Zero Time Dilemma

>Need codes from different timeline to progress
>This happens like 5 fucking times
This is getting annoying

I finished it in 10 minutes :^)

That picture is more related than you think.

It was such a great twist the first time in 999 that they had to redo it four fucking times in VLR and I guess a bunch more times now in ZTD because Uchikoshi is a hack fraud who can only write one fucking story over and over.

It's because of the nonlinearity
They want to give freedom but don't want to end up a jumbled mess like Her Story, so they're using that as a really obnoxious meta password system

Just finished it and i'm really not sure how I feel. I loved some of the twists but there is one in particular i just dunno if i can get behind, and the ending i'm really not sure on either. It's probably my least favourite of the 3 but it isnt bad by any means

Finished it after playing straight for 2 days, I logged in 19h in these days and completed 100% (I think?).
Really great and captivating game, yes, the technical aspects are really mediocre, but it's forgivable.
Also some puzzles are really uninspired and the characters give too many hints, but somehow I overall loved it.
as a PCfag I'll be awaiting VLR and 999 PC ports that I heard mentioned somewhere

tbh it's pretty sad how very often the camera cuts to the ceiling to avoid showing an animation, obvious lazyness

Yeah I was disappointed that these were not a more open type of puzzle, instead simply requiring to do other storylines to be flat out told the passwords.

>Someone is not teleported, but copied into another reality
>This is adequately explained beforehand
>"W-why's I still here? You said I's gonna be somewheah's else, massuh!"
>"I guess we'll never know"
Every time
You'd think characters who bring up obscure theories and paradoxes left and right would have a basic understanding of consciousness

14 hours in. Better than VLR, not yet as good as 999.

Finished it after clocking in 22 hours, on the 3DS. I personally didn't like the full 3D cutscenes. The VN style presentation was way better for a game like this and you can speed read through VN presentations unlike the cutscenes here. As what the other anons said the animations look pretty shoddy, and awkward. While they tried to look expressive, a lot of the times it just felt awkward, I mostly ignored the animations and just listened to the story.

They really fucked up the story to be honest, not one place did they explain what happened to Alice and Clover, no mention of Kyle at all, and various other plot holes from VLR that should've been filled. Seriously what the hell, I was at the very least expecting a reference to the player being an unknown entity like what the secret ending for VLR did, but absolutely nothing.

Even with that I did enjoy the game for what it is. Taken alone, it's an alright game, taken with 999 and VLR, it's pretty eh, I'm glad it's there, but at the same time, I wish it was better.

oh baby

They should have put the third game on hold to work on and release PC ports of 999 and VLR and then use the sales of that to give this new game a better budget.

But the game wouldn't even make sense if it was made on anything besides a DS

>Inb4 you have to flip your monitor upside down for sudoku

What kind of freedom is that?

Is Ashley Burch in the cast like some anons claimed a few weeks ago?
Arr you forced to find "report cards" like in VLR to get to the true ending?

DS emulators can rotate

The kind where you get to choose random pieces of different timelines at your leisure and end up getting slightly confused
There's a nice red herring early on that takes advantage of it

They're not talking about an emulator, you can already do that, they're talking about a full PC port. Most people would probably find it suspicious rendering two identical screens anywhere outside of a DS.

No, she isn't. It's dual-audio anyway.

This was not the Decision Game I was expecting
This booklet is a fucking madman

It's amazing how much of this game is a fuck you to Old Man Grumpei's speech about the people left behind in discarded timelines.

Eric should've been given the gun and choice to shoot Zero, he'd actually think about it, rather than Mr. Saviour Carlos who'd probably fuck up a timeline to save his clothes from getting wet.

>he'd actually think about it
You mean he'd actually do it
Eric is an angry retard with "flying off the goddamn handle" as one of his major personality traits, I doubt he even understands half of what happened
He'd probably just do it to make Mira happy, since he knows she's batshit insane

I dont know why anyone would change. VN's are the best medium for storytelling. The atmosphere from sounds, music and voices, the characters are depicted to help tell them apart, the interactive element of choices, the detail of a book. Wasted potential.

This author and the other one behind ever17 are stagnant imo. Root Double BCAD was also dissapointing and I never liked danganronpa or whatever it is.
Can R07 redeem mystery vn's with Trainology?

All spoilers are well, spoilers.
Its implied clover and alice used the copy pasta device to go back in time.

the game was underwhelming compared to the first 2.

the third person has a reason, but its kindof a crap reason that could be done differently.

They should have went with 2d sprites if the budget was tight. The textures are extremly blurry on the 3ds version, which should not be the case since some textures are crisp as fuck, they once again fucked up the optomization, and the places that needed textures could all have been pre rendered cutscenes.
They forgot how to present mysteries. Present the mystery like 2 sigima and dianas then the solution the copy paste machine
Yes, they were retarded at times. No excuses for somone like sigma to be a blithering retard. they also miss that the strongest shifters all have 1 thing in common, the copy paste machine. Also, copy paste machine should be taboo. The mind science is fine, the future tech also good, but pulling aliens did it is lazy, unless you have said aliens stop the machine from existing in the end.

oh, and as far as I have found, no secret ending. Thats what made 2 special.
Honestly, it was an underwhelming conclusion to the series.

Eh, that twist was a nice touch at best. Really not worth denying the game a PC port over. The game's already been ported to phones regardless.

A "nice touch"? It was the fundamental driving narrative device of the entire game.

I said it in a previous thread but might as well say it again. I'd say it's the weakest of the 3. The full 3d was not a good decision purely because of how un polished and awkward it is. Characters have super exaggerated facial expressions, lip syncing is way off and the animations are kind of shit.

The writing is definitely the weakest too with things being explained MULTIPLE times over and over and in general the antagonist and his motives are kind of boring. There are some debatable plot points too and i can't help but feel it suffered because it was trying to appeal to people who hadn't played the previous games.

it's still good and has some really great twists but it's still the weaker of the 3

Is it worth buying VLR on 3ds ?

It's not really about motivation and more of circumstance, he's the only one in the game who doesn't have any hand in the time shit, and his only connection is being in love with the instigator of technically the entire plot of the games, and had no influence on such. As such, he is the closest we can get to an unbiased observer to this bullshit, and is circumstantially the only one really qualified to judge the actions of the villain and really the motivations and steps that are taken to create a "golden" or "ideal" timeline or situation, temper aside. Honestly, the fact that the villain actually claims responsibility for what they set up, unlike in VLR where almost everyone is completely fine with being fucked around to save something that at least half of them won't be around to see, is enough of a confession on behalf of the writers that a necessary evil is still evil.

