Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, Ever17’s cousin

6 years and I finally finish this mess

Before I start this review I have to genuinely mention I am so sick of watching the same door animations and the map constantly showing you walk from A to Z a BILLION TIMES EVEN ON SKIP.

(-) Models, Lighting and Animations

Horrendous, ill-looking game and just completely confusing why they have an entire 2D sprite-set for the characters that matches the sprite aesthetics for the first game and then purposefully choose to never use it in favor of objectively uglier graphics. Literally BLOWS MY MIND. I originally started this game in Ramadan back in 2016-ish I believe and I remember just looking at the game back then gave me a headache, this is one of the ugliest games ever made.

Additionally, there is no concept of lighting everything is lit up exactly the same so there’s no depth of shadows or realistically any reason to even go out of their way to source 3D models for a story in which there’s such limited animations. Many times, there’s going to be a door or an elevator animation and you never see characters actually interacting with them, the doors open and close with default animations like old RE door animations.

The graphics of this game have aged like milk.

(-) Gameplay

The flow system is something I’ve supported in Uchikoshi games, it reduces walkthrough dependency that traditional VNs can have and it greatly streamlines the routing process the diehard VN enjoyers can probably have a court session on this topic I don’t really care, but what I do care about is the puzzle gameplay. It is bad. Holy SHIT is it bad. Oh, and I cheated like 40% of these I could not be fucked to care.

Throw darts to make a score of 91, connect voltage paths to generate 120V, move dice around, move ice around, move jellyfish around, Uchikoshi why don’t you fucking move your ass around and get a new job. Often times you have to remember a numerical pattern or combination (many times you are tasked with making calculations on the fly), its BAD gameplay, AI Somnium seems like the logical next step for Uchikoshi considering how the “puzzles” are far more intuitive and original

There’s an in-game explanation (spoilers) for the puzzles that allow the MC to be better at jumping between timelines and interacting with the 4th dimension and I was like shut the fuck UP its just there to fill airtime

Additionally there’s straight up quality of life stuff missing from the game, whenever you end a route if you accidentally click a box on the flow map (which WILL happen trust me), you can’t zoom out of it, so you are forced to press the return button, which means having to REWATCH sigma get gassed in his car 1 billion times. Other times when you use an item instead of putting the next item in your item-list in your hand you have to go to the menu physically and do it. In the crew quarters if you input the green password first you can get locked out of the room from entering the blue password afterwards…. Like WHAT? There’s a dice puzzle in the archives and both blue and green passwords have the same pattern the colored dice are supposed to be in, but the green password requires them to have a specific number facing upwards, the issue is if you fuck up just ONE die but get the pattern right it will consider it as you trying to get the blue password again and reset the dice. AMAZING.

BAD. -9999/10. Reason to not touch these games with a 10 meter pole.

(+) Soundtrack

I like some of the OSTs

(+) Story(i): Nonary/Ambidex Game (not the puzzles lol):

The Nonary game in 999 based its character grouping on numbers on the watch which was an extremely cool concept and I wish they continued it in this game, but the Ambidex game is also very interesting in its own right.

I like the idea of pairing based on colors or complementary colors, the dynamic between characters who don’t like each other being forced to pair up is a lot of fun, the watch switching colors after voting, the pair/solo combination of watches, a representative from each color being forced to vote or all people belonging to the color being penalized, it felt very different for Uchikoshi’s writing and I wish he added a few more layers to this to make it even more complicated and fun.

The real meat is definitely in the voting. I LOVE the voting concept, the only issue is that the game has so many repeating events in each route that the voting rarely ever changes too drastically, there’s also this weird mix of characters acting out-of-character for some BS reason in a few routes (the Bad Endings).

I do think Uchikoshi strictly put the entire voting aspect in because he just read about the prisoner’s dilemma and wanted to have it in the game but even the bland as fuck cast of characters have some cool friction with one another, expanding on the “bland” cast later in the review.

(-/+) Story(ii): The Overall Plot (Spoilers)

I’ll start this by saying this is probably the 2nd most ambitious writing I’ve seen from Uchikoshi since R11, and similarly to R11 there’s some insane flops but similarly intriguing developments that really stick with you, the time stuff is exactly like Ever17’s time loop where there’s a system that’s at play and you have to force the future (as already experienced) to happen in a certain way in order for everyone to live.

