i'm glad i got to finally experience this classic, though it is definitely severely dated in many ways. my biggest issue really is the general navigation, which is very inconsistent and rough; i get the limitations of the time but man even just looking around the way you want or going in the direction you want is a major hassle sometimes. i also feel like the game would have benefitted significantly from even a tiny tutorial or introduction instead of just throwing you in with no context; i do like the natural discovery of various things but nothing really "clicked" until i had to look up hints and figured out what the actual goal was, and that just feels like bad design to me, especially when the majority of the story is shoved into one massive exposition dump that isn't technically even mandatory. just feels really sloppy in that regard. as for the puzzles themselves, i did enjoy a good portion of them; most of the ages were pretty decent but were dragged down by one or two nuisances. pretty much all of the "main island" puzzles i thought were good except for the elevator thing which still makes very little sense to me. the stoneship age was pretty good, but the hidden passageway was borderline impossible to find, even trying to click literally everywhere. the mechanical age was pretty basic, but it was very frustrating not being able to see how the tower is moving without tediously going back and forth and back and forth. the selenitic age is probably my favorite except for the maze, which isn't that hard to navigate but is sooooooo dang slow and mind-numbing. channelwood is probably my least favorite age, pretty much everything about it i disliked; navigating the paths was a total nightmare, which also made figuring out the puzzles that much more tedious, especially on the upper levels (i basically had to permanently cross-reference the map to get anywhere), and maybe i'm just dumb but it took me an incredibly long time to figure out that you had to close the door before using the elevators, which is honestly pretty dumb when every other elevator in the game does that part for you. ANYWAY it sounds like a lot of complaining but i did actually enjoy the game to some extent; mostly i look forward to playing the sequel(s) since this sets up a lot of potential and i've heard a number of times that riven is an improvement!!

myst gets a solid 5/10 from me, definitely not a bad game and very clear why it is a classic, but it had a few too many problems for me to give it much higher than that. i am hopeful that riven will blow that out of the water, though!

riven is definitely an improvement over myst in pretty much every way. the navigation is way smoother just by nature of better scene transitions and the more readable pointer, though i do think it would be still improved with actual movement since it can still be pretty easy to get directionally misguided or just miss important things outright while trying to regain bearings. the world itself felt significantly more intricate and detailed which i really enjoyed, and the visual storytelling is a vast improvement (although there is still plenty of lore dumping); i liked occasionally coming across scenes during exploration even if they had no bearing on the puzzles at all; the voiced scenes really need subtitles though because especially with the existence of the other language it can sometimes be hard to tell if the voices are supposed to be english or not. the atmosphere and MUSIC are also super, super good, even with the limitations of the time. as for the puzzles themselves, i thought they were much better crafted for the most part, which is somewhat helped by the larger world. there were only a couple things i took issue with in that regard (which i suspect are not uncommon): for one, i think the game could have been significantly clearer in regard to the whole animal puzzle; i enjoyed finding the animal shapes once i knew what to look for, but the link between "eyes" and "animal shapes" is kind of a big leap to make without any guidance, and even then it's a bit annoying that even that is inconsistent, with two of them not even fitting the pattern. the other thing i found a bit annoying was the dome puzzle requiring actual guesswork wrt the prison island, which seemed pretty out of place in juxtaposition with the rest of the game. on the other hand though, i really enjoyed figuring out the number system, which was actually probably my biggest "lightbulb moment" in either game haha. and to be clear - i loved that the animal and dome puzzles made use of the entire world in really cool ways - i just think the final execution could have been better.
as a whole - i definitely had fun with this and it definitely deserves "classic" status; like myst, i think i'll probably appreciate it more retrospectively, watching someone else play it and having the full context, and just generally being able to talk about it, but on its own, a very solid 8/10!

