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[Bebpo]

tldr version at the end of 24 hours of gameplay:

dude, that was so dumb.


Long version (contains spoilers for complete VLR & 999):

Ok, first of all, I hate visual novels. Which is a little ironic since I like Japanese games, anime & manga, and I enjoy novels. Plus I grew up on the western Point n' Click genre and it's still one of my favorites and those are basically western Visual Novels with more puzzle, less novel. But I hate visual novels because they are incredibly overwritten, 20/30+ hours long and boring because they're so drawn out. My favorite visual novel is Time Travelers because it's six hours. No fat, no blah blah blah, just a plot that moves and is tells a full VN story in six hours. The 3d cutscenes and full voice doesn't hurt either.

I liked 999! I took a look at the faq when I first started to see how I could get the best ending and see the whole story in a single play because if there's anything I hate more than visual novels, it's wasting my time replaying games just to get a different ending. Well it turns out you had to play it twice, but the game was a nice 8-10 hour adventure, with fun puzzles, an exciting story and the second time you could skip through most of the dialogue and so the game was maybe 10-15 hours total. Was a bit wack in some of its time travel shenanigans, but I could accept it and I liked the characters and the plot. Good game.

I picked up VLR at the Vita launch, but I just never got around to playing it until ZTD came out and then it seemed like a good motivation to play it so I could play ZTD if I wanted. The first run of VLR I was having a bunch of fun, just like 999. The escape rooms were even better than 999, very fun puzzles, the mysteries seemed good and the cast seemed interesting.

Then like 4 hours in I hit my first lock. Ok, well, that was a fairly short scenario, I thought. I guess I'll replay it again-wait...there are a lot of branches on this timeline. Lemme count, eighteen of them :O Ok, lemme faq which branch or two I need to do to see the true ending. You have to do every single branch to unlock the final ending and every branch is totally incomplete until you've done a bunch of others? Whaaaaaaaat??

Alright, fine let's do this.
[14 hours of A LOT OF REPETITION LATER] Ok, I just hit all locks on the 18 routes. Man, all those people who said the repetition is fine because you can skip all the dialogue you've seen are full of shit. You watch the same like 3-4 hours worth of scenario play out over and over but because the team pairings are different everytime, the dialogue is "slightly" new in that instead of saying "A go with B into door C" they say "A go with E into door C" which means you can't skip it. So basically there are TONS and TONS of scenes you can't skip and you just mash OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO while reading gaf or watching TV or something because you've seen this scene play out 6 times before and you can't skip it. Fuck.

Well, at least each branch had a unique puzzle room. That's good. A lot of the puzzle rooms were fun and had good puzzles. A few were not. The parts that re-use puzzles are lame and in a game like this puzzles shouldn't be re-used. You have enough writing content to force the players to play the game 18 times, you can at least make enough original puzzles for each. But mostly good on the puzzles.

Well, at least the characters were interesting. Yeah, outside of Dio whose just an unlikeable fuckface in every route, and the fact that Quark has zero character besides just WOOOO I'M A KID YAAAY FUN I LIKE SCALPLES *plops dead*, the cast is fun and interesting. Alice + Clover are kinda annoying and shallow, but I liked Luna, K, Tenmyouji, Phi.

Anyhow, I'm glad I got through all the tedious crap, time for the FINAL BEATING LOCKS ENDGAME
...hmmmm
......yeah, most of these don't have much content and just give you a password
.........and there's still a lot of repetition
............and there aren't even new puzzle rooms except Tenmyouji getting the director's room
...
Awesome, I got the two Lion passwords, lemme see what great stuff unlocks now in this route! ...oh, all this was just to get another bomb password.

Ok, at some point during this I get enough information to figure out that Tenmyouji is Junpei and Akane is Akane so it's like 50+ years later. Hmmmm...ok? Could be interesting, could be lame use of 999's characters. Let's see how this story plays out. I like Tenmyouji, so him as older Junpei is kinda neat.

