Really feels like Uchikoshi let himself loose on this one, and I love it. Little bit of everything he loves all in one place.
After 999 I wondered how the format would work, and switching to a transparent flowchart with "surprises" is a reasonable evolution. I found myself missing 999's total lack of clarity of how it was structured, but I also know you can't really do that trick twice in a row.
I did find that the structure meant that there was a lot of repetition and that key plot moments were spaced awkwardly. Towards the end of the game, when I'd mentally pieced a lot of the plot together, I found myself ready for the game to be over but with several main branches to get through before the "true" final route became available. I wish it felt like the ending came when I was ready for it to come, because I'd love for the last parts of the game to feel like they came at the height of my excitement.
The escape room segments felt a lot weaker this time around. There were several rooms that were weakly designed or even boring, which is a big problem for a game like this where they're meant to be key pacing moments, and it's especially bad when the worst escape room in the game is the very final, climactic one. With 999, I couldn't imagine how the escape room-less iPad version would possibly work, but here I could actually see a version with no escape rooms being paced well.
After 999 I wondered how the format would work, and switching to a transparent flowchart with "surprises" is a reasonable evolution. I found myself missing 999's total lack of clarity of how it was structured, but I also know you can't really do that trick twice in a row.
I did find that the structure meant that there was a lot of repetition and that key plot moments were spaced awkwardly. Towards the end of the game, when I'd mentally pieced a lot of the plot together, I found myself ready for the game to be over but with several main branches to get through before the "true" final route became available. I wish it felt like the ending came when I was ready for it to come, because I'd love for the last parts of the game to feel like they came at the height of my excitement.
The escape room segments felt a lot weaker this time around. There were several rooms that were weakly designed or even boring, which is a big problem for a game like this where they're meant to be key pacing moments, and it's especially bad when the worst escape room in the game is the very final, climactic one. With 999, I couldn't imagine how the escape room-less iPad version would possibly work, but here I could actually see a version with no escape rooms being paced well.