getsugasaiho
199 Reviews liked by getsugasaiho
For a good while now I have made it evident that I am huge fan of the Zero Escape games, I have persuaded many friends to play, go back to or even stream the game series and it easily sits within the echelon of GOATs for me, including my top 5 games here on backloggd.
AI: The Somnium Files, was a game I was very excited for - bought on launch (or thereabouts) and whilst it didn’t hit quite the right notes for me, I did thoroughly enjoy it.
Since then I’ve been chasing that Zero Escape level of enjoyment.
I started the Danganronpa series, which I feel off of for a combination of reasons. Watched more Japanese and Korean crime tv. The nearest anything has got to it was 2023’s Paranormasight.
So, why has it taken me so long to play nirvanA Initiative? Honestly, I have no good reason.
Sometimes games pass you by and for me wanting to pick it up after launch it took me a while before finding it at a price, I was happy to pay for an “old” game. Told you I had no good reason.
I’ll start here as I speak about the game by saying, I really enjoyed it. The first AI didn’t really stick with me, but this one has me much more excited to spread the good word and I think thanks to Uchikoshi pulling a few more Zero Escape style tricks, this game will be on I think about for a while.
AI 2 takes place in the same universe as the first, a near-future world with many similarities to our own but with some key differences in the jobs and technology our protagonists are involved with.
In this title we get a duo of protagonists in part due to Special Agent Kaname Date from the first title taking his holidays. Instead, we play as Kuroto Ryuki and the Date’s adopted daughter Mizuki. They’re job is the same as Date’s before, they work for “ABIS” the Advanced Brain Investigation Squad - in short they are police but also “Psyncers”.
If like me you enjoyed The Minority Report, with its precrime etc. you’ll enjoy AI’s main gimmick.
To put it simply the Somnium of the games’ title refers to a dreamscape, Somnium being Latin for dream after all. The agents can “psync” with someone to explore their dreams, see things from their past or unveil secrets they may be hiding.
The Somnium as a game device is genius before we even think about it mechanically.
It allows the game to give us very interesting and varied locations to explore that don’t need to make sense as they all follow dream logic.
Secondly, because these are dreams of an individual, we get the narrative device or unreliable narrators throughout as to how things may look or seem are from the dreamer’s perspective.
Without spoiling the plot or the many surprises this game has I can confidently say that these Somnium spaces will go places you do not expect, some fun, some dark, but all entertaining.
Within these different mechanics can be bought in and thrown away and the game itself can even slightly change its own themes and genre due to them.
The other main gimmick of the AI games are the AI-balls themselves.
Date’s partner Aiba returns in the left socket of Mizuki, while we are introduced to Tama - Ryuki’s partner.
These little AI robot-things give our main protagonists skills in the outside world, some things like zooms, video playback, x-ray vision and more to make them better detectives and give a great in-world reason to give the player lots of varied and interesting tools to solve things or simply engage with the story.
Within Somnium is where we control Aiba or Tama as they are the ones to physically (if we can call it that) navigate those dreamscapes.
Outside of the Somnium we also get VR sections, where the AI-ball can fully recreate a crime scene so that the detectives can check things without interference and in-game allow them to recreate what they conclude has happened to better understand it and show it to the person playing.
Where Somnium has its own rules and very strange, sometimes whacky interactions, the VR crime scenes feel a little more grounded and straight-faced… to a degree.
I say to a degree because one thing that I am not the biggest fan of but at times did enjoy is AI’s comedy. There’s a lot of gags, some great comedic dialogue and strange characters but the thing that typically puts me off is the weird-horniness that I have felt creeps far too often into any narrative based Japanese game.
The horniness is still here, you can see it straight off the bat with a lot of the character designs.
In the first title Date had a “porno-power” gag that at best made me smirk, which thankfully is mostly not here but that doesn’t stop many conversations leaning towards people being perverts or being accused of it.
Everyone is going to have a different line with how much of that type of comedy they will be ok with and the fact I mention it shows that I have a line but I would say this game rarely crossed it.
In fact it does many things that I was pleasantly surprised by, that being its handling of romance and also LGTBQ+ people.
I will also state clearly here that I don’t believe the horniness ever gets in the way of the many serious conversations and subject matters the game hits upon - which is a fear I have when playing something like this that I am enjoying.
