I found this visual novel on Kickstarter and tried out the demo. Supposedly, the game is heavily inspired by the Ace Attorney and Zero Escape series. I have mixed feelings toward both, but it seemed like the problems I have with them (plotlessness and bizarre over-the-top pseudoscience mindscrews, respectively) wouldn’t be present from the blurb I read.
The game starts with a Pretentious Opening Quote™ that scrolled by too fast for me to read. It seems like the glory/horror of war will be a big theme, but I could guess that much from the Kickstarter description.
Then the opening is the main character’s sister getting fridged, because it’s not like that idea isn’t horribly overdone in addition to being horribly sexist. We’re not off to a good start.
Then we skip to two years later and the main character’s buddy is unlocking a box using a “King Key”. The main character makes a comment about how that sounds like another word, so it looks like the other thing I hated about Zero Escape (contrived setups for sexual humor everywhere) is also being faithfully preserved. Yaaay. (I’d also like to point out that this joke occurs in-between the narration describing the mutilated bodies of previous treasure hunters. Not the time, game.) At least the protagonist seems to act relatively mature about it unlike Junpei and Sigma, so maybe we aren’t getting a creepy perv for a protagonist.
Then the other guy hacks something and Protagonist thinks about how there’s an artifact that can turn back time and he’s going to use it to save his sister and oh Jesus that’s where the Zero Escape influence is going to come in isn’t it. The artifact is totally going to involve some insane magic pseudoscience bullcrap on the level of “your actions in the future affect the past”. Ehh. Well at least the setting is a much more downplayed Ace Attorney-style thing so maybe they’ll actually be able to pull it off instead of leaving me with the feeling that the story was better when it wasn’t about crazy pseudoscience magic. Maybe.
Then he…wakes up in a room?
This interface is kinda awkward. The print text here cuts off and doesn’t display the full page text. Maybe there’s a way to scroll down that I’m not finding?
So it looks like this is his sister’s room but he doesn’t seem to recognize it and when I leave he’s just on the streets at night and I’m really confused.
So he’s decided he wants to get the old treasure-hunting gang back together so they can get the time travel artifact. For some reason he’s decided to start with the most logical and level-headed guy who obviously isn’t impressed with the “I can totes resurrect people, for reals” pitch instead of trying to get more support on his side to convince him first. I don’t get anywhere in the discussion and he throws me out.
Oh hey, three scenes in and we finally meet a non-fridged female character! Apparently she’s on board with the magic time travel plan and will be acting as the tutorial advice character because she gives me some tips on how to win over logical guy. She better not die.
Then I got a Bad End by agreeing to help some guys. I quickly realized they were crazy suspicious, but it looks like if you agree to hear them out they kill you no matter what. Harsh.
I just realized the interface disappears when choices pop up so you can’t quicksave during them. I hate it when visual novels do that. Apparently there’s a “rollback” function but I can’t seem to get it to work.
Okay so the protagonist’s name is “Yu” and everyone and their dog takes the opportunity to crack puns about it, but they’re in Japan and everyone is supposedly speaking Japanese (there’s even a scene with a “not-so-Japanese man” who Yu can’t understand because he speaks a different language) so I don’t even.
The next day I talk to logical guy again, but beforehand I talk to the patrons to try and dig up dirt on him. There’s one promising lead but the guy is really cagey, and when I try to bring it up with logical guy he flips out and kicks me out again. Advice girl calls again to tell me I screwed up. I don’t normally like reloading in VNs but I do to see if I can make things go better, and I manage to successfully confront him on a more minor issue but it doesn’t make him any more amenable to talking about the heavy stuff.
Oh, and when Advice Girl calls Yu he makes a weird joke and she goes off on a weird tangent about it being sexual harassment and Yu is confused because they don’t have laws for that anymore because post-apocalyptic and she says she read it in an old book but she knows he didn’t mean anything by it and she was just screwing with him so ??? That was some really hamhanded exposition there. It wasn’t really that risque at all, (certainly not nearly to the extent of, say, everything Sigma says ever), just random. At least it looks like the protagonist will get called out on his perviness if it happens again? I am cautiously optimistic that this will not descend to Zero Escape levels.
There’s a guy who says he’ll give me some info on logical guy after he gets really drunk, but I can’t seem to trigger that flag. He just says “come back later” every time I talk, regardless of if I exit the building or whatever. Is this a bug, or what?