I played the vita version so I don't know how the 3ds version compares technically but for the story alone yes

I guess I'll look into how to crack my 3ds

Glad I pirated, had a feeling this wouldn't turn out well.

www.spike-chunsoft.co.jp/zeroescape/x_door/en/
>ESCAPE… MURDER…
They're backgrounds

Fuck mira and Eric I hated those two motherfuckers

Just finished the game right now. I'm going into spoilers

[spoiler]First, Zero did nothing wrong. I was really worried about the ending since the very moment I saw the AYY LMAO technology I thought it was going to end in trainwreck. But well, it wasn't so bad.
A second problem with the ending is, that after so much shifting and shit the game lost any interested in finding that "good ending", since basically the different world stories are just there and just stop caring.

That's the problem with this author, he had a great idea with 999. He made it 99% science game and then 1% bullshit but based in that science so I could more or less believe it how Junpei would know things from other stories just like that.[/spoiler]

I FUCKED UP THE SPOILER. Well fuck it, just don't read if you haven't finished the story you faggots.

Then VLR happened, and he basically used that 1% of bullshit to create half of the story. Don't get me wrong, VLR was a good game but I couldn't help but roll my eyes from time to time.

And then here comes Zero Time Dilemma. I like the point the author wants to make, how sometimes the "worst option" can actually be "the best one", and how everything was just a huge according to keikaku to save humanity and shit, but the way to go there is just wrong.

The Ayy lmaos technology is the WORST PLOT DEVICE they could even create. It's just simply wrong in so many ways because it's basically a huge Deus Ex Machina the author uses to make any sense of the story, and this brings at the same time a lot of rushed and badly writen things.
We have for example Phi suddenly saying how she's actually red-haired, or how she was sent to 1904 then sent to the future to 2008. Why? Just some experiment who cares! These are plot points brough from literally nowhere.

The entire Q twist plot, that is the main twist plot and is basically another version of Sigma twist plot at the end of VLR or the dual screen twist from 999, contains another huge problem. Sure, in no moment anyone calls Sean by Q name, but at the same time you are telling me nobody ever mentions how "that deaf guy chilling there is fucking suspicious?", I mean, they suspect each other during the entire game, they even mention at the beginning how Zero could be one of them, and nobody brings how a fucking old man that can even talk or anything is just chilling there? If he was in a wheelchair we should have seen Eric or someone moving him around at any moment, or at least mentioning it.
I don't know, I think the foreshawing for this twist plot was really weak. It surprises the player sure, but at the same time I think that going by "hey, here's this guy that can't talk, hear, move or doesn't even have a name, but just forget about it never ever think about how fucking weird it is".

To explain some deaths they just go with "hey, Mira is a serial killer and she wasn't actually sleeping so she would go around killing people sometimes… that why would she wear a black robe to do so if nobody is supposed to know what's going on in other wards? Well who cares?" She basically kills some times and some others don't, is a totally random character that is there just to fill the shock value of the game. Hey, things are getting boring, let's just kill junpei and put his head in display, who's the killer? Let's say Mira for example, why the fuck not. Funny enough how her character is only interested in hearts, but then the way she kills Junpei has nothing to do with check his heart or not.

In the ending where everything connects with VLR is more or less the same. Hey Junpei you need to forget about everything to make my plan work… Why the fuck would they need junpei to forget everything? He has been there, he has seen everything, all he wants is to stay with his waifu. Couldn't he just help her out with her plan? The issue is that they had that in VLR and now had to connect it somehow. Once again for making any sense of this sense they had to use the Deux Ex Ayy Lmao machine.

How they get rid of the watches? Ayy Lmao Cards made out of Ayy Lmao element.
Why do some times the characters take stupids decisions nobody would make? MENTAL HACKING POWAH. If the Shift bullshit wasn't enough, now he's giving the main antagonist manga powers that let him some shit to happen. These powers are not clearly defined since he manages to take control over Carlos or Diana minds even though he's supposed to be hidden away. And that's another thing, during the team switches, would he just hide around like Snake watching everyone? Was he using his powers through walls? I don't know man, the main issue when you create supernatural powers is making sure these powers follow any logic, here they are just convenient plot elements to make everything finally fit.

With all that said, it's not a bad novel, and yeah, I say novel because the gameplay elements suck. As everyone mentioned, the animations suck hard time, and the puzzles are pretty meh. Going for a traditional VN style would have been better.
Some good things about the story is how the author managed to get rid of the usual slow paced beginning all these stories have, where everyone needs to meet each other and shit. He just went for a story where everyone knew each other before so we didn't have to read all that. The way the story is presented too is pretty great, through fragments that make you put together the story. I would sometimes go to the flowchart to make sense of everything and that was pretty nice touch. Considering they would forget what would happen in previous scenes the order to watch them wasn't really important so this was never a negative point. However, sometimes I would get stuck because I didn't see all the characters deaths and shit like that so it would force me to repeat the votation phase several times.

Anyways 999>>>VLR>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Time Dilemma

But still is a good saga, it was worth the time

Security cameras
They made kind of a big deal about them
But yes, the reveal made no fucking sense, and the overuse of MENTAL HACKING in the dialog instead of simple goddamn phrases like "mind control" or "mind reading" was probably the worst the writing's ever gotten in the series

I wish I could fuck Diana

Anyone else having problems to buy the game?
Like, Amazon says that it will be available until DECEMBER

If you loved 999 and VLR, ZTD is a satisfying enough conclusion. VLR isn't complete without it (although 999 is.) The game is engaging but a lot of the design choices are double-edged swords and the game takes shortcuts to make them work (in both presentation and also the game's plot.) Cutscenes are great following decision games; not so great for waking up and staring at a wall for 10 minutes. Fragments are great at nonlinearity and making the mystery; kind of stunts of the narrative because there isn't really any progression between them. Any character dialogue is wiped out, so…

Overall in spite of its flaws I'd say it's worth playing.