To step back into speaking about the protagonists, again without any major spoilers, the game has two characters because the main plot involves a story, the HB case, in which Ryuki and a younger Mizuki were involved with and the serial killer seems to return six years later - where we get to investigate as an older Mizuki (with Aiba).
The HB case is the Half Body murders. It is as strange as it sounds and leads you into meeting a vast array of people and friends from the past, including a failing comedian, children from an orphanage, gene-scientists and cult leaders.
If you enjoyed Zero Escape for its, let’s call it education, then you will enjoy this too as this game uses many different ideas, historical happenings and philosophies that you will feel you have to go down a wiki hole about them - thankfully the game itself also contains a file on trivia, a highlight for me as there are multiple pages that explain wrestling moves.
AI 2 isn’t without faults, thankfully most of these sit within the boring technical side of things.
I played this on Switch and had four separate crashes to Home. The game gave saves often and ZR allows you to fast forward so it never took too much time getting back to the point I was at but obviously it’s less than ideal and can really break the immersion.
The other two much smaller technical issues that can break immersion also are the characters, specifically their heads in the lower-third to show who is speaking would sometimes have glitchy things like bouncy or clipping strands of hair. The second is the frame rate, this game isn’t one where that matters greatly but either when showing videos, transitioning in and out of Somnium and sometimes when changing those talking heads - the game visibly chugs.
The other fault for me is that the combat sequences, while kind of fun are more often than expected, narratively play out almost the same every time and the QTEs are just crap.
They’re never too taxing but they also don’t have a great logic to when they do and don’t appear and really don’t add anything to the scenes except a chance to fail and have to repeat.
Admittedly you can change the difficulty but I simply don’t think it’s an element this game even needs.
Overall AI The Somnium Files: nirvanA Initiative is fantastic, especially so if you are Uchikoshi-pilled like me. It’s a great story, with amazing twists, wonderful characters and a believable if sometimes silly world that will make you think about it once you’re done.
It has a decent amount of in-game rewards and achievements if that is something you crave and come in at a reasonable playtime of 20 hours give or take a few depending on how quick you are to solve things and how much you want to dig.
Finally getting around to AI2 makes me feel good, as I look at the past and towards the future.
I look at the past and now consider even more heavily trying some of Kotaro Uchikoshi’s previous VN series, and I look forward to the future as this shows that Zero Escape was not a complete fluke and that we can get more of that same goodness I crave.
AI: The Somnium Files, was a game I was very excited for - bought on launch (or thereabouts) and whilst it didn’t hit quite the right notes for me, I did thoroughly enjoy it.
Since then I’ve been chasing that Zero Escape level of enjoyment.
I started the Danganronpa series, which I feel off of for a combination of reasons. Watched more Japanese and Korean crime tv. The nearest anything has got to it was 2023’s Paranormasight.
So, why has it taken me so long to play nirvanA Initiative? Honestly, I have no good reason.
Sometimes games pass you by and for me wanting to pick it up after launch it took me a while before finding it at a price, I was happy to pay for an “old” game. Told you I had no good reason.
I’ll start here as I speak about the game by saying, I really enjoyed it. The first AI didn’t really stick with me, but this one has me much more excited to spread the good word and I think thanks to Uchikoshi pulling a few more Zero Escape style tricks, this game will be on I think about for a while.
AI 2 takes place in the same universe as the first, a near-future world with many similarities to our own but with some key differences in the jobs and technology our protagonists are involved with.
In this title we get a duo of protagonists in part due to Special Agent Kaname Date from the first title taking his holidays. Instead, we play as Kuroto Ryuki and the Date’s adopted daughter Mizuki. They’re job is the same as Date’s before, they work for “ABIS” the Advanced Brain Investigation Squad - in short they are police but also “Psyncers”.
If like me you enjoyed The Minority Report, with its precrime etc. you’ll enjoy AI’s main gimmick.
To put it simply the Somnium of the games’ title refers to a dreamscape, Somnium being Latin for dream after all. The agents can “psync” with someone to explore their dreams, see things from their past or unveil secrets they may be hiding.
The Somnium as a game device is genius before we even think about it mechanically.