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

this is definitely the weakest entry in the series up to this point, but i'll start with positives (note: i did not play the dlc case)

- the 3d character models are a surprisingly effective replacement for the 2d sprites. i was worried that they wouldn't be able to live up to the level of expression and sheer absurdity, but they definitely pulled it off
- athena is great, and i do like the way the "acting protagonist" rotates throughout the game
- message log! such a good feature!
- the last case is really good! aside from the wholly unbelievable face-swapping nonsense at the end (and the letdown of never seeing the real face... i get that it's done for a reason but idc i just wanted a fucking payoff that i never got)
- blackquill is hot (and also a solid main antagonist)

negatives:

- so many of the characters in this game are just so insufferable. it's probably my biggest gripe with the whole thing. i get that you gotta make everyone look suspicious but godddd it made the game feel 10x slower to not care whatsoever who is guilty or not
- on a related note, it was pretty annoying that the "true culprit" was basically handed to you on a platter for the first THREE CASES of the game
- and speaking of those cases, they just.. weren't that interesting. i didn't find myself invested in most anything that was happening until case 4 or 5. probably because the characters sucked
- the lack of "examine" in 90% of areas really shows how important that flavor text was for enjoyability in all the games before this. this one felt really bland a lot of the time without it
- the "dark age of the law" is super BS, it annoyed me every time it was said (which is a lot). literally just a new name for the same shit the series has been about since day 1
- the mood matrix is GARBAGE. like, holy shit that mechanic is the worst thing they've done so far. for me almost every single time came down to desperate trial and error because of how incomprehensible the logic is, and it really soured the mood of the trials (at least there's no health bar, though... i don't even want to imagine)
- i hate that trucy's entire personality for most of the game is just her fucking underwear. it was awkward enough in apollo justice, i didn't need to see it over and over and over again here
- i miss gumshoe :(

ok that's a lot of negatives actually but i didn't hate the game, like, it's Fine. just has a whole lot of problems that really makes it pale in comparison to previous titles. 5/10, i guess?

what a game. i'm glad i went in completely unspoiled, i definitely get why ppl say even the tiniest thing could ruin the experience. story and cast are obviously the highlights, i really liked all the characters pretty much all the way through and even when the story beats and twists were sort of predictable they were still supplemented with enough surprises and mystery to keep things really interesting. obviously can't ignore the couple big blatant "problematic" things; they didn't really take away from the game for me but i still got a little uncomfortable every time they said "he" after that reveal (which i'm sure there are many many long discussions to be had about, but i'm no authority on that). the gameplay itself is pretty rudimentary but for the most part is not bad; the trial minigames grew on me more as the game went on, though a couple of the threads of logic are reeeeal thin and the flashback mechanic was really annoying. the moving around controls are also kinda clunky but it's a minor inconvenience at worst. honestly my biggest gripe is that the blood is pink lmfao, great game, can't wait to play the sequel(s), 9/10

i wish this had just been packaged as a single game from the start, because that's what it really is - the first game is basically just a long winded intro to the second and neither works without the other. my impressions of the first game initially were lowered because it failed to match the pace I was expecting for a self contained game, but when treated as a preamble to the masterpiece that is TGAA2 it's all well worth it. so - treating this all as 1 game - the overarching story is easily one of the best in the series and the main cast is incredible - loved how many recurring characters were intertwined in the complex lattice of events, making for so many satisfying reveals toward the end. on the other hand though, particularly in TGAA1, i found the side characters wholly unsatisfactory; i found it difficult to care about many of the witnesses/etc as they were either boring or explicitly detestable (2 was definitely better in this regard). i also really am not a fan of the jury system in the trials. it didn't affect my enjoyment of the game too much, but i just found them a constant nuisance whenever they were at the forefront, especially when interrupting trials for no good reason other than to awkwardly force the plot forward. i also found the jurors to be the most blatant perpetrators of xenophobia/racism across the board. while surely period-accurate, it really doesn't make me want to listen to more of their dialogue when half the time it's some spin on "japanese bad". at least van zieks has some motivations about it (speaking of - awesome prosecutor, but it did take quite a while for me to think of him anywhere above average). it speaks volumes that my favorite trials from a gameplay perspective were the ones with no jurors! but in any case, still was all worth it in the end. (though they never did explain the deal with all the repeat jurors... I kinda expected that to be a major plot point somewhere, but nope?) I definitely do hope we get to see more of this cast in the future, whether it's in britain or japan or some wholly new location - honestly as characters i think ryunosuke and susato are way more interesting than phoenix and maya lol, not to mention sholmes, iris, gina and the like.

i don't know how i'd even begin to rate this as two separate games, but as a complete experience - minor gripes aside - truly fantastic. it's simply a long, slow burn, but with the greatest show of fireworks you've ever seen waiting at the end. 9.7/10