I completed the game today and I recind my earlier ranking. 999 > VLR > ZTD

There were a lot of great things about it, sure. It's a mess, but it's not an irredeemable mess. There were a lot of problems I had with VLR that I think they addressed. For example, I think the fragment vignettes worked a lot better with the constant timeline-jumping. I also think the dilemmas and decision games were on the whole a lot more interesting than the Ambidex, which got stale after the first time somebody scored a 9. I also appreciated that the shock and gore were back from 999, and that it felt as though Zero had more of a presence in this game, I didn't feel like Zero Jr. was a constant, looming antagonist at all.

But among the rest of the problems with the game there are two huge, gaping plot holes that span nearly the entire trilogy. The first is Akane, Sigma and Phi's plan between VLR and ZTD. It feels like they've completely forgotten that this universe works on many worlds theory. They want to jump back into the past to Dcom to prevent the Radical-6 virus from spreading, but they can't. That timeline already exists and will always exist, altering the past will never erase it; Akane explained that herself in ZTD with the Back to the Future story. If they just mean they want to go back and create a branching path where the virus didn't spread, that's a piece of cake. It only occurs on one timeline in ZTD of many, and there are even more universes where Dcom never happened and Zero never existed, so humanity's fine. The events of two entire games are pointless.

Then we come to the Zero's explanation for his "complex motivations" and I assume the writers' explanation for the message of the entire franchise, that possibilities are limitless and the future isn't determined.

Fuck you. Yes it is. I thought Zero's first explanation for the Decision Game was underwhelming, but I didn't mind it too much since it's very similar to the events of the first game, within the many branching possible paths it's a closed time loop between two dependent events. Akane had to make the Nonary Game so that Sigma could save her in the past so she survive to make the Nonary Game et cetera. Zero had to make the Decision Game to cause his own birth so he could survive to make the Decision Game. It's like Akane's tournament metaphor in the Anthropic Principle segment, it's one branch in the timeline and somebody had to fulfill it. The event was already determined and causing it to occur is practically a formality. Then Zero tries to turn around, from this game set up out of necessity because he had to cause a determined event to happen, and says that the whole point was that the future isn't determined. I have no idea what the writers were thinking, it makes no sense.

Wow that post looks autistically long now

The biggest problem with all this is that the VLR timeline was handled incredibly poorly
There's no big central nonary game this time, so they just threw a bunch of random decisions and smaller "games" at the wall to see which one stuck
Which means both that the VLR timeline was one of those random events shotgunned throughout the timelines, and that it had practically no real overall meaning, or any connection to anything that happened elsewhere in the game
Which means that the VLR timeline was something they could have just thrown in anywhere, just some thing that needed to happen somewhere at least once to keep up continuity, and that makes the whole thing suffer

And then there's the characters themselves
First akane decides to have everyone jump out of their timeline instead of playing the AB game for no fucking reason other than the plot needs it to happen
Which takes them from a timeline where everyone important is still alive(and could continue to be so), to one where both diana and sigma are dead
So then after junpei's retarded plan doesn't work, they do more time shenanigans until they all end up in the literal bad end for all of humanity, that akane came to stop in the first place
So then akane, the person who started all this shifting bullshit for no reason, decides to just live with it for no reason, and then none of them ever try to shift again to get to a less shit future for some reason, even though each of them have personally been inside like three separate timelines where that doesn't happen
And the worst part of all of this is that the original junpei and akane died in the teleporter explosion, which means their original consciousnesses probably shifted somewhere that doesn't suck, and we never see that timeline instead

Right, that was a sinking feeling I had from the beginning of ZTD. I got the impression from the end of VLR that the whole point of that game was just to set up the events of this one, and then it's like it didn't even matter. I thought the whole point of Akane's AB game was to train Sigma and Phi to project their consciousness across parallel universes so they'd be better equipped to deal with the crisis at Dcom? They're no better at it than two random people off the street.

And then there's the magical transporting device, I don't think the writers remember how it works half the time. Sigma and Diana send Phi and Delta back to the past. So what happened to the two copies left in Dcom? They just died? What about when Phi was sent from 1904 to 2008? What about the copy that should have been left in 1904? Did she lead a full life? Did they just throw her in a dumpster?

Or what I would assume is the twist that the events of the whole game are taking place from the perspective of Zero and his security cameras, despite the fact that some of the camera placement would have been outright impossible. Or Zero's claim that he can only see histories in which he isn't dead, despite the fact that in one of the histories you listen to a recording of Zero saying "I'm dead in this timeline".

Or when Zero shot the dog for no fucking reason. I don't get that.

Why didnt akane just jumo to the history where the coin toss was correct from the start? She had no idea of the 8 billion deaths that would occur

The copies that were left behind got shipped off to doesn't matter land, because they stopped being useful to the plot
And zero could read minds, which would give him knowledge of the timelines he's dead in
And he shot the dog because fuck that dog I guess, gab was the only thing I was expecting to have some sort of twist that didn't actually turn out to be anything important

I suppose, but that doesn't explain why we got to watch it play out in real time, after that farce with the attempted rape that you're not supposed to know what's going on, even though Zero knew the whole time.

And why was there a bracelet on Sean and not Delta if the characters were supposed to assume that "Q" was the one playing the game with them? Why were Eric and Mira letting some random kid call the shots while their real teammate slept in a wheelchair? Why would Akane be surprised that the anagram on the wall said "with you, we are ten" or whatever when she should have known there were ten people including Sean?

Or that mess with the arrangement of the timelines after they revealed the teams weren't all awake at the same time. I figured something was up when they had all of those Execution Games mysteriously merge and then split off into four timelines, and it was nice that they rearranged the rest of the timelines to reflect how they related to each other in sequence, but it made the top half worse by stacking them end to end. After C-Team voted, each branch should lead to its own Q-Team vote, and then each of those four branches should lead to its own D-Team vote, then they would connect to the rest of the timeline. It also would have made it clearer that you have to clear all four execution scenes even if all scenes in the Execution segments are filled out, which is where I was stuck for like an hour. I don't think they thought too hard about that either, since I was able to fill out 80% of the segments in the post-C-team execution and post-D-team execution timelines even though I hadn't witnessed the death scenes.