It allows the game to give us very interesting and varied locations to explore that don’t need to make sense as they all follow dream logic.
Secondly, because these are dreams of an individual, we get the narrative device or unreliable narrators throughout as to how things may look or seem are from the dreamer’s perspective.
Without spoiling the plot or the many surprises this game has I can confidently say that these Somnium spaces will go places you do not expect, some fun, some dark, but all entertaining.
Within these different mechanics can be bought in and thrown away and the game itself can even slightly change its own themes and genre due to them.
The other main gimmick of the AI games are the AI-balls themselves.
Date’s partner Aiba returns in the left socket of Mizuki, while we are introduced to Tama - Ryuki’s partner.
These little AI robot-things give our main protagonists skills in the outside world, some things like zooms, video playback, x-ray vision and more to make them better detectives and give a great in-world reason to give the player lots of varied and interesting tools to solve things or simply engage with the story.
Within Somnium is where we control Aiba or Tama as they are the ones to physically (if we can call it that) navigate those dreamscapes.
Outside of the Somnium we also get VR sections, where the AI-ball can fully recreate a crime scene so that the detectives can check things without interference and in-game allow them to recreate what they conclude has happened to better understand it and show it to the person playing.
Where Somnium has its own rules and very strange, sometimes whacky interactions, the VR crime scenes feel a little more grounded and straight-faced… to a degree.
I say to a degree because one thing that I am not the biggest fan of but at times did enjoy is AI’s comedy. There’s a lot of gags, some great comedic dialogue and strange characters but the thing that typically puts me off is the weird-horniness that I have felt creeps far too often into any narrative based Japanese game.
The horniness is still here, you can see it straight off the bat with a lot of the character designs.
In the first title Date had a “porno-power” gag that at best made me smirk, which thankfully is mostly not here but that doesn’t stop many conversations leaning towards people being perverts or being accused of it.
Everyone is going to have a different line with how much of that type of comedy they will be ok with and the fact I mention it shows that I have a line but I would say this game rarely crossed it.
In fact it does many things that I was pleasantly surprised by, that being its handling of romance and also LGTBQ+ people.
I will also state clearly here that I don’t believe the horniness ever gets in the way of the many serious conversations and subject matters the game hits upon - which is a fear I have when playing something like this that I am enjoying.
To step back into speaking about the protagonists, again without any major spoilers, the game has two characters because the main plot involves a story, the HB case, in which Ryuki and a younger Mizuki were involved with and the serial killer seems to return six years later - where we get to investigate as an older Mizuki (with Aiba).
The HB case is the Half Body murders. It is as strange as it sounds and leads you into meeting a vast array of people and friends from the past, including a failing comedian, children from an orphanage, gene-scientists and cult leaders.
If you enjoyed Zero Escape for its, let’s call it education, then you will enjoy this too as this game uses many different ideas, historical happenings and philosophies that you will feel you have to go down a wiki hole about them - thankfully the game itself also contains a file on trivia, a highlight for me as there are multiple pages that explain wrestling moves.
AI 2 isn’t without faults, thankfully most of these sit within the boring technical side of things.
I played this on Switch and had four separate crashes to Home. The game gave saves often and ZR allows you to fast forward so it never took too much time getting back to the point I was at but obviously it’s less than ideal and can really break the immersion.
The other two much smaller technical issues that can break immersion also are the characters, specifically their heads in the lower-third to show who is speaking would sometimes have glitchy things like bouncy or clipping strands of hair. The second is the frame rate, this game isn’t one where that matters greatly but either when showing videos, transitioning in and out of Somnium and sometimes when changing those talking heads - the game visibly chugs.
The other fault for me is that the combat sequences, while kind of fun are more often than expected, narratively play out almost the same every time and the QTEs are just crap.
They’re never too taxing but they also don’t have a great logic to when they do and don’t appear and really don’t add anything to the scenes except a chance to fail and have to repeat.
Admittedly you can change the difficulty but I simply don’t think it’s an element this game even needs.
Overall AI The Somnium Files: nirvanA Initiative is fantastic, especially so if you are Uchikoshi-pilled like me. It’s a great story, with amazing twists, wonderful characters and a believable if sometimes silly world that will make you think about it once you’re done.
