Zero Escape— A Story Based Review

Three Stories, Two Games, One Headache, and Zero Waste Of Time.

9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors (999)

I really wish I knew about this game back when it came out. I would’ve been such a smart kid if I played Zero Escape instead of Pokemon. I had no idea what I was in for. Yes, this is a mystery puzzle game. I knew it was going to be like AI: The Somnium Files (same creator) but this really felt like the originator. I could see how those games take from this, but also how this game creates the core concepts that make the genre.

Obviously, be ready to read, because some of these people can really yap. I mean…Akane please! But it’s all good, I enjoy science, especially theoretical concepts. And this game takes a bunch of them and tries to create a story out of it. I will say, in the nine hours (…wow, how on brand) it took for me to beat the first route for me, I don’t think I had enough time with the material for it to not be confusing by the end. Actually, I understood it more when I got to the 2nd game, where they repeat the concept and also explain it in a lot more detail and with easy to understand examples.

I also like how this game can’t be dated. Other than the graphics, a new game could look pretty much the same. I played Rain Code+: Master Detective Files pretty recently, and it’s more or less the same except existing in a 3D space. That also goes to show how this genre hasn’t really expanded that far. AI: The Somnium Files added in the timed dream mode, Rain Code+ adds in an adventure mystery solving mode, and Danganronpa has it’s trials and mini-games. But like Ace Attorney (which I also played for the first time recently), the genre staples are also the rulebook. This is especially obvious when you look at the other games these creators have made. Uchikoshi made AI: The Somnium Files, and No Sleep For Kaname Date is very similar to Zero Escape. Danganronpa is getting a remake for DR2, Rain Code+ was similar to both, and the latest game, Shuten Order, is also spiritually similar save for the new gimmick of adding in multiple genre mini-games. I don’t hate this by the way, it’s more of the good stuff for an interactive VN enjoyer like myself.

8/10

Virtue’s Last Reward (VLR)

When you first enter this game, you’re greeted with a quality OST. The music is really good. It’s both notable, recognizable, and matches the tone of the scene. I like that hype moments have adequate music choice that helps to increase the tension of the moment. And there were many tracks that have small beats or notes that almost sound like they come from behind you (maybe it was just my headphones) but it helped to put me in the mood and in the room.

The characters are all awesome! Yes, they are definitely stereotyped. Alice is the cool beauty. Dio is the manipulative a-hole. Luna is the kind and hopeful dame. But I like that in each person’s ending we get to know more about why they are like this. Alice isn’t as single minded as she seems in every scene. Nor is Luna. Or K. Everyone can become distrusting if the right sequence of events occur. Or they can be trusting on the other hand.

And this plays well with the how expanded this flowchart is. 999 was a lot more linear and it was a lot shorter in how each route helps to build the others. With how locks are placed in this game, and how much story building and puzzle solving it takes to acquire different clues to open the locks, you can truly run into a wall early in the game that won’t be solved until the end. Especially if you take one of the two long routes. I also liked that the true split between the routes is not near the end of the flowchart tree but at the very beginning. If you take door 1, the story becomes all about one thing. Door 2 is about another, and door 3 is about another plotline. But you need clues and memories from each plotline to solve each other’s locks. It’s very interesting to break down the story and even see how certain events in one plotline are explained in another plotline. It’s essential that the player sees these moments too, because our knowledge is shared across the routes too via the archive system and via our own memory.

Thus, fascinating storytelling. And just like in 999, we have to endure a bunch of confusing sci-fi theoretical mumbo jumbo to understand it. I don’t fault it for that though. It’s not strange for a sci-fi story to need to explain it’s concepts, it just gets a little difficult when there’s multiple concepts to understand at the same time. The basis is the same as 999, Schrodinger’s Cat. But there’s a bunch more tacked on to explain the ending and how this game transitions to Zero Time Dilemma.

9/10

Zero Time Dilemma (ZTD)

First things first, the characters. I had some major faults here. Especially with characters we’ve seen in the previous games. Junpei supposedly just came from 999’s events but his personality is closed to Tenmyouji’s from VLR. He’s not supposed to be calculating yet, he’s supposed to be a savior like he was in 999. It’s explained a little of how he’s changed, but I can’t feel like that justifies his attitude in this game. Sigma and Phi on the other hand are exactly like it says on the tin. Coming from the events of VLR, both know everything that’s going to happen and what has happened in the future. So, they’re very clearly here to try and figure out what happens inside the Dcom Facility. Sigma does seem a little…dumber though, and it’s not clear why. Phi also makes fun of him throughout the game for it.