Did you realized they named him "gab" because he helps the players talk to each other through the notes? Whoooaaaaa

What I meant was he how was he doing mental hacking during the story. There are moments where is implied the characters do stuff they don't want to, and that's because Zero uses Mental Hacking. Now, he just uses mental hacking from anywhere, or was he hidding somewhere taking a look? I don't know. Everything around Metanl Hacking just sounds lazy and a OP power to fill parts in the plot

Welcome to Japanese mysteries, where it's like an unfair Nero Wolfe novel but Goodwin is some can do no wrong red haired whore.

Hey remember when Kyle was super important to the plan and would NEVER be left behind?
Or when you yourself, the player, were taking an active role in the events of the series?
Well, at least that means you have a better memory than Kotaro Uchikoshi.
It's all just such a lukewarm ending, it's disappointing.

user, if you'd played the game you'd know it's probably a bit of both
It's not like he was ever more than throwing distance away from any member of the cast at any time

Hey remember when you yourself, the player, became a prewritten character by switching consciousnesses with kyle
Or when you yourself, the player, were playing ZTD

Both Diana and Carlos do things they didnt intend on doing and insist someone controlled them obviously "?" is doing it

No that's Zero, who may or may not be controlled by the player for most of the game, but obviously not for all of it

Oh shit niggers VLR and 999 are coming to Vita and PC.

I thought I wouldn't be disappointed by a zero escape ending since I liked VLR's despite it being rather unpopular but holy fuck.
This is literally VLR's ending but not well done in any way. There's no closure at all. The secret goal of the game is just a self-fulfilling prophecy that changes jack shit. It retcons shit to the point of making the main villain dindu nuffin and reducing VLR to a single extended game over. It's sappy. It has no meta payoff.
But the worst is that only a third of the cast has any closure to their character arc in game. The rest is in fucking files. It's MGSV all over again.
SERIOUSLY, THE BIG SECRET IS THAT PHI IS SIGMA AND sorta LUNA'S DAUGHTER AND ALL THE REACTION WE GET FROM THEM IS A SILENT GROUP HUG HOW DO YOU FUCK UP THIS BADLY
Did I miss an entire true ending or some shit ? This is preposterous. And everything was so promising up until the force quit boxes.

Why does everyone look so fucking ugly? VLR's models looked great.

Soon, probably? They'll want to cash in on ZTD's release and critical reception before the fan outcry get too loud. Or maybe there isn't a fan outcry outside of Holla Forums, I wouldn't know.

Alright, here are my final thoughts about the series.

999
The good
-Amazing payoff and meta twist, best by a landslide not only in zero escape but in vidya in general
-Crisp 2D visuals, best aesthetic with the setting
-Good plot overall, tightest one in the series

The bad
-The omnipresent digital root shit gets very old very fast
-The bad endings are arbitrary and cheap
-Awful flowchart management
-When you're in the middle of the story, feels more like the scenarist compiled a list of his favorite weird science
-Ending makes little sense upon scrutiny

anecdotes and made a game out of it

Virtue's Last Reward
The good
-Best escapes, no possible contest. The secret answer mechanic is great with a good payoff while never feeling too unfair
-Best character drama
-Best flowchart management, except maybe for the Phi betrayal
-The attention to detail is amazing, the tiniest shit will change depending on what you chose first
-The true ending is a great flood of twists, but all of them were subtly foreshadowed
-Best feels in the series with the Luna ending

The bad
-The 3DS save brickings, obviously
-Free the Soul and Apocalypse out of fucking nowhere
-Ace is reduced to some acolyte of Free the Soul
-AB game is interesting at first but quickly has to resort to bullshit to score cheap feels
-Quark is basically a wasted slot of a character
-Is essentially just a prequel to an unreleased game

Zero Time Dilemma
The good
-Pretty good at making a "I don't know what the FUCK is going on" atmosphere
-Best life or death decisions
-Good fanservice for players of the first two games
-Great buildup for a meta plot involving the player…

The bad
-But nah, it's just an NPC mind hacking
-Here, let me just make VLR entirely pointless real quick
-Free the Soul dindu nuffin
-Brother dindu nuffin
-It was just because of a terrorist we pulled out of your ass
-Hope you enjoy character arc conclusions in files
-13 escapes, all of them a step down from the VLR model
-The secret plot of the game was just to make something that already happened without time travel shenanigans happen
-God forbid we'd show Phi react to Sigma being her father

So ZTD dead last, and I understand why people like 999 better, but overall I my personal choice is VLR.

Have to strongly disagree, I hated the way they changed the puzzles in VLR. By placing the camera in the center of the room and making the navigation work by rotating the camera 360 degrees, they essentially reduced every puzzle to a collection of objects neatly arranged along the wall. Pick up all the objects in one go and see how they fit together, fuck exploring the room. I think the only exception to this was the Garden.

The constant timeline jumping also skewed the difficulty curve horribly, making you jump from an end-game puzzle to an early-game puzzle a few minutes apart.

How is that any of this dependent on a perspective change ? Any escape game is collecting shit until you can solve the puzzles presented, and 999 was no exception. It doesn't fucking matter if it's in multiple stages or at a 360° angle. The fact is, VLR added secondary solutions, turning escapes into possible rewards instead of obstacles, and didn't keep a single dumb gimmick throughout the game.

Digital roots? Those only play into maybe two puzzle rooms, the VLR equivalent would be the AB game.

And recognizing the shit to collect and collecting it is part of that. By removing the room navigation VLR practically hands all of the puzzle items to you instead of requiring you to actively seek them out.

>that subtle flirt Junpei passes to Carlos

Not as intriguing as the previous two games, but there were definitely more times that got me a bit misty eyed.

They should have tried to match the lip synching like they did in VLR, though. The animation in general was pretty poopy.

VLR was awesome but the save bricking shit was the worst thing. You wouldn't know until it happened and then you look it up and there's no update that fixed it or anything. The worst thing about it was that I should have avoided it in the first place, but for some reason in that room, it softlocked in an unrelated puzzle, so the next time I was going through it, I was saving frequently. Fucking tragedy and practically took the fun out of 100%ing it.

This game probably had heavy budget problems. Based on the premium booklet's info, the modeler couldn't make asymmetrical faces, and they had so much trouble working Junpei's bad-ass jacket into the game that they had to stick to the shirt on it's own, real shame

besides that and my toaster not running it particularly well, this was hype as fuck and I fucking can't stop jizzing over how exciting this fucking game's twists were

I did that thing where I started giggle-weeping minus the tears during the moment D-team realized they were a fucking family, that shit just dropped a bucket of acidic emotion all over me

Anyone else feel bad pushing the button in the disinfecting room?
Holy shit that seems like a particularly nasty way to go.

