Zero Escape: The Nonary Games

released on Mar 24, 2017

Zero welcomes you to take part in both the Nonary Game and the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition as the award-winning escape-the-room visual novels Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (999) and its sequel, Virtue’s Last Reward (VLR), are together for the first time.


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This review contains spoilers

This is just a review for 999, not VLR:
I played this once in high school and absolutely loved it but I don't think the story has aged well for me. I think the reveal of the mastermind and their ability to set up the nonary game requires a suspension of disbelief that maybe I'm not willing to do anymore.
I do like the morphic field stuff, it's a cool way of explaining how you the player can direct the MC with meta knowledge of branching story paths that you often find in visual novels like this.
But I also kind of despise these number puzzles, I think they could have been more Professor Layton-y and less Sudoku-y.

no encuentro la version individual asi q los 2, el 999 me encanto pero el virtue last reward cumplio con las expectativas y mejoro todo lo que el anterior hizo.

This review contains spoilers

999: march 10 - march 12, 5/5
fun, charming, intriguing, and really well written!!!! everything wrapped together so nicely. i had so many questions throughout the game and was hanging on every word, and every time the characters went into some shit like Well have you heard of i was like oh fuck here we go
like the science and anecdotes all feel random but theyre so fascinating and elevate the story of the game
created an almost scary atmosphere for me every time it happened

loved the characters so much and thought they had so much personality, wish lotus's design was different and that there werent as many perverted jokes but hey what can you do. i like the rest quite a bit.

i was enjoying the game a lot already but when the true ending hit and the game revealed its hand i fell completely in love
though i wish akane and junpeis relationship was presented a little nicer bc its really heavy on the cheese early on to the point that its almost insufferable but the ending changed my mind about them almost completely. love prevails and love is all powerful
the whole story is really good overall and i think hongou's motivation makes a lot of sense!!!! dude is fucked up!!!!!!!

puzzles were really really fun i have to say the cargo hold was my favorite to do and figure out but the digital root system as a whole was so fucking fun as the thing the puzzles shaped themselves around. solid, dependable, and wraps into the story well too!!

the way the gameplay as a whole wraps into the story with the replays, door choices, and novel/adventure mode is so well done too and im sure its even better in the ds version

good aesthetic, really nice 3d visuals that feel creepy like a 3d adventure game from the 90s
good and catchy music, wasnt crazy but it was a nice backdrop to the whole game
fantastic voice work (JP) as well

doesnt outstay its welcome with the replay factor and wraps up quickly and nicely

i hope what im writing gets across how much i loved this game

vlr: march 12 - march 16, 2/5
i wanted to like this game much more than i did so so bad
i couldnt help comparing it to 999 bc vlr is its own game (although connected) but 999 just did everything vlr was going for so so so so much better

the need to replay to get information for other endings was one thing and i liked it at first, loved it in 999, but you have to do it so goddamn much in this game its ridiculous
i understand its essential to the story but fuck i dont even like the story!!!!!!!!! so many things and events repeat just for a few lines to be different and it gets tiring having to skip through so so much
999 does the same obviously but way less than vlr just bc it has less branches
not to mention
the fucking door/travel animations i was seriously so frustrated with being forced to watch these it had to have made up like half of my playtime
AND the shots of the room from different angles you had to watch almost every time you entered a room! sometimes even between dialogue!
sure theyre fast forwardable! but if i timed it incorrectly i was shit out of luck

it was still fun and i was deeply interested in what the truth was, what the actual story was, but as it went on, i really felt like i was pushing myself to get there. like i didnt want to keep going but i had to to find out what the fuck was going on
and it was not even a little satisfying and didnt feel at all as good as learning 999's true story

i have this problem with plots where it bothers me if things "get too big." if the scale of a problem gets too big and it advances rapidly from endangering a small set of people to endangering humanity, stuff like that
that was probably a big part of my issues with vlr's story and why i didnt enjoy it at all really
and just the sheer amount of things it takes for them to resolve it/try to resolve it
the amount of time travel in 999? perfect. loved that
the amount of time travel in vlr? too much man cmon

i liked the themes it was going for and the scientific elements it had and explained as much as its hard for me to wrap my head around quantum physics but i feel like nothing worked together at all
sure maybe the whole story objectively makes sense in conjunction with its themes but to me it felt like a pile of slop barely held together with glue. i just did not like it and the explanation in the true ending was kind of maddening with everything that kept getting tacked on

the whole "we had to recreate what we saw of the future to fulfill it" thing was crazy in 999 but really good
it is completely fucking ridiculous in vlr
radical-6 as a whole to me is so 30923ut4y93uwifjkwfn fucking stupid i dont wanna talk about it

i felt like 999 revealed its story much more steadily than vlr
while you hear the same set of information over and over throughout many of vlr's branches with maybe an added scientific/philosophical concept here and there
maybe objectively vlr did the same things as 999 and presented its plot and ideas in the exact same way but it really didnt feel like that to me, it felt like an utter mess that i was simply forced to understand in contrast to the seamless way that 999s story and scientific concepts weave together

i did like individual things! i really really love luna! she has to be my favorite part of this game by far, and her story is just really sweet. oh i just realized in her ending she basically died in the arms of her creator my life is ruined

occasional good writing and descriptions, i liked the voices of characters and how they interacted with sigma
i like sigmas personality a lot actually even with his pervertedness 🙄🙄 hes fun, not that different from junpei but you get to see him way way less for obvious reasons so hes not as compelling

the characters from the previous game it wraps into this one was. interesting but i think the best thing we got out of it was learning that snake plays the harp and has a weirdly devoted fan following
i do like clover n alice, tenmyouji to a lesser extent but whatever, i dont really like their presence in the game and what it does to both games plots

i think the characters as a whole are just weaker
i do like them! but theyre weaker than 999s cast
dio is just unlikable even before u find out anything about who he really is and i think he puts a damper on everything
the replay factor and the AB game as a whole weakened the bond i couldve had with these characters just because of the nature of betrayal and all
its purposeful of course but it only made me like most of them less overall even after being provided their backstory
zero jr. is also annoying !!!! i do not like these sorts of silly animal mascots for masterminds

puzzles were not as fun to me
more difficult and frustrating even with their specifications but whatever im probably just bad, 999 did spoon feed u most solutions
visuals are fine, obviously less likeable than 999s sprites but the 3d models dont look bad or anything
music was fine but im struggling to remember because of just how many times trepidation was played

despite this review just being almost all criticism i liked the game 70% of the time playing it i think
but just as 999s true story made me love it, vlr's true story almost ruins it for me
whatever man. onto zero time dilemma, maybe itll give me that satisfaction

Good plot and characters , kinda hate how i have to get all endings to understand the story but still amazing

Es una de mis historias favoritas, en general, contando cualquier medio. Es emocionante rejugar este juego, incluso sabiendo todas las rutas y opciones y soluciones, es un juego que si te gusta este formato para contar historias, te fascinas con ella, con los personajes, con la escritura tan brillante, con el misterio alimentado del interés que enciende cada personaje, cada escenario y cada canción de la entrega. Literalmente me voló la cabeza este juego porque es como si estuviese hecho perfectamente para satisfacer mis gustos en todos los apartados posibles.