth, aware of the false reality, of a timeline that doesnt exist but happened somewhere, somehow
even though he uses this knowledge to "fix" things and make sure that no one else had to die, was it really right?
everything's perfect, why does it feel so wrong?
this was naix's true victory. they, tokiko most of all, achieved their goal

it reminded me of how i felt after finishing the first game. i loved the ending but i felt like there couldve been a happier ending where everyone could live. shoko and renju could still be alive because i knew everything, so i could fix it, right? just like in 999 and vlr. everything could be fixed through knowledge from other timelines. but what did that really mean, would it really be okay to fix things just like that?

i like the way the zero escape series goes about multiple timelines in a more grounded pseudoscientific way while the AI series approaches it with a more unsettling and technological way. hopefully that makes sense

this resolution makes the rest of the game, that i disliked so much, all worth it to me. it is worth going through subpar reveals and weak character developments to reach this ending and its presentation

it put ryukis mojibake breakdowns into perspective too
is it hallucinations as the characters assure you, induced by the virus and subliminal messaging, or is it a sign of some higher realization?
these breakdowns and the mysterious naix/tearer videos were also some of my favorite parts. presented in such a cool way and unsettle me so bad
those being in one of the first sequences you play as ryuki made such a huge impression on me. still thinking about them still thinking about the diverge ending

very flawed game but has some good things that make me not regret playing it
ryuki ily