Wait, the title is an anagram? Of what?

M'ira.

Zero Time Dilemma

ME, I AM ZERO, I AM DELTA

I forgot to say

SIGMAxPHI OTP BTFO

I thought the whole ending was really cringey. They boil everything that happened down to "SHAPE DA FUTURE". And the bit with the terrorist causing all of humanity to die, so that's why Brother has to unleash Radical-6, which ends up killing all but 2 billion people was a huge load of bullshit. And about Radical-6, didn't Zero in VLR need it to train Phi and Sigma to have the shift ability, so they could go back and stop Radical-6 from spreading? Then we come to Carlos who's able to shift, just out of the blue. BUT WAIT IT WAS BECAUSE AKANE AND JUNPEI COULD SHIFT TOO SO IT RESONATES TO CARLOS even though in 999 a year before they were only transmitter and receiver. And then Irredeemable Piece of Shit 1 and 2 are both there for no reason other than to be catalysts for people dying why else have a serial murderer who can't use the field and her pussy whipped white knight there?**

As far as Delta knowing what happened in all the timelines, he mentioned the glasses he wears has a direct feed to all the security cameras in the facility, and the quantum computer is able to store data from other histories (which is how Sean is able to "shift"), so it isn't too far fetched that he just pulls the recorded footage from the quantum computer, and that's how he's able to know what went on even without being able to shift. Which is still a load of hand-wavey crap.

In the end I'm just glad this game was able to happen.

oh my god my spoilers

YOU DO REALIZE THAT THE ONLY ENDING YOU NEED IS THE VERY FIRST ONE, IN THE COIN TOSS, RIGHT?

THE TRUE ENDING JUST REQUIRES THAT

INPUT THE NUMBER CODES YOURSELF WITHOUT PLAYING THE REST, FIND THEM ONLINE IT WORKS FOR A 3hr SPEED RUN OF THE GAME

GOOD JOB FAGGOT
It doesn't matter, anyway. The game sucks but it's VLR done right, so it's not that bad.

999 was better.

Who Dunnit? stories from the Nips always get bloated with world-encompassing retardation. These stories were made to be smaller-scale, and 999 does it better.

I bet you money Danganronpa will have either timeline screwery or mental powers in DR3

Danganronpa and Zero Escape rip each other off so hard it's insane, but I guess they have the same writer? I don't know.

Zero Escape was retconning stupid crap after 999, and Danganronpa became asspuss of LE WACKY and other retarded nonsense after DR1 (which was wacky but actually had a far better plot–more grounded, so to speak–thanks to it having most of its plot and key animations from the original project).

People keep saying the grandfather of ALL of this is Ever17 and that Ever17 is the best mystery VN, better than any of these.

Is this true?

...

Where's that cute bird from?

Fuck that snail. He doesn't know he caused 6 billion or 8 billion people to die.

NOPE A TRUCK DROVE IT ALL AWAY IT'S GONE NOW FORGET IT
this game, man…

Nah, Ever17 is pretty meh. 999 and VLR cribbed basically all of their plot points from it because they shared the main writer but if it's the best mystery VN then all the others must be total dogshit because it's barely any sort of mystery and the execution of it all is resoundingly average. I thought 999 was better in pretty much every regard.

Why didn't they use the alien machine to transport to before the lady had her heart cut out and move that snail somewhere else?

This is perfect in so many ways.
Marry me, user

Fair enough, then. I'll stick to dusting off 999.
Even with the cliffhanger (which, coincidentally, is never properly concluded ever in the sequels) and dumb mummy nonsense it's probably the best SpikeyChun has offered in terms of a mystery/game of death title.

Only other mystery VN I ever played was Kara no Shoujo, and that was both far superior to 999 and yet utterly pathetic in terms of why the ending couldn't just be happy and why the true end required you to play another ending first for literally NO reason.

What woman of any possible value in any regard whatsoever is deterred by a snail?

The cameras just let him see everythung in the shelter in that timeline. He knows what happened in other timelines by reading the minds of people who have shifted. I just feel like delta himself came out of nowhere, did I miss some hints?

Well, there were the anagrams, and you knew zero had to be someone
And the guy himself was set up before the reveal, if only like 30 minutes before

The kind who smiles and forgives her sociopathic murderer before telling her not to do it again
So, no value at all

Where did you get this video, anyway?

And I never did get a solid answer from an user as to the truth of Umineko:
Is this VN as utterly retarded as people proclaim it to be, or is it just fan theory for an unfinished mystery?

And before anyone says anything: Yes, a mystery "Who Dunnit?" is only concluded when a definite answer is given to the audience who has been playing detective the whole time. If there is never a definitive answer then the story bears no conclusion and the story is thus unfinished.

Nicely said, mate.
This should be a test for first dates.

Did no one remember that Mira is a serial killer and pretty much caused what happened in the trilogy at the end of the game? DID NO ONE REMEMBER THAT MIRA CAUSED RADICAL-6 TO GET OUT OF THE FACILITY?

DID NO ONE REMEMBER THAT MIRA IS A ABSOLUTE PIECE OF SHIT

AND DID NO ONE REMEMBER HOW MUCH OF A WHITE KNIGHTING FAGGOT ERIC WAS???

user shush-sh sh shhh

It's over now.

Let it die…in a puddle of its own blood and piss.

No but seriously, it worked in Danganronpa 1 but it doesn't work for this story to just "let it go"

I find it most enjoyable how the first decision you make in the game is the most ironic. You won the coin flip and died anyways. Life is so unfair.

In the ingame epilogue file Sean finds out where the Transporter was taken to and he breaks Mira out of prison so that they can do so

>mfw it was HEAVILY implied that Mira's first victim was Eric's own mom

What are you-… lol, oops

But wait, how would that even work? Wouldn't that corrupt the timestream?

I mean, events happened as they did because of that snail killing. If they undo that then everything becomes unraveled, Phi ceases to exist, Sigma never gets old and turns into his young self with a game that didn't happen and….huh

Also
>breaking Mira out of prison
I hate Eric so much

you're a funny guy

Time travel is possible, even if only mentally. Or you can copy yourself to another time.