FINAL ROUTE + TRUE ENDING
Lots of bomb decactivations, blah blah blah GO TO THE PAST TO GO TO THE FUTURE TO GO TO THE PAST TO STOP THE BOMBS. K IS YOUR CLONE. YOU ARE OLD SNAKE. Man, this is kind of stupid. Like it'd be one thing if Akane set up some stuff to stop herself from being killed like in 999, but this is just on a whole another level of 999's time travel nonsense x 1000.

Oh, and this game takes place in the BAD END of 999, so good to know that after the nice happy ending of 999, a year later the world ends and everyone lives a terrible life and Junpei ends up in a shitty life of repairing junk and Akane ditches him to go to the moon and Clover is in cold sleep while everyone she knows dies and most of the world dies.

Yeah, uh, can we just like go back to before VLR came out and pretend this game never happened? I liked it a lot better when it was just 999, which was a good game and then I was satisfied in the end with everything except the Alice-9 tease (which turned into nothing in VLR).

Hmmm, so I guess ZTD might be about stopping the terrorists from releasing radical-6. I kind of hope it isn't because this storyline sucks and I'd rather ZTD be an original story not having any of this really dumb sci-fi tale in BAD END 999 world weighing it down. (watching ZTD trailer) ok, so yup that's exactly what it is. Wait, and not only is it Sigma + Phi, but Akane + Junpei? What. Whyyyy. This storyline is so convulated and stupid. Ugh.

Well, I like most of the cast, and a lot of the puzzles. I didn't like how the game basically wasted 20 hours of my life to tell a 6 hour scenario (this is what happens when you stretch a budget!), and the story totally shits on 999 and it's dumb. Basically the whole VLR experience is a huge step down from 999. Eh, at least it's done.

In the end, VLR was "ok, I guess"

So should I play ZTD, watch a Let's Play of ZTD? Read a summary of ZTD? Pretend ZTD doesn't exist like I should have pretended VLR didn't exist after 999?

 

[Feep]

It takes place in the true, good ending of 999.

 

[GamerJM]

You probably wouldn't like ZTD knowing what you didn't like about this game. ZTD is quite a bit shorter though.

Anyways VLR is probably one of my favorite games. Upon release I had more issues with it, but playing it again on the Vita (without the dumb 3DS version save glitch destroying my progress and making me start again) made me appreciate it more, especially in the context of the rest of the series having played all three games back to back. I love the characters, the puzzles, the plot twists, and I actually really like how long it is and how much content is there. Initially I also missed 999's atmosphere, but replaying it made me realize that the whole time the game does have a huge

Spoiler

moon/space

atmosphere, and it's something I really dig. The emotional beats really hit too.

 

[Greatest Ever]

Honestly, just skip ZTD. It's noticeably worse than the other two, even if you don't like VLR.

 

[PrinnyBomb]

im guessing you didnt like the movie Groundhog Day?

 

[Korigama]

It takes place in the true, good ending of 999.

They did mention having only played it twice, which would lead to missing quite a bit regarding how the whole Morphogenetic Field thing worked. But yes OP, this is in the true, good ending's timeline. As for ZTD...stopping Radical-6 is indeed a major focus. Don't expect it to answer all of the lingering questions from VLR either, because it doesn't.

 

[Remembrance]

Things you might like about ZTD:

- Much less dialogue than the other games. No "same version of scene with different characters" at all. Every scene is self-contained, with very little repetition, and you will barely have to replay anything.
- There are new characters you'll probably like, and recurring characters you'll probably like.
- The most genuinely emotionally gutwrenching moment in the series happens in ZTD, and it's only possible for this to make sense because of VLR.
- You get a

Spoiler

happy

ending. But it's probably not the one you expect.

Things you might not like about ZTD:
- There are still the obligatory unlikeable characters.
- The puzzles are much more straightforward (you will probably never get stuck), and puzzle types are reused even more blatantly across rooms.
- Once again you get asked for passwords in one timeline and then have to find them in another timeline. The writers just expect players to accept it by now.
- You get to learn even more about that bad future in VLR.
- Quite a few of the plot threads in VLR end up turning into nothing in ZTD.
- The biggest twist is definitely the most convoluted one in the whole series.
- The story gets even further from the premise of 999 until it's barely recognizable.
- It will be even more obvious when the budget got stretched.