After reading this type of story for so damn long I’ve grown extremely tired, its not a good explanation to say “We do XYZ exactly so that time keeps looping”, I’ll give an example: Zero Jr. does not NEED to exist at all in this game the game rules can be relayed by literally anyone else, but the game needs a Monokuma substitute despite not even being a sadistic killing game (much like 999). Additionally, this stupid bunny does not exist for 95% of the game. Oh, but Sigma goes to the past he has to learn advanced AI to make this specific bunny for this game because grandfather paradox logic. TIRED. TIRED WRITING.

I like the idea that he really went there for some twists, but it also feels like the plot exists to serve the twists. The thing about Radical 6 and how it works EXACTLY with the gravity in order to fool the reader feels extremely contrived, even when you see Phi jumping around you’d imagine she herself would come to the moon conclusion but she doesn’t, and anyone would to a certain degree find the physical world to be a bit strange in its interactions, had there been consistent enough foreshadowing I would have loved it, or in Alex’s criticism if Uchikoshi just made it so that the facility supported earth gravity it wouldn’t feel stupid.

Another weird thing Uchikoshi does to hide this twist is straight up make the Moon a brown desert, WHY? Anyways the twist was really obvious to me even though he tries extra hard to throw you off with the lunar eclipse article.

All being said I do find it funny that he explained the JUMP OF ALL THINGS. I thought its just because the game is fucking ugly as shit. Anyways.

Another example of contrived explanations is how Sigma doesn’t realize he’s old, he specifically has cybernetic limbs so that he can’t tell his age, but on several puzzle rooms you can encounter a mirror and it genuinely feels like ludonarrative dissonance.

Additionally, the puzzle rooms themselves always get solved but you’d encounter some roadblocks like Tenmyouji having to use a picture of a girl to open the door (how the hell would they solve it if he didn’t conveniently have that? Oh nvm grandfather paradox there’s no WAY they’d get stuck XDDDDDD nice writing Uchikoshi). Unlike the moon twist, THIS one has a lot of foreshadowing and dialogue that directly references your age, which I really liked.
Even when I criticize the existence of these twist and how the plot is based around the moon and the old man twist, I still think these twists are a fun read, I like the idea Uchikoshi was going for despite the wobbly execution. I HATED the overarching plot for 999 and I think Uchikoshi just does a way better job in VLR with some ambitious twists.

Similarly to 999 and other Uchikoshi games, however, it is very clear he CANNOT kill a single character, and for that reason I don’t even think he should write these <trapped in a life or death game> Visual Novels because he wants his stories to be contrived paradoxical pacifistic muck. It was so obvious to me Akane would be alive later because Uchikoshi just does this all the time, what is the POINT of a game that can kill you if it claims no victims? If the point is the game exists because it exists in the future that needs to come to be, then it could have been ANY game or event, nothing necessitates that it needs to be a life or death game despite the shitty explanation that it boosts your consciousness to the 4th dimension or whatever.

(-/+) Story(iii): Endings (Spoilers)

(+) K Ending:
There’s other portion of the stories I liked, I enjoyed K’s route where he kills Dio (funnily enough Dio manages to escape quite a lot in the game as opposed to Sigma since he gets apprehended almost immediately for slighting someone during the voting etc), his entire route is completed while you both are dying and I also liked the clone reveal, although again there’s very little explanation given for why this is even done in the first place with a special K true ending that is now apparently non-canon. I suppose this is handled in ZTD which I never want to play.

(+) Luna Ending:
This one was a lot of fun, it has some cool reveals with a sappy emotional ending which doesn’t feel all too bad. I liked how Uchikoshi rationalized all of the murders even though extremely contrived story telling with the “Sayaka Maizono” number twist (it genuinely makes no sense how blood would copy thigh to thigh its not like thick ink, also Dio is strangely opposed to killing them himself, but whatever it was fun)

(-) Quark Ending:
This is a non-ending actually Quark is just here for the SAKE OF IT HE GENUINELY HAS NO REASON TO BE IN THE GAME

(-) Tenmyouji Ending:
“I love my grandpa” that’s the ending Uchikoshi you are so jobless

(-/+) Dio Ending:
Because of the horrible graphics I thought this ending was actually extremely creepy, even though I was very adamant on the fact that they were on the moon it was still creepy the way they made it so that it looks like a wasteland. I’m neutral on this ending since I hate the stupid cult plot.

(-/+) Phi Ending:
Not necessarily a Phi ending but ehh I’ve already discussed at length how much I dislike this paradoxical pacifistic storytelling in ZE games

(-/+) Sigma Ending:
Its just there to explain the sperm in your arms

(-/+) Alice Ending:
Enjoy manually decoding shit anyways it’s a fine ending

(-/+) Clover Ending:
I thought everyone killing themselves was cool but also how the fuck does Radical 6 even spread, additionally isn’t everyone sick with this disease? Then why are only Quark and Alice affected in each route? I was so confused about this.