It has a decent amount of in-game rewards and achievements if that is something you crave and come in at a reasonable playtime of 20 hours give or take a few depending on how quick you are to solve things and how much you want to dig.
Finally getting around to AI2 makes me feel good, as I look at the past and towards the future.
I look at the past and now consider even more heavily trying some of Kotaro Uchikoshi’s previous VN series, and I look forward to the future as this shows that Zero Escape was not a complete fluke and that we can get more of that same goodness I crave.
This review contains spoilers
This is such a conflicting game. On the one hand it has some fantastic fucking writing once you’re following Ryuki as the protagonist, but when you’re following Mizuki as the protagonist the writing is just pure dog shit.
Even though Uchikoshi loves writing about multiple timelines in all of his games and about interacting with said failed timelines to get to your true ending, I felt like there was an obvious chance lost to make Bibi be Mizuki from a failed timeline. Instead, the writing decided to spit on the original game by making Mizuki have no reason to feel a thing about her parents and made the issues of the first game be worthless. The fact that it’s normal and can be completely unexplained just exists that Date can get super human powers after viewing porn mags, but that Mizuki needed to be a man made designer test tube baby to justify the existence of her superhuman strength and abilities just feels like such a cop out.
Also, the “true timeline” still has plenty of plot holes and makes no sense. Mizuki as the protagonist is basically just setting up predators with the women they preyed on in some form or another so I cannot like any of those characters (and in fact ended up laughing when Gen died.)
The writing is so good and heart wrenching and amazing when you’re following Ryuki as the protagonist, but the second you go to following Mizuki as the protagonist, it just shits all over all the wonderful writing of the first game and the characters relationships, as well as the struggles Mizuki went through from the first game.
It’s so unfortunate because I really love Ryuki and his half of the game is so fucking fantastic but the writing for everything else is so complete dogshit it feels offensive. I guess if you want to play it just go into it expecting it to be terrible.
Even though Uchikoshi loves writing about multiple timelines in all of his games and about interacting with said failed timelines to get to your true ending, I felt like there was an obvious chance lost to make Bibi be Mizuki from a failed timeline. Instead, the writing decided to spit on the original game by making Mizuki have no reason to feel a thing about her parents and made the issues of the first game be worthless. The fact that it’s normal and can be completely unexplained just exists that Date can get super human powers after viewing porn mags, but that Mizuki needed to be a man made designer test tube baby to justify the existence of her superhuman strength and abilities just feels like such a cop out.
Also, the “true timeline” still has plenty of plot holes and makes no sense. Mizuki as the protagonist is basically just setting up predators with the women they preyed on in some form or another so I cannot like any of those characters (and in fact ended up laughing when Gen died.)
The writing is so good and heart wrenching and amazing when you’re following Ryuki as the protagonist, but the second you go to following Mizuki as the protagonist, it just shits all over all the wonderful writing of the first game and the characters relationships, as well as the struggles Mizuki went through from the first game.
It’s so unfortunate because I really love Ryuki and his half of the game is so fucking fantastic but the writing for everything else is so complete dogshit it feels offensive. I guess if you want to play it just go into it expecting it to be terrible.
As someone who really liked AI 1, this was just a major fumble. If you liked the connected characters and reveals from the first then you probably will be sorely disappointed. The game in general gets severely worse as you go deeper in as things fall apart and other reveals fall flat with an entirely unengaging ending.
there's still plenty of substance and good moments with some cool endings but the main antagonist is way less interesting in this one, two of the new men have weird age gap loves with young women, and like every returning character with exception to one almost feels like they didn't need to be added and it almost kinda insults me. the somniums are overall very high quality though and the game is still fine with some good highs, it just sucks it doesn't stick with me nearly as much
This review contains spoilers
Ryuki's side was a lot more fun than Mizuki's, he was fun with Tama. Honestly it pisses me off how bad Ryuki was done by everybody in the game. It's no wonder he got so attached to Tama and Date when literally everybody else was not helpful at all!! They explain away his craziness but I would've gone crazy too if someone I loved died in front of me and then everybody else got mad at me for grieving. I also hated Gen - not only for enabling Ryuki's alcoholism but also for hiding information and his weird creepy relationship with Amame. If you think about it this game was really just a means of delivering Tama and Ryuki. It only gets a 40% because Tama and Ryuki were only relevant for like a third of the game. But what a good third it was...
