I have been playing this game on and off since it came out in 2019. Every once in a while I would get the urge to go back and finish it, but would end up getting stuck on a boss and giving up.

But finally after 4, long, grueling years I have finished the main game. I decided to sit down and play the game on a fresh save from start to finish. It was hard at first, and i very nearly gave up once again.

After Gyobu, the game just clicked with me and it was no longer the unruly slaughter fest it once was.

Beating Lady butterfly on my first attempt give me such a rush that i wanted to keep playing. Especially considering she took me about a week to beat the first time i played the game.

From that point on the game was just a straight path to the end.

Ishhin the Sword Saint was the furthest I had ever made it into the game but just could not beat it in 2019. This time around, after only about 40 minutes of trying I had him beat.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a game I wanted to love so much but never did.

While I still much prefer most of the other soulsborne games,
I now have a newfound appreciation for the game. Most of the bosses in this game are absolutely phenomenal and very well designed.

With all that said, the game is just not for me, and that's okay. I truly enjoyed this game on this playthrough but i can't really see myself ever playing it again.

I have been in a toxic relationship with Sekiro for the last 4 years and it feels so good to finally lay it to rest.

Zero time dilemma is absolutely fascinating for all the wrong reasons.

I played this game one year ago and to this day it lives rent free in my head and I’m not afraid to admit, but no game has ever been able to fumble a storyline so absurdly, so ridiculously as this game does that I’m still finding out awful things about it a year later.

I’m gonna start with what was expected, even promised to an extent. A conclusion to the zero escape trilogy that will tie up all lose ends and realise the plan and plot points set in motion by VLR to their conclusion, we got almost none of this and for what we did get it was lacklustre at best. For an example the route where Sigma and Phi are meant to try and find out the true path described in VLR that took 45 years of work and training is decided by a coin flip. Yep all that build up to see if they win the 50/50.

Anyway starting with the only okay part of the game, Diana’s route. This route consists of the timeline that loops into VLR and shows the events before the AB project. It revels how Sigma lost his arms, how the virus broke out and how Phi was born. This is all great and I feel was the only written part of the game. It was a nice timeline to coincide within the storyline and ties up some information we didn’t have from VLR, however. This route also includes a very pivotal plot point, something that if you were to hear it you’d think it would have numerous hints and other tidbits of information and world building to make it seem feasible in the story’s universe.

The aliens.

I don’t know what they were thinking when they thought to introduce extraterrestrial lifeforms in a series that has not even hinted about their existence all to try and explain a very poor plot device in the form of transporters that send you mind and body through time. What happened to all the intriguing real life theories about concepts like morphogenetic field and Schrödingers cat that were littered throughout the previous games and gave meaning to them being brought up later. The aliens came out of nowhere and although they are a concept in real life, this was never mentioned once before its reveal making it feel ridiculous and out of place in the world.

Then we go onto the Carlos route. This route has just a couple more things wrong with it. The complete character assassination of Junpei made me think we were seeing a different character in the story unlike Tenmyouji who feels like a development on his character. Although very important and one of the best characters in the last two games, Akane is kinda just there (when she isn’t meant to be as stated by HERSELF in VLR) and only serves to infodump for far to long on the player at random points throughout the route.

Then we have the man himself Carlos, who I believe was meant to be the main character before they decided to have 3. This man finds out he’s able to SHIFT and once he does he can just do it?? at like any time he needs to and he just abuses this ability that took Sigma and Phi an entire game, a whole 45 years of preparation to even use semi reliably while Carlos jumps to a different timeline well over 10 times and completely messes with the games already messy story. This on top of a recent revelation that me and my friends came to that got confirmed by Uchikoshi himself that “?” In VLRs ending “intervened” in the Decision Game and is someone who knew Sigma and Phi from the decision game. Only two characters that fit this bill are Delta and Carlos with the latter being incredibly likely which is a huge retcon to what VLR lead you to believe. If you really want to see how bad this character messes everything up just search “Carlos shift timeline ZTD” and try and piece it together.

Trying to keep this short I’ll move onto Q team. This cast of characters is one of the worst cast I have ever seen in a story. Them being uninteresting aside, they add almost nothing meaningful to the story and what they do add, makes the ENTIRE series as you knew it completely different.

