This game is such a mess, and it makes me sad because it has a lot of charm and great ideas.
Unlike Uchikoshi's previous titles, this presents itself as a "detective game", but it is so in name only. Investigating the murders takes a backseat to the rest of the game for some reason, and when it does focus on it, it does with such little tension, just to drop one or two pieces of evidence of you, the characters will stay silent for a second and nothing will be addressed until the end of the game. This kind of setup is only possible if there's a source of tension, like in all Zero Escape games. There's 0 tension for 90% of this game.
There's no deduction involved in the actual gameplay or sense to the flow of the investigation. Every time you're left to free roam, you'll find almost nothing of interest for the whole section. This makes it feel like most of the game is just filler to reach the final twist of the story.
The runtime filler is also assisted by the route system, which I wonder if Uchikoshi put in the game just because he felt he had to instead of the game benefitting at all from it. It's just used to repeat information and replay situations to fill the runtime. Also, unlike in the Zero Escape series, it is never formally explained aside from some characters mentioning parallel universes. Aside from the endgame routes, every other route has a character focus, which would be good if they didn't ditch the murder mystery entirely.
Characters are really hit or miss. I liked Mizuki a lot, but I couldn't like Iris at all for how much they shove her in the game. I also like Aiba but she has no arc at all so I didn't care much about her. Everyone else is boring or unlikable.
And then we get to Date. I really like him too, but he was written inconsistently as fuck. The irresistible need for Uchikoshi (and almost every japanese mystery vn writer while we're at it) to insert sex jokes every 3 lines of dialogue fucked Date's character hard, and the game as a whole while we're at it. There was quite a bit of that too in the Zero Escape games but it feels like there's NOTHING here but that. This and the slapstick action scenes make the game's tone terribly inconsistent and it suffers hard from it.
Somniums are a cool concept and I liked the time management dynamic. However, they are very badly thought out: they are designed as metaphors for the characters psyches, so they are meant as foreshadowing first, and everything else after. This results in the player having no idea of what the line of reasoning in each somnium is, so the only way to advance is trial and error, which meshes terribly with the time management thing. These sections are basically the only interactive part of the game, so they making no sense to the player is pretty bad. Investigating somniums also makes no sense for the characters, because it almost never helps the investigation in any way.
On the artistic side, I'll say I love Yusuke Kozaki's character designs for this game, and that some somniums look cool. The music is a bit underwhelming, which is pretty sad considering most of these kind of games have banger soundtracks.
To finish off, I'll talk about the story. This game lives and dies by its final twist. Everything in the game is a setup for it. Everything after it only rides on said twist. It's not a particularly interesting twist or it is hard to see it coming. It's convoluted, but actually tame for Uchikoshi's standards. The last 5 hours of the game are okay-ish, but they are so to the expense of the rest of the game.
I was so disappointed on this game that I started thinking fondly of Danganronpa games and Zero Time Dilemma. And if that isn't a bad sign, I don't know what is.
Unlike Uchikoshi's previous titles, this presents itself as a "detective game", but it is so in name only. Investigating the murders takes a backseat to the rest of the game for some reason, and when it does focus on it, it does with such little tension, just to drop one or two pieces of evidence of you, the characters will stay silent for a second and nothing will be addressed until the end of the game. This kind of setup is only possible if there's a source of tension, like in all Zero Escape games. There's 0 tension for 90% of this game.
There's no deduction involved in the actual gameplay or sense to the flow of the investigation. Every time you're left to free roam, you'll find almost nothing of interest for the whole section. This makes it feel like most of the game is just filler to reach the final twist of the story.
The runtime filler is also assisted by the route system, which I wonder if Uchikoshi put in the game just because he felt he had to instead of the game benefitting at all from it. It's just used to repeat information and replay situations to fill the runtime. Also, unlike in the Zero Escape series, it is never formally explained aside from some characters mentioning parallel universes. Aside from the endgame routes, every other route has a character focus, which would be good if they didn't ditch the murder mystery entirely.
Characters are really hit or miss. I liked Mizuki a lot, but I couldn't like Iris at all for how much they shove her in the game. I also like Aiba but she has no arc at all so I didn't care much about her. Everyone else is boring or unlikable.
And then we get to Date. I really like him too, but he was written inconsistently as fuck. The irresistible need for Uchikoshi (and almost every japanese mystery vn writer while we're at it) to insert sex jokes every 3 lines of dialogue fucked Date's character hard, and the game as a whole while we're at it. There was quite a bit of that too in the Zero Escape games but it feels like there's NOTHING here but that. This and the slapstick action scenes make the game's tone terribly inconsistent and it suffers hard from it.
Somniums are a cool concept and I liked the time management dynamic. However, they are very badly thought out: they are designed as metaphors for the characters psyches, so they are meant as foreshadowing first, and everything else after. This results in the player having no idea of what the line of reasoning in each somnium is, so the only way to advance is trial and error, which meshes terribly with the time management thing. These sections are basically the only interactive part of the game, so they making no sense to the player is pretty bad. Investigating somniums also makes no sense for the characters, because it almost never helps the investigation in any way.
On the artistic side, I'll say I love Yusuke Kozaki's character designs for this game, and that some somniums look cool. The music is a bit underwhelming, which is pretty sad considering most of these kind of games have banger soundtracks.
To finish off, I'll talk about the story. This game lives and dies by its final twist. Everything in the game is a setup for it. Everything after it only rides on said twist. It's not a particularly interesting twist or it is hard to see it coming. It's convoluted, but actually tame for Uchikoshi's standards. The last 5 hours of the game are okay-ish, but they are so to the expense of the rest of the game.
I was so disappointed on this game that I started thinking fondly of Danganronpa games and Zero Time Dilemma. And if that isn't a bad sign, I don't know what is.