Yu has really weird dreams every night. I have a sinking feeling they’re going to be involved in the trademark Zero Escape mindscrew twists.
So I have another conversation with logical guy and it looks like I might be getting somewhere but Yu still goes on about how he won’t budge and I don’t know enough. Then he storms off and Yu decides to investigate the secret room behind the bar in the hopes of finding something out, and… the demo ends. Well that was anti-climactic.
So, I don’t really have a good idea of where the story is heading right now. So far it’s been kind of bland, honestly – the entire game is just going between the same three locations and talking to a guy for three days straight. And even after all that, nothing’s really happened; there’s been a lot of talking but pretty much no action. I presume it’ll pick up eventually, but right now there’s not a whole lot going on and the demo didn’t give me a good idea of how things might change.
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen much evidence that there will be meaningful choices, which is a shame because that’s what I like best about VNs. The story seems pretty linear; even when the game told me that this conversation with the guy was the final push and I couldn’t screw it up, it still seemed scripted into a single outcome. (Let’s face it, though, if they did have choices and branching it would totally just be a setup for some True End bullcrap.)
I don’t loathe the characters, which is already a step up from Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors. I don’t love them either, though – right now they’re kind of flat, which is a problem when I’m supposed to care deeply about the protagonist. Maybe after they get time to develop they’ll be better – it took a while for the cast of Virtue’s Last Reward to grow on me, after all. And I liked the use of Phoenix Wright-style social puzzles, even if they basically boil down to “talk to everyone about everything”. I’m… cautiously optimistic, I’d say? I’m still wary of Zero Escape-style mindscrews, but those will probably only occur at the very end so I don’t have a good idea of what they might be. And there hasn’t been any “let me tell you about this cool thought experiment I just read about”, which is a good sign. It could crash and burn or it could turn out really good, depending on if the developers are sensible enough to nix the worse elements of their inspirations.
I just hope that the demo will be more substantial and give me a better idea of where things are going in the final release. The current one doesn’t even have a real cliffhanger or any plot hooks or anything, it just…ends.
OMG someone else who has played 999 and hated all the things I hated about it! WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE LOVE THAT GAME?
It all comes down to whether or not you think the ending twists are worth the slog of the setup, I think. When I see people talking about the game they mostly fawn over the big twists and things while agreeing the rest of the game is pretty meh (most people say they hated Junpei, even!). I actually did like (most of) the twists myself, especially because it meant I was finally getting resolution and things were finally ending, just…not enough to wash away the rest of the tediousness.
The replay mechanic is probably a big issue there, especially since the only meaningful divergence happens at the very end. If you could just skip to meaningful choices directly like in VLR it would be much less frustrating I think.
But yeah I don’t know. I found some of the characters (Lotus, Ace before the reveal, Santa, Snake, Seven) likeable at first but my goodwill gradually dwindled as they descended into pompousness, pettiness, and/or jerkishness. Like, on my first playthrough I went into the operating room because I hadn’t been in a room with Clover or Seven yet, expecting to be pleasantly surprised by the exploration of their characters, and then they start hurling insults at each other before we’re even in the room and I’m just like -_-
Have you tried out Virtue’s Last Reward though? I found myself being surprised at how not-terrible it was, then actually liking it, then being really disappointed by the ending (so, the exact opposite of my 999 experience).
(And you should totally resume your Let’s Hate of 999! It brought up so many things I had repressed like how awful the writing was. Or maybe Act can give it a try after F/SN.)
Nothing about the actual review, though…?
Ah, sorry! I just couldn’t think of much to say about this game aside from “welp, that sounds fairly shitty” and also maybe to point out that the sister wasn’t just fridged, she’s fridged in a gross sexualized CG.
I have no interest at all in playing the sequel. I don’t want to bring that kind of pain on myself again.
And I think what I learned from that project is that I am just not a Let’s Hate-creating kind of person. I found the experience way more draining than I expected it to be, and in general would much rather spend my energy on writing fanfic of things I enjoy (or ideas and characters I enjoy in things I am overall not so hot on). Act is welcome to take the project on if she wants it, because the chances of my ever resuming it are exceedingly slim.
the sister wasn’t just fridged, she’s fridged in a gross sexualized CG.
Yyyyeah I cringed when I saw it. And the whole “I’m so sorry to burden you by dying, I’m so inconsiderate” thing. Urk.
I have no interest at all in playing the sequel. I don’t want to bring that kind of pain on myself again.