It's kind of a nitpick, but I really hate whenever video game characters talk about things like quantum mechanics and its clear the writers do not know what they're talking about. As a physical chemist, wave-particle duality is practically my whole career. Everything Tokiko said about the double-slit experiment and uncertainty principle is sooooooo unbelievably wrong. If video games are feeding misinformation to the youth then us quantum theoreticians are never getting out of the trenches. Not that I was expecting the general public to ever have a solid grasp of what exactly the uncertainty principle means and how it is applied. It's really a personal issue because I can suspend my disbelief for everything except this
It's kind of a nitpick, but I really hate whenever video game characters talk about things like quantum mechanics and its clear the writers do not know what they're talking about. As a physical chemist, wave-particle duality is practically my whole career. Everything Tokiko said about the double-slit experiment and uncertainty principle is sooooooo unbelievably wrong. If video games are feeding misinformation to the youth then us quantum theoreticians are never getting out of the trenches. Not that I was expecting the general public to ever have a solid grasp of what exactly the uncertainty principle means and how it is applied. It's really a personal issue because I can suspend my disbelief for everything except this
This review contains spoilers
This game feels like the pinnacle of that one quote that Uchikoshi allegedly said about not trying to make good games, but rather memorable ones. I’m unsure if this game is a masterpiece, garbage, or somewhere in the middle, but it is a game that will stay with me, ironically not as much as the first might. Quick aside, but god bless Uchikoshi for sidelining Falco for Date. Regardless of what shitty things his VA has or hasn’t done, his voice works much better for #89 than Date. The characters are interesting, but many don’t get as much time as I’d like. No character better exemplifies this than Ryuki. Ryuki’s route is a touching story about obsession, mental illness, and the lies we tell to protect those we care about. AND THEN HE’S FUCKING SIDELINED OUT OF HIS OWN GODDAMN GAME(technically he gets the most screen time since Mizuki’s route is split between the two Mizuki’s). The twist of the game is interesting as it’s purely a metatextual shift, none of the characters in the game were under that delusion, only you, the player(Frayer) were. At this point, we can only speculate as to why this decision would be made. The Doylist explanation is that it’s fucking memorable, regardless of how you feel about it. The Watsonian explanation is more complicated but the only explanation that makes any sense to me is that Tokiko did it to fuck with the Frayer so they would create the seam that allows her to ascend to nirvana. Bs aside, NI has some of the best character writing and hands down the best gameplay in any of Uchikoshi’s works… even if the narrative structure and pacing are questionable.
This review contains spoilers
ngl 80% of this game was an absolutely exhausting and miserable experience. however, i'm giving it one full star by technicality because it went through with the only decision i would've needed a sequel to ai:tsf to make - no longer denying pewter his god given right to flop around and make a fool of himself in the state-mandated silly gay ending dance scene
The characters, voice actors, gimmicks, and character moments all excel like they did previously, but a weak story and twist muddles my overall enjoyment of a game that doesn't live up to the original
This game is kind of a dumpster fire in a very entertaining way
I loved that they improved the Somniums and I love Ryuki and Tama's dynamic, but...wow. The writers really made shock twists just for the sake of making shock twists, and much of the narrative and characterisation suffers for it.
One character in particular suffers the brunt of it, that their story reveals appalled me enough to drop the game entirely.
Nirvana Initiative had the potential to be a truly great sequel. How did this happen?
One character in particular suffers the brunt of it, that their story reveals appalled me enough to drop the game entirely.
Nirvana Initiative had the potential to be a truly great sequel. How did this happen?
This review contains spoilers
This game was very good, probably even better than the first game. The sex jokes were toned down a bit thank god, but I still found them annoying. The timeline twist was clever, it was hidden well but there were still some clues that initially confused me but were ultimately explained. Unfortunately, the ending was a bit anticlimactic though. Also the Tokiko jumpscare scared the shit out of me even though I was fully expecting it.
