Being the third game in the Zero Escape series, you probably know what to expect by this point. However, this is different from the first two in that it completely ditches the VN-style presentation for more cinematic cutscenes. This doesn't really pay off very well considering the animations are pretty bad. You can tell they had like no budget when making this game because the presentation is a big step down. The models themselves look fine, though I do miss the Kinu Nishimura designs of the first two games.

The story structure is quite a bit different from VLR, where instead of every choice splitting off into a new branch, the flowchart is sort of random. You don't know beforehand where on the timeline each scene takes place, (assuming you're not using a guide) so it's like filling in pieces of a puzzle, the puzzle in this case being the flowchart. It's an interesting direction, but not a straight upgrade from VLR since there are fewer branching points.

Now, about the story itself... it's okay, I guess. It starts off really interesting, but it gets kind of ridiculous towards the end. It's cool to see events that were alluded to in VLR play out, and I enjoyed a lot of the character moments, but some of the twists are just bizarre. There are also a lot of unintentionally funny moments because of the awkward animations. I can't decide if the big reveal at the end is really stupid or actually genius.

I wouldn't say ZTD was disappointing, in fact I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, but it's really not as good as the first two. There are parts that I'm not sure were planned from the beginning, or if they were decided last minute because of budget/time constraints. I guess you could say, "Life is simply unfair..."

🐌/10