The other major issue is the camera and graphics. They feel so odd. The camera angles are skewed. The composition is often too close to the subject. And the game itself just doesn’t look all that nice for something that came out in 2016. I actually preferred how VLR looked, it was old but it wasn’t bad. I’m not entirely on board with the cinematic gameplay, I like the VN style more where I can read the text myself. This hurts twice as much when the voice acting took a nosedive. Familiar characters sound the same but when they have to scream or be expressive, there’s a sense of muted emotions. It’s almost like every line was recorded separate from the entire dialogue, they don’t flow nor do they sound convincing.

On the other hand, the music is good. A lot of it is just tweaked versions from VLR, but there’s also new ones. The main trait that these tracks have is their ability to tense up any moment or to be eerie and ambient. There are multiple tracks that make it sound like something in my room is moving. Or tracks that are plain creepy all by themselves. They are a definite step up from VLR, which were already good.

And finally the story. I can’t say I’m truly happy with the fragmentation of the story. I get that this game’s gimmick is the Reverie Syndrome, and so to replicate that we go in and out of various fragments where the characters interact with each other differently each time. It has the same flavor of Zero Escape where characters reveal different clues about each other and the game, but the fragmentation makes it harder to decipher the story at the beginning. That was enough for the start of this game to feel like a drag. There is a very clear “ah-ha!” moment in this game. In this game, since all the branches are already shown to us, we have to piece the puzzle together. I will admit though, even though I like the “eureka” moment, it takes a while before we get there. A lot of fragments have to be opened up before we start to piece together the puzzle, the storyline, and the clues. Just like in VLR, each route more or less has a theme to it. There are three main storylines occurring at once, and each team will work towards solving their storyline. I love Uchikoshi for this level of intricacy.

But when it comes to the characters, I’m not really happy with the entire Q team. Partly because there’s a kid in the game and even though the previous game had Quark as the child character, he wasn’t really active for most of the game. There were only two portions where he was actually even interacting with Sigma directly. Otherwise he was just asleep. But in this game, Q is one of the main characters so fleeing as a kid who has amnesia is quite frustrating and it’s even worse when you consider that that he’s paired up with Eric, who is the worst character in the game. Even worse when there are moments where Q can be killed…yes, a child is killed in this game. VLR avoided this by having Quark sleep or the other characters showing genuine compassion for him. Then there’s Eric. At the beginning he’s annoying. He’s easy to to provoke and without Mira he’s just an idiot. Q is smarter than him. Eric does have his own sad backstory, but it’s not enough to make me feel anything for him. And Mira is…well I won’t spoil it. The other two teams are plenty interesting with characters that come from the previous titles. Carlos isn’t that bad, though he sometimes looks like he’s frozen. Same with Diana, and considering that you would only play this game after playing the other two games, everyone else is interesting.

Where the game redeems itself is in the ending. Much less confusing, and provides a resolute solution to the entire series. As long as you allow yourself to not think too hard about the multiple bootstrap paradoxes that exist. Think of it this way, this game has a solution to an equation. You know what the answer is, but the characters have tried again and again to find out what variables, constants, and values equate to the solution. That means in 999 they spent so much effort to make sure Junpei was primed; VLR did the same for Sigma and Phi, and ZTD does it for all nine characters to ensure that they find the solution. Finally, in this history our protagonists have found the left side of the equation that matches the right side and we are free!

7/10

As a series, this is a hit. If anything, at least for how unique it is. There’s a Japanese flair to these games, the way they are both nostalgic and comical but also serious and creepy. Coming off of the Ace Attorney Trilogy, both of these series give me a sense of what 2000s Japanese games were like. Yes, they are visual novels. But the quality and care put into them make it clear why fans are still in love with the characters now. Maybe not as much for Zero Escape, but it’s effort to bridge big brain sci-fi with a compelling non-linear mystery is praiseworthy. And for me, having played AI: The Somnium Files (2019) (and its sequel) before Zero Escape, I can totally see the upward progression from Uchikoshi. I think I’m a fan.

8/10