That’s what I thought too, but maybe try reading a few posts from this ongoing Let’s Play? I will warn you that there’s another character with a ridiculous Lotus-style outfit, but the game treats her slightly better than Lotus I think. There’s less insistence that she’s the antichrist for doing reasonable things, and when there is an indictment of her, the narration’s in first-person so it comes across as Sigma’s personal viewpoint rather than something narratively-supported. And there are 4 female characters instead of 3 this time.
And I think what I learned from that project is that I am just not a Let’s Hate-creating kind of person.
I know what you mean. The Reconstruction has been pretty draining for me. Maybe I can convince Farla to do one for 999.
I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can possibly overstate how uninterested I am in playing anything else by the 999 team, especially if it’s not being billed as “great all around, 500% improvement!” but rather “better for most of the game but then the ending sucked”. There are too many other things I could be spending my time on instead.
And the whole “I’m so sorry to burden you by dying, I’m so inconsiderate” thing. Urk.
I will have you know I demand an apology in any such circumstances. Just because you’re dying in agony is no reason to be self-centered!
I gave up on Uchikoshi after having Ever17 hyped up as some kind of masterpiece, trying to finish three seperate routes and failing due to utter boredom, and then looking up the Shyamalan on tvtropes.
I love that it exists, but the twist literally requires most of the game to be filler to hide the clues. The characters are really bland and large portions of the routes are shared for completely unavoidable reasons. There’s a really horrible cringeworthy scene at the very end that didn’t need to be there at all. Despite being entirely constructed around a single giant twist, there’s still a glaring plothole with “plot magic!” as the only explanation. Not even foreshadowed pseudoscience, a legit miracle straight out of the author’s ass.
At least his characters apparently got better! People keep saying Zero Escape is superior to 999, but those are the same people who think that 30+ hours of tedium are a reasonable price to pay to be surprised. If you say it’s a better game, I’ll give it a shot.
Didn’t realize Ever 17 and 999 were the same writer. Good to know I should skip it, it was on my list.
Ah, you were considering Ever17? I’m half-disappointed and half-relieved you’re skipping it. On the one hand, watching you tear into that piece of crap would be glorious. On the other hand, it’d probably make you explode from rage. It’s…really, really bad.
Oh gods Ever17. I tried reading a LP of that and after finishing the first route (Takeshi’s) I just ragequit. So, so awful. Literally nothing happens between the first day and the last except stupid dating sim crap (really awful dating sim crap at that, hello painfully textbook tsundere and why are you in love with a computer Takeshi what is wrong with you). Everyone says that yeah, the game itself sucks but the ending twist is really awesome!!! which I guess is the mindset you have to have when you think 999 is a good game but it doesn’t impress me very much because that’s awful writing. Also, I’ve heard people say the twists were pretty much self-plagiarized and done better in VLR anyway so there’s no point.
Virtue’s Last Reward is definitely better than 999. As I said to Ember, I found myself actually liking it a lot. It probably helps that I took the magenta path first (the best one). Just be prepared for disappointment, the ending is… pretty out there and ends on a massive cliffhanger.
Does it count as a spoiler if most people would agree you’re better off skipping straight to the twist?
**EVER17 & 999 ENDING SPOILERS**
Re: Self-plagiarism: Both E17 and 999 involve reconstructing a past scenario to complete a stable timeloop. 999 uses morphic resonance to connect the loop, while Ever17 involves manipulating a 4th dimensional entity (the player) to believe that the two people they are possessing are seperate perspectives in the same amusement park disaster, when in reality the two occur several decades apart. The latter event is orchestrated by survivors and descendants from the former event, for the purposes of summoning the entity to inadvertantly save a victim of the former disaster so as not to cause a grandfather paradox. The game exploits the lack of protagonist sprites to trick you, as you can only see the viewpoint characters when you aren’t playing them, allowing the game to disguise the fact that “Kid” from the former scenario is acting as the dead “Takeshi” in the latter, while the “Kid” you play as in the latter is a new addition who is completely out of the loop.
So, large portions of the game need to repeat because all the major story beats from the original disaster need to be hit in the second one or else it won’t match. The original content is mostly dating sim freetime activities where the party splits up and you get your obligatory Important Plot Concept for that route.