Why not just kill Mira before she commits her first murder and stop all this shit from happening in the first place?

Also I can't tell if Uchikoshi is an asshole or an idiot. VLR was created just setup a third game and sold poorly. Said third game was only possible via begging and fan support, given dirt for a budget, and was a miracle.

So why on Earth would he use three to setup ANOTHER PROBLEM, with another villain that's NOT EVEN REALL Y EXPLAINED beyond being a religious fanatic who would cause a nuclear apocalypse unless Radical-6 killed them off, when they ALREADY had a well setup problem(Radical-6) and Villain(Free the Soul) to deal with?

Also, didn't Uchikoshi say there was supposed to be a Dio or Left clone in ZTD? Why does Phi's hair have a red tint here but not in VLR? Why did Sigma and Phi even shift there when their abilities did nothing since the Decision game trained them all into shifters? What happened to Alice and Clover? Why did Q team drag around a deaf, blind, mute old man?

I don't get people who call this VLR done right. Even though VLR fucked shit up with the multiple timelines, ZTD fucks it up even worse.

For plebeians, perhaps.

This game revolves around the idea that there are multiple timelines. If the timestream could be "corrupted", the endings where everyone survives would have done that, when one of the endings is the canon transition to VLR. Sean, not Eric, mind you, broke her out. Eric's idea was that she can absolve her sins through legal punishment, but Sean explained that she's a Death-Penalty tier serial murderer and the only way she can pay for it is with her life, but he tells her stopping herself from the past would also work, even though it won't change the original timeline. Zero brought up that in a universe where he hasn't caused any deaths, he can get away as long as there's no evidence of intent. The copies of Eric and Mira will likely live the rest of their days in this new timeline incognito, and even the Mira with Blood on her hands can be cleared of any crime in the universe where they are still alive. They don't need to move the snail as much as they need to stop Mira, so that everyone is happy- this will just make another timeline with a happier set-up for an ending, a timeline where the entire trilogy never happened.

However, while there isn't a problem with creating that timeline, it should be kept in mind that Radical 6 would likely still have been implemented, or the religious fanatic would have started the nuclear doom. Ironically enough, we go back to what Tenmyouji was saying in VLR about his life in that set timeline with Quark. Zero put the team through this experience on purpose (maybe even plotted the situation that VLR ended with, or even anticipated Crash Keys and 999) just so that he would have capable SHIFTers that put saving the world on their priority.

The single timeline concept was brought up earlier in the game, but because we know for sure that there are different timelines and universes for this world, the dilemma of swapping out the minds of other selves doesn't really apply. From what we've seen, SHIFTing and transporting creates a new timeline instead of changing it. In game, some timelines just continue off where shifting or transporting is important, but we can assume that these moments branch into two histories where the jump happens and the jump doesn't happen. Like the Alien Transporter, SHIFTing is really more like faxing the memories from a few different histories to create a new timeline where the SHIFTer has downloaded extra memories.

I have to defend Mira and Eric, though, they are quite a pair. It was straight up entertaining watching them interact, and despite how fucked up they are, you can really see some good in both of them. It's funny, it was like I could tell that Mira was a killer even though it wasn't very obvious early on. I liked how Mira wasn't just craving to kill people and simply wasn't morally conflicted about killing when she could or needed to get away with it. The fact that she only wants the warmth that a certain two people had leads to her interest in watching how people react, how they present themselves and whatnot. And Eric, well, I can't say I blame him for being so broken from everything. He can point his shotgun at everybody for half of the game and I couldn't hate the guy. When you look at his concept art, though, it gives you a better idea of what his character is supposed to be like.

Because it's not a problem, and it doesn't need explaining
Which they did, conclusively

What if VLR Akane and Delta were in cahoots the whole time

All good points, though I was being somewhat facetious about the timestream thing. Still, you make a good point.

Guess that's yet another colossal plothole.

That being said, I have to admit that I prefer a more outlandish Jackal/Hyde killer than the portrayal here, and that's because the portrayal in this game is actually pretty realistic.

Seriously, this is genuinely how people with disordered minds and utterly psychopathic mentalities act/react. It's not some Joker HUEHUEBLOOD stuff but legitimately an empty shell of a human being without focus, clear goal and lacking regard for the feelings of others due to an inability to truly understand any of it.

There was once a time when autistic people were thought to be the same as psychopaths. Thankfully that changed with more study.

TL;DR The character was written well, yeah, but Mira is simply too real for me to actually like. I like the character as more of a concept and execution rather than a living character, you know?

Eitherway, it was done very well yeah.

A nuclear apocalypse is a big fucking problem.

We got setup and backstory with Free the Soul, Left, and Radical-6. With this, all we know is some religious person causes a nuclear end of humanity. What religion? What about their religion called for a nuclear apocalypse? How did they gain access to the nukes? What is this person's gender? We don't know when, how, who, and we're barely given a why. It's bullshit.

Or why not skip to the timeline when Diana and Sigma beget Delta and prevent his birth? Or go back to 1904 and kill him there?

If Akane's mission was to prevent the spread of Radical-6, why didn't she? If the spread of Radical-6 only happens in one timeline out of many, what's the problem? If Delta's plan was to release Radical-6, why does it only happen in one timeline? Why not try to prevent it in every timeline? Why even bother trying to prevent it when Akane knows that changing the past will never erase a future timeline because of the many worlds theory?

Jekyll

I know it's the first room and unfair to judge the game by it, but HOLY FUCK I hate it when puzzles don't let you act on a fucking obvious thing until some character points it out for you. Pissed me off I just went through and did the rest of the voting cutscenes to just get them out of the way.

Can't be because Akane never gave that impression.

You might finagel something out of Old Ass Akane aka OAA being involved with Delta but eh.

I wish the player turned out to be Zero like another user suggested was probably the original intention.

Or why not go full Ar Nosurge and have the player be the anti-Zero and Zero be another time-distortion antagonist, essentially an opposing gamer that was using the people in the game for their own ends?

You could even have the player use certain characters by possession and the anti-player doing the same thign with a final stand-off and

YOU KNOW WHAT? FORGET IT!
WHY NOT JUST PLAY AR NOSURGE?