This review contains spoilers
hoo, boy. spoilers for both aini and aitsf in this one.
my best guess is that uchikoshi wanted to have it both ways: a fresh game for newcomers, and the familiarity of aitsf for old hats. unfortunately for literally everyone, the way he incorporated aitsf sucks. i was actually going to rate this a lot lower before i played ryuki diverge and had a delicious palate cleanser of what aini could have been if it focused less on its connections with aitsf.
- somniums somehow feel both more fleshed out and underwhelming in this one--maybe because the actual info in them isn't as interesting? (i'm spitballing, i have much greater concerns with this game)
- the game is, like, fine until the last 5 hours or so, at which point it spirals into some mix of incoherence, bad faith, and aggressively retconning a lot of the things that made aitsf good, which brings me to ...
- mizuki/bibi just made me miserable. aitsf had such a lovely found family story surrounding mizuki, and it feels completely nonsensical to make her adopted and a clone. which brings me to ...
- what on earth is date even doing in this game
- the mask excuse is bad (i prefer saito!date, but The Mask Excuse Is Bad). the fact he loses his memory for 6 years again is bad. mizuki being robbed of her family AGAIN is bad--particularly because aini hardly touches on how horrific this should be for her.
there are so many more underbaked aspects of this game, but i feel like those problems actually stem from uchikoshi mistakenly focusing on the weak retcons of aitsf instead of the fresh material in aini. amame's motives are fine. diverge was incredibly exciting for me. ryuki has so, so much rich potential and connection to the themes of vigilante justice date already embodies in his arc from falco to date.
but for some reason, uchikoshi really wanted me to know mizuki had a sister.
my best guess is that uchikoshi wanted to have it both ways: a fresh game for newcomers, and the familiarity of aitsf for old hats. unfortunately for literally everyone, the way he incorporated aitsf sucks. i was actually going to rate this a lot lower before i played ryuki diverge and had a delicious palate cleanser of what aini could have been if it focused less on its connections with aitsf.
- somniums somehow feel both more fleshed out and underwhelming in this one--maybe because the actual info in them isn't as interesting? (i'm spitballing, i have much greater concerns with this game)
- the game is, like, fine until the last 5 hours or so, at which point it spirals into some mix of incoherence, bad faith, and aggressively retconning a lot of the things that made aitsf good, which brings me to ...
- mizuki/bibi just made me miserable. aitsf had such a lovely found family story surrounding mizuki, and it feels completely nonsensical to make her adopted and a clone. which brings me to ...
- what on earth is date even doing in this game
- the mask excuse is bad (i prefer saito!date, but The Mask Excuse Is Bad). the fact he loses his memory for 6 years again is bad. mizuki being robbed of her family AGAIN is bad--particularly because aini hardly touches on how horrific this should be for her.
there are so many more underbaked aspects of this game, but i feel like those problems actually stem from uchikoshi mistakenly focusing on the weak retcons of aitsf instead of the fresh material in aini. amame's motives are fine. diverge was incredibly exciting for me. ryuki has so, so much rich potential and connection to the themes of vigilante justice date already embodies in his arc from falco to date.
but for some reason, uchikoshi really wanted me to know mizuki had a sister.
This review contains spoilers
if this was strictly a ryuki game it'd be 4 stars at least but they really wanted to make a sequel that you could also just play with absolutely no knowledge of what happened in the first one so the story just feels kind of hollow and pointless. You read through the whole thing and then the big twist hits, hey buddy you read it OUT OF ORDER. wow okay cool, but like, none of this matters. Oh ok mizuki has a twin sister that looks exactly like her so they could make this twist make sense. Ok cool.
Definitely not as good as the first game. Has some pacing issues and the twist isn't really that good as it doesn't build up to it that well. The overarching story and plot I didn't find as engaging as the first and the twists along the way seemed kinda contrived, but the characters in this are insanely well written and are so charming it's genuinely hard to find things to dislike about them. The somniums themselves are much better and much more unique leading to better and actually engaging puzzle solving sections. Biggest gripe with the game is that it tries harder to be a bit goofier while the first game was more contained and knew when to be humorous and not.
Man, this one really didn’t work for me, and I loved the first game. The new UI and gameplay changes were nice as well as the somniums themselves, but the new characters are all bland and the story is convoluted. I couldn’t find myself caring about this at all.