I’ll start with a simple one, Mira. Mira plays the roll of the psycho/killer of this game and just doesn’t really do a good job of it. She likes to kill people and feel their heart in her hand, great i guess but this is pretty much her only trait of her character. The only thing she really does is kill Eric’s mum in the past.

Speaking of Eric I think he’s even worse. He doesn’t even have the villain character situation going for him, he just complains at Q and really wants to be in a relationship with Mira. That’s it. That’s his character. He does however tell a story about one of the most stupidest plot twists and metaphors used in this entire series, the snail.

If you look through “the snails” wiki page for this game you will understand how ridiculous this is. This one snail basically inadvertently causes the events for the ENTIRE SERIES because Eric’s mum saw this snail on her bike trail and decided to go a different path to avoid it, thus running into Mira, dying, and then having Akanes father be blamed for the murder which spirals her family out of control.

I wouldn’t mind the snail situation had it been anything but a snail. Eric’s mum could have just cycled past it, there was nothing to avoid most people wouldn’t even see the thing. If it was something like a tree fell over on the road then sure, but no the god damn snail caused it all.

I will return to that later because it gets even more insane, but moving on we have Q. Q isn’t bad I’d say just very under-utilised. From what I gather Q or Sean is a robot who’s personality had a car accident?? Honestly I do not know what to say about him other than you are under the illusion that you are playing as him throughout his route, you actually play as a very cool character called Delta.

Just wanted to say before I go off on the tangent that is about Delta, the whole map/room being the same for every character at different times was also ridiculous in that it just was an unnecessary twist.

Now Delta is revealed to be on the Q team this entire time and is actually who you play as in EVERY route through “mind hacking”, he can also be “seen” in some sections where there’s just a random shadow of a wheelchair (you should be able to see the thing) on the ground. If that already isn’t insane enough I just want to assure you that this man is the most ridiculous and most absolutely outlandish character to ever be made.

Let me give a small summery on Delta. He is 120 odd years old, is the son of Sigma who was then transported to the past. Is after an unnamed, never before mentioned “religious fanatic” that’s apparently who he’s trying to stop and he has the ability to “mind hack” (what???) people to make them do his bidding.

This is all well and good and already makes no sense whatsoever but what if I told you the absolutely shocking revelation I found out after scrolling through information about him, I genuinely don’t believe that this wasn’t somewhat intentional and is just never brought up or considered in the entire game.

Here’s a couple of extra facts about delta:
Was sent back to 1904 Germany.
Was in his late 30s during the 1940s.
Founded an organisation that states if you devote yourself you will be reborn as a “new race”.
Created a militia of “blonde haired, blue eyed” white men.
Had melting chambers in his facility.
Killed 6 billion people.

So based of this information we can safely say that delta is A NAZI, UCHIKOSHI HAS JUST WRITTEN A SECOND HITLER. Like I cannot stress enough how insane this is, way to much lines up for it to be a coincidence his cult following that he has even has a red and black colour scheme going on for his “new race” of people it’s insane.

Delta ends up being the beginning of nearly every event in this game, he was the answer the writers had for us for all our questions. Free the soul? Delta. The man who placed the snail knowing that Eric’s mum would change her path? Delta (yes that’s real). Who was Akane conversing with to try and stop the catastrophe shown in VLR? Delta. Who gave money to Ace to fund the second Nonary game? Delta. Everything leads back to Delta, and what does this man say after all this, after everything he’s apparently done surely this man has some very solid motives for all of his actions-

“My motives are somewhat, complex”

That’s it, this is all he has to say for himself before “””mind hacking””” Eric into shooting him in the head with a shotgun. The man who has been there for everything just describes himself as “complex” in the game we were meant to get answers.

In the end the cast all shift to the coin flip timeline where they escape (Because they can just all do that now) and delta appears giving Carlos a gun, ending on a cliffhanger to the finale of the series on if he shoots him or not. And that’s how it ends.

This game is so flawed, so absurdly terribly written that it’s actually one of the funniest games of all time and I cannot recommend it enough.

-1/10