Make sure all of the skulls and the thumb are lit up over on the left, or it won't allow you to progress to certain scenes. I had to go through some of the voting cutscenes multiple times to get every possible outcome. Still not sure if that was a bug or intentional.

Thank you, user.

If Delta's so smart, why couldn't the fucker just find the terrorist on his own?

The Many Worlds theory just ruins a story, especially when coupled with the ability to shift between timelines.

Because he is the terrorist. Or he might not be. Or the terrorist might not even exist.

If he exists and it's not him, he doesn't really want to find him : he wants a scapegoat for unleashing Radical-6. So that he can avenge Left and purge humanity, blablabla, while still pretenting to be a good guy.

Hence the entire plot of the game
But a single terrorist somewhere in the world isn't a big problem for 7 people with fucking in-built time travel
And clearly he's not with free the soul, because free the soul was dealt with
Seriously, did you even play the game

You have to open the slots first you retard

Not really. Seven and Junpei only destroyed the HQ, which probably only crippled them. Brother is still alive. The Claydolls are still up. Akana even "infiltrated" them before sending Sigma to the moon; I say "infiltrate" because Zero gave her the place and time of FtS big event (April 12 2029, in the bunker).

I can't really explain it, but Mira comes off as a character I wouldn't be afraid to be near. Like she wouldn't fuck with me if I stay on her good side, but I guess if I get too comfortable with her, she would want to feel my warmth, if you know what I'm saying. Maybe it's like that gondii parasite thing. I guess you wanted simpler characterization, but when you bring stuff like this up, Eric's kind of like a deconstruction of the type of character that seems really nice and happy all the time but he's actually kind of crazy and sensitive. It really got to me how he would fawn over Mira because she really is the only thing that Eric was happy for.

Judging by the previous 3 games, something to do with the player.

>you… finished the fucking puzzle right? You're supposed to take pictures of the key symbols on the wallpapers to open each slot SO you can put the keys in

Don't even complain about having to do the other votes, what game do you think you're playing besides a puzzle adventure game?

In ZTD's ending that leads to VLR, Zero tells Akane to take part in some Free The Soul- related thing. Just because the impression wasn't given doesn't mean it wasn't the case. Of course the AB players were supposed to think that their enemy was Free the Soul. And ZTD Akane was only aware of specific ideas from the future morphogenic feed. The experienced SHIFTer OAA could probably be very selective in the information that she can send. And she didn't mind getting killed by Dio when it happens. It wasn't like she was working around it, it was like Dio's infiltration was part of the experiment.

>I wish the player turned out to be Zero
user this better be fucking facetious because in case you hadn't noticed your facetiousness isn't translating very well through your posts. I'll take this as an opportunity to help clear things up for anyone who doesn't understand. Literally every Zero Escape game has had you be Zero in one way or another.

>999: you're seeing things through Junpei's perspective, but when he's confused about the shit that's going on a new inner monologue starts, deliberately made to seem like it's you saying it, thinking it, but it is revealed to be Akane sending the info to Junpei. You are essentially Akane when influencing Junpei to make different decisions.
>VLR: You were Zero before he even set up the game through SHIFTing mumbo jumbo.
>ZTD: Me, I am Zero, I am Delta

Yeah, I guess I'll just play the game you just spoiled to me.

I think I've gotten used to reading typos online unless I manage to go over my own, but otherwise when someone spells something wrong it's like a subconscious itch that I don't realize is happening.

Good question. He's read millions of minds, you'd think he'd be able to figure it out, but if the religious fanatic is secluded, antisocial, or deliberately hiding his presence and identity, then that could possibly put him out of Delta's reach. Maybe the fanatic has some way to deter Delta's mind hacking. Maybe he has some way to hide his presence. "The Truth is Invisible", after all.

And maybe it's a total cop-out so that the writer can come up with everything later.

That's just, like, your opinion man.

That'd be fine, but if Delta is the player, do you want to release a virus that'll wipe out 6 gorillion, or would you do something to keep the whole world from a disaster that would end it in the first place?

I disagree, what the fuck are they even gonna do to find him anyway? They can't just comb the world all their lives in different directions for several timelines. Well, they can, but that'd be the most inefficient and tedious thing. They have to be clever with how they use their abilities.

accidental greentext up there

Well, I mean, the ending could go either way, really
You didn't pay attention, did you

user
They can time travel
Backwards
Terrorists are not undetectable when they blow shit up

How the fuck are they gonna find him or her? We don't know anything about them or any abilities they might have to counter the Shifters efforts? Are they just gonna sustematically kill everyone in the world until they find the ONE person responsible?

I never said they weren't. Are you even reading what I'm typing? I never said Left and Free the Soul weren't dealt with in ZTD, I question setting up yet ANOTHER villain and problem when a sequel is incredibly unlikely for the series.

Okay so they have to find where the first explosion is but what if hypothetically Israel freaks out in an instantaneous response and deletes fucking everything?

Ar nosurge is a sequel (but stand-alone and conclusive in its own right) to Ciel no Surge

The 4th Wall being a part of the narrative is known from the get-go.
Also, most people never give the game a second glance until that little bit is spoiled. Not like I told you everything, or even the most important things, or even the ending.

Literally fucking dying has never stopped anyone before, why would it now?

You could have at least put on spoiler tags. Maybe I would have instinctively read it anyway, but even if I didn't, I'd be aware that the game probably has some meta shit in it that I really like. In any case, the gameplay's important to me, and can I pirate it?

You are the densest motherfucker

It's from part of an eight hour long explanation on an alternate theory for a murder mystery visual novel. Length aside, that such a theory can be validated by the story's own words show that Ryukishi07, the writer, was not as good as he should have been at closing loopholes, and fell ill to the same sickness that pervades modern "mysteries" in media today, and added spectacle, not with the magic scenes, but rather within a significant character's backstory, and while this spectacle did not break the mystery rules he set out for himself, is an event which I believe still breaks the boundaries of what can be considered a fair mystery.

I have stated the latter before, but the unspoken rules that the writer broke are what you could call "The professional magician" and "The convenient ledge." The first rule is that any character within the story that has a job or ability must only perform that role as well as reasonable doubt allows. Someone who is called the top of their field may be given some leniency, but they may still not perform an impossible feat. The second rule is that a character can only cheat death if a method of survival is mentioned before either their supposed death, or before any actions they may have on the mystery are revealed. A character that is last seen in an impossible to live situation cannot be fairly considered to survive unless evidence is suggested otherwise.

