This review contains spoilers

A masterpiece sequel to a masterpiece game. I thought it would be very difficult to top the first game's story and structure, but I think this just barely surpasses it (I was on the opposite side of the fence until the, well, "twist", near the end of the game, if you catch my drift). The amount of foreshadowing throughout is insane (realizing about the glass statue after the reveal totally blew my mind) and really shows how much effort was put into the details of making this concept work, although that's little new for Uchikoshi lol. I love pretty much all the characters, new and old, and they all have a great amount of depth. I love that Ryuki is an enigma throughout the entire game, whether as the player character or as an NPC, and his relationship with Date is stellar (and I want MORE!). I loved Mizuki, just in general, just as badass (or even moreso) as she was in the first game (AND she shares my birthday, which automatically makes her awesome! like what!!!). I loved that we never truly saw Gen's face, because we never needed to. I loved how Lien went from initial impressions of a cringey weirdo to end up being a really fucking awesome guy. I loved the relationship development between Shoma and his dad, which is very reminiscent of Ota's arc from the first game. I loved the masked character, who I could never truly tell until near the end if was good or bad, and who was an incredible surprise and twist upon their reveal. I loved the villains, who felt genuinely terrifying and evil in the most pure sense of the word. The story goes to some extremely dark and fucked up places and I massively respect how it handles them. Of course, like the first game, I also love the sense of humor that keeps the experience from being 100% dreary; there is once again so much reward for inspecting every possible thing at every possible moment. This game definitely has about 100x more innuendos than the original, which isn't necessarily a good or a bad thing. I do certainly respect the sheer audacity of Tama's design and personality.

On the other hand, I think the Somnia in this game overall are significantly weaker than the original game, with a few exceptions. My favorite part of the original Somnia was the vast array of choices and resulting amount of exploration, even if it meant more failures or more time spent figuring out the right sequence of events; in contrast, although there are some fun escape-room-esque puzzles in this game, I feel like many of the solutions are a bit too linear and don't quite have the same charm. I would much rather a new Zero Escape (or some new IP in the same vein) than the attempt to make AI be more like Zero Escape. That said, the Somnia from an audiovisual and storytelling standpoint were phenomenal and they were still very much enjoyable. I also definitely appreciate the unlimited time feature on replays.

For me though the story outweighs the gameplay in this case, so I think I have to say I prefer this over the original, if just by a hair. I would play the shit out of an AI 3. 10/10

Reviewed on Jul 12, 2022


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