(-) Bad Endings:
With a minor exception of the Luna Ending which felt like it at least had some variety with her escaping with Quark, all the Endings are the same where sometimes someone will escape leaving you all behind or you would have the ability to escape but everyone restrains you, I thought it would have been very smart to have a variety of creepy Bad Ends and seems like an extremely missed opportunity.

(-) Characters

Horrible, Uchikoshi has never been good at banter its very clear from his games (now his protagonist is just a straight up pervert so funny guys) but yeah I felt like the cast of characters was extremely fucking bland and the voting game made them interesting if anything. Zero Jr. the rabbit wasn’t even a mainstay like nigga is the bunny there for merch? Shut the FUCK up.

Dio could have been an interesting dude but he’s so in-your-face evil that it felt like Uchikoshi wanted to hang a billboard on his body that read “I’M THE BAD GUY”, and even then there’s a fun way of doing that but Uchikoshi missed so hard. Clover was annoying straight up, Quark deserves to be boiled. Tenmyouji’s entire personality was “where is Quark”, Alice’s personality is being betrayed the first round and then killing herself, Phi is good especially with the lack of explanation about her origins but then you have Sigma making perverted jokes at her that ruin everything.

(-) Conclusion

I don’t like ZE games, puzzles are shitty browser games that have never been the appeal and I genuinely don’t get why Uchikoshi bothers framing these as survival-type games when he always saves everyone. Its annoying storytelling which I don’t enjoy, additionally I’m sick of the grandfather paradox storytelling methodology and I’m glad at the very least with AI Somnium he did not return to this format because he KEEPS writing them with the very purpose of making everyone survive. Kill one person for stakes, Uchikoshi, and not just the bad guys. With a horrendous cast of characters, dated garbage archaic gameplay elements, horrible graphics, an ambitious but extremely contrived story, I do not recommend this game to a single other person. I don’t like ZE and I think it’s the gutter of the trapped-in-a-facility games.

game SUCKS i go to BED

In typical Game Freak fashion, this is technology from a decade ago being paraded around like it's cool when it's Pokemon. Accelerometers tracking your movement in the night certainly works as a means of tracking sleep, but integration with wrist trackers, smartwatches, and smart rings (and AI beds? Whatever that even means?) have allowed a greater degree of fidelity for users. Sleep as Android has been doing a damn good job of telling me I have horrible sleep hygiene for a decade, only improving with time. It has recommended ways of improving my sleep, alarms that go off only when I'm in a light sleep cycle so I'm less groggy, 'captchas' were I can only turn off my increasingly loud alarm with math, or tapping an NFC point, or shaking my phone like it owes me money. Not only am I firmly entrenched in my current sleep tracker, it has always been frictionless. I tap a widget, I put my phone beside me, I sleep.

Pokemon Sleep shows a fundamental misunderstanding of why sleep trackers are used, how they are presently used, where the market lies, and how the gamification of life actually works. This isn't Habitica or Fabulous trying to improve your life through things you don't already do. I have no choice in whether or not I sleep. The appeal of a sleep tracker is that it is set and forget, a companion for something I have to and will do anyways, so it better not be an annoying partner. If Pokemon Sleep wants the user to be concerned about the quality of their sleep, shouldn't it be able to sync up with existing hardware that can supplement its readings? If sleep is meant to be restorative, why is that rejuvenation immediately undone by tutorialisation and currencies and systems and a goddamn battle pass when I wake up? Why am I chastised when I wake that I only got 54/100 sleep points because I woke in the night and can only get 5-6 hours of sleep a night if I'm lucky? Why is the assumption that 8.5 hours of sleep is a perfect ideal for everyone to aim for? Why is there no accommodation for the peculiarities of the human sleep experience, for the insomniac, the narcoleptic, the medicated? The very least it could do is offer a sleep quiz, or a calibration period. The very least it could do is not inundate me with things I have to learn and keep in mind. The very least it could do is not make my phone radiate enough heat that my wrist tracker thinks something is wrong. The very least it could do is not eat 80%(!!!) of my battery at night so I panic when I wake up. And for the chronically eepy like me, the bare minimum amount of effort could be put towards not having a minutes-long load-screen before I can track my sleep. Last night I passed out waiting for it to complete. Y'know what it took for my wrist tracker to document my sleep last night? Nothing.