Oddly enough, after setting up the game to have the player act as a vital in-story character, they give the entity a name and speaking lines, distancing them from the player again. I don’t get why this was done and I think it’s stupid. There’s also the issue that the only established power the entity has is to push someone towards a certain decision in a crucial moment (incorperating VN decisions into the narrative!) but the actual pivotal moment involves the entity nudging Takeshi (currently dead for hours on the ocean floor) awake and inspiring him to swim to the surface with some really good motivational speaking.
I think that while E17 was far more ambitious in incorperating the player, it was horribly executed compared to the “June was the bottom DS screen all along!” reveal.
I don’t know if any of this was repeated for VLR, but Remember11 went off on some other ridiculous tangent entirely. It’s actually pretty suspenseful, linear and decently paced until it stops after answering exactly one mystery and requires a detailed timeline of the entire Infinity series and a bumch of inference to guess at all the rest of them. I don’t think VLR could possibly be worse in that regard.
Ah, okay. That actually does sound pretty cool but, yeah, not worth the slog.
I’m actually somewhat interested in Remember11. I’ve heard people say it’s the reverse of Ever17 – most of the game is really good and then it fizzles in the ending. (So, like VLR then.) I’ve heard the reason for that is it ran into budget problems and wasn’t ever finished properly, so they slapped together a crappy non-ending instead. Apparently it was re-released in Japan with an actual ending, but there’s no English translation, so.
So, large portions of the game need to repeat because all the major story beats from the original disaster need to be hit in the second one or else it won’t match.
The thing is, having a clever reason for why the plot repeats doesn’t in itself absolve the fact the plot repeats. You need to have a clear idea of how you’re going to work around the inevitable problem, and it sounds like these games just shrug and say it’s required.
I wasn’t excusing it, the fact is that it’s an awful slog, especially considering that the individual character plots that are supposed to spice up the routes are largely tied up with explaining the facet of the mystery that character is involved with.
But I also can’t think of a way to fix it without collapsing the entire thing. The skip function maxes out at an unsatisfactory speed, maybe speeding that up? My instinct is just to say “This plot has seriously deleterious effects on the structure of the story, you shouldn’t use it.” Most likely there is a solution and I can’t grasp it, and that colored my description. Sorry.
Hm. I just marathoned the entire LP (because I hate myself), and I really don’t see why you couldn’t just start on the final route. The other routes are just totally unnecessary; Coco’s route even repeats pertinent scenes from the other routes so you don’t even have to rely on prior knowledge! And apparently the true timeline was a merge of the two routes anyway so what was the point of splitting them up in the first place? Agh.
And yeah, giving Blick Winkel lines of his own (and giving him a defined gender) is just…what. If ever there was a time when a silent protagonist would have actually facilitated player immersion…
The whole ending sequence seems pretty phoned-in in general to me, honestly. Like… he needs to sink to IBF, and his first instinct is to grab something heavy and dive? And he’s totally fine afterwards??? And yeah, the narration says Takeshi was totally dead but he gets resurrected BY MAGIC/THE POWER OF LOVE. I don’t even.
(And the self-plagarism thing is 100% true. What few ideas weren’t repeated in VLR were used in 999. I really hope Uchikochi was responsible for those ideas and not the other writer, because otherwise it would be actual plagarism…)
I’m sorry, that was supposed to be a sophisticated answer to your query of how to fix the plot and it devolved into a rant. Oops.
I think that, fundamentally, stuff had to happen in the filler routes. That’s really the biggest problem; they’re just so incredibly empty, like the game is hoarding all the plot for the very end. They should have been full, mostly self-contained stories in and of themselves (like in VLR). The foreshadowing also should have been proper foreshadowing, in that it should have allowed a clever player to guess the twists in advance (like in VLR) instead of just being all “wooo ~mysteries~”. Also, the shoehorned dating sim romance stuff should have been trashed and replaced with better, more substantial plots (like in VLR).
…So basically, it looks like the solution is VLR.
Well, there must be some way.
I mean, okay, so the same events have to play out twice but look like they’re happening once, but you could easily alternate viewpoints so there were no repeats and we just assume that when first section character says they’re going to get lunch, and second section character says they ate lunch, the same lunch happened. You don’t actually need the story beats to be shown repeating if you write it in such a way it’s assumed.
The idea of it is to seem like it’s all the same event, isn’t it? So you could present it like that’s exactly what’s happening and there’s no need to show you the same thing twice because obviously if you saw it happen it’s still happening because you are totally the same person at the same time and not sometimes in some convoluted plot to repeat events to change history.