Ryukishi07 broke both these rules by having a young character survive a clearly fatal drop with only serious wounds, and had a medical professional somehow keep them from dying, and returning to full automotive action in less than several decades.

Link? I really want to see that.

Shame since he seemed to do much better with Higurashi, right?

No. Remember11, the game after Ever17 is, in my opinion, better than every single one.

This one?

I suppose so. In hindsight it was obvious you were shitposting.

Junpei always looks stoned out of his fucking with these 3D character models

Clench your ass, ass clencher, you're heading into a realm that few men have returned from, and even less who gave a shit.
You know, instead of talking about shit, let's do something else. Let me tell you about Gregory Mcdonald.

Gregory Mcdonald is a famous mystery novel writer, most known for his Fletch series, about a journalist who simultaneously fucks the world and is fucked by the world. The first book, that he wrote at least, don't ask about timelines, is called Fletch. I would consider it one of my, if not the, favorite books of all time. The dialogue is snappier than a trout during a fly fishing competition, and one of the best scenes is when he's talking with the underage girl he's sharing a room with and is implied to be fucking, as she makes small talk about this and that leading into how he should "turn tricks," and how "it doesn't hurt," it really doesn't. The mystery doles out its clues fairly, and the method and motive of murder both change frequently as we are given clues. Now, not all of Mcdonald's works could be considered "fair play" and there is no helpful sidekick telling us when it is, but the entire series is great. Except for anything involving Flynn, Mr. "OOOOH I'M AN OIRISH SUPER GOVERNMENT AEGENT YUS OI 'M DID I TELL YOU ABOUT HOW I WAS THE LITTLEST BOY SCOUT IN HITLER'S GOOF TROUP AND WENT AROUND ASKING ALL THE OFFICIARIES ABOUT THEIR SECRETEST WAR PLANS? OH OI BUTTA TELL YOU ANYWAY ALSO DID YOU KNO' MOI PARENTS WERE SHOT BOI DOSE NAZIS AND HOW MY SONS ARE THE BEST FOOKING MUSICIANS IN THE WOIRLD?"

piece of shit

Says the idiot who thinks they were setting up a sequel

I'm hyped.

Ah, got my answer then. haha

Okay, I'm sold. Everything about this smells of the sweet scent of "I'm a genuine fan of this series and it's actually worth getting as involved in it as I am".

As amazing as this guy's explanations are, it's kind of sad that he's convinced himself that the author is keeping up the facade even after during interviews rather than that the guy is not godlike and that he clearly screwed up.

Still, this is really interesting

So if it can go either was, then there is a timeline where Brother is alive and FtS is up and running, as opposed to what you incorrectly said. I can't fathom how you missed this obvious fact, considering it's a basic fact of VLR
And even with Delta dead, there is a strong possibility that the rest of FtS hierarchy could withstand the loss.

Yes
But then you forget, that FtS was only behind the Radical-6 outbreak
That's it, crisis averted

Yes, but I didn't play the psp one. I played the fan translation, and they did a great job. However, in order to receive all the information you need to obtain all 30 something bad endings, which is horrible because there is no time line you can just go to like ZE.

WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT?

It's part of the meta the game's story pulls off. It isn't the Loop of Infinity for nothing

I get that but WOW
30 Bad Endings
You have to go through 30 Bad Endings to get the final solution?

Well, kind of. You don't even get the final solution. The game is infamous for being credited as both a masterpiece and an unfinished pile of crap because there are so many things that are left unanswered, but that can be seen as done on purpose.

So, not really a final solution, but you get the information to tell you why the hell you just did all of that work.

I just got some, gave up, looked up the information and I still thought it was cool (without the waste of my time)

Adding to this, but it isn't the same unfinished pile of crap ZTD is.

Well then it's better than what pile we ended up with here. I should check it out. Thanks.

Remember11 and Fletcher
haha This thread has gotten some great stuff

Overall I enjoyed it. However, though the series is practically known for introducing new bullshit right at the end, this one takes it to a whole new level. Other things that were very jarring to me;
>the villain's whole plan hinges on a time loop Because those are always fun to think about in time travel stories, right?

Things I really enjoyed;
>the puzzles were pretty good, I don't remember too many that heavily relied on "puzzle game logic" bullshit and I fucking loved the transporter puzzle, I had to actually get a pen and paper

If you could deal with the bullshit Virtue's Last Reward threw at you, then you'll probably enjoy this game too.
I completed it in about 20 hours (all paths).

Yes, actually
Only thing that threw the plotline off was that fucking brooch, which was in a completely closed loop and essentially came from nowhere

I hated the whole MIND HACKING thing, it's like Uchikoshi was trying to absolve the guilt of the characters when they made bad decisions, when it's already established in 999 and VLR that sometimes, in some timelines, people are just dicks and that's it.

Maybe it's just me then. I just hated the fact that Delta was alive, and his plan was to create the right circumstances for himself to be born.
He was the one who orchestrated the whole thing right down to the acquisition of the Transporter. If he didn't exist, then he couldn't have been born. It's the whole "chicken or egg" thing and I hate it.

I really didn't mind it. A lot of the times where people acted like assholes was just really out of character for some of them. I also like how it plays into the fact that Delta can't SHIFT, so he uses his mind hacking to put everything together

I guess another thing I hated in was Eric and Mira as characters in general I sort of grew to like Eric because they developed his backstory rather nicely in my opinion but sometimes it just seemed like they really overdid it when he flew off the handle. And as for Mira's character I just hate that the whole "the mention of a serial killer in a closed environment means that one of characters is definitely that serial killer" thing is becoming such a predictable trope
Dangit Ron Paul did it, I'm sure I've seen it in at least 2 anime at this point (can't remember the names off hand)

no its not just you, mate

Also I see people in the thread talking about Ever 17 and Remember11. Looking it up, the first game seems to be more like a dating sim, do I really need to play it to understand the others? Which games out of the series are most worth playing?

I sure could go for a chicken sandwich right now.

I always thought a murder mystery And Then There Were None style VN with dating sim elements and multiple endings would be pretty great. Is it like that?
Or crap?

chicken is great

What are you talking about

i was on board with this guy until a vid before here

He is DESPERATE now.

...