 

[The Awesomest]

...I remember an auto-skip feature I used very liberally, not sure what OP is on about.

 

[Fluxdyne]

...I remember an auto-skip feature I used very liberally, not sure what OP is on about.

I think it doesn't skip the same text on scenes with only a slight variation.
About ZTD: It has almost no repetition at all and it is shorter, so you might like it better than VLR. At least I do. Still much, much worse than 999.

 

[Soriku]

I'm not sure what you mean by good happy ending of 999 --> BAD END 999. The world goes to shit after 999, but that has nothing to do with 999 itself or a "bad end".

You might like ZTD more because of no repetition, but honestly the plot is worse because it doesn't resolve the lingering plot threads in a satisfying manner. ZTD is also not an original standalone plot at all like you're hoping for, and the main focus, in the end, has to do with the death of most of the world's population...a big part of that dealing with the virus.

Btw Bebpo what was the last notable Japanese game you liked? I feel like all the reviews you've written recently have been negative. Anyway despite some issues with VLR I think it has a very smart plot and setup.

 

[Bebpo]

It takes place in the true, good ending of 999.

They did mention having only played it twice, which would lead to missing quite a bit regarding how the whole Morphogenetic Field thing worked. But yes OP, this is in the true, good ending's timeline. As for ZTD...stopping Radical-6 is indeed a major focus. Don't expect it to answer all of the lingering questions from VLR either, because it doesn't.

I'm not sure what you mean by good happy ending of 999 --> BAD END 999. The world goes to shit after 999, but that has nothing to do with 999 itself or a "bad end".

I'd like to think Feep's reply is a joke about ZTD being so bad that VLR's route is the good path post-999.

But if there was any confusion, I wasn't saying VLR takes place literally after 999's bad end. I know it takes place after 999's true final good ending. I'm saying that after 999's true final good ending THE WORLD ENDS and Junpei and Akane, Clover and who knows else lives a miserable life. It's in all means a very bad end for those 999 characters, which is why I say VLR shits on 999 since if VLR didn't exist you'd imagine that after the true good ending of 999 that those characters live happily ever after.

Then again, I also get that is the point of VLR. That VLR is the shitty future waiting for the 999 cast a year+ after 999's true good ending ends and ideally the whole point of ZTD would be to erase VLR from existence and make a good bright happy future for the 999 cast after 999's true good ending.

Anyhow, that's been done before (where a sequel game erases the bad timeline of a previous game) in better series and in a more enjoyable way that didn't feel like it had to be the crappy future for everyone, so I'm not letting that be an excuse for VLR shitting on 999.

im guessing you didnt like the movie Groundhog Day?

Great movie Nothing wrong with repetitive cycle stories. Just there's a difference when they are 24 hours long. I feel VLR is a lot close to the Haruhi 8 series that drove people nuts.

Btw Bebpo what was the last notable Japanese game you liked? I feel like all the reviews you've written recently have been negative.

Eh, not really. I've enjoyed a lot of great games this year. I don't even think VLR is bad, it's just like 7/10. For 2016 big Japanese games I've played, SMT4-2 and P5 are both fantastic near 10/10 quality games. Falcom's Tokyo Xanadu is great. Guilty Gear Xrd Rev is fantastic. Project Diva Future Sound is one of the best music games released in Japan. I finally got around to playing Nier and Asura's Wrath this year and they were both great. Even Exist Archive was better than expected for a budget game. The only big Japanese game I've played this year that I actively disliked and think is kinda shit is Tales of Berseria, but that's for another thread.

 

[Bebpo]

Things you might like about ZTD:

- Much less dialogue than the other games. No "same version of scene with different characters" at all. Every scene is self-contained, with very little repetition, and you will barely have to replay anything.
- There are new characters you'll probably like, and recurring characters you'll probably like.
- The most genuinely emotionally gutwrenching moment in the series happens in ZTD, and it's only possible for this to make sense because of VLR.
- You get a

Spoiler

happy

ending. But it's probably not the one you expect.

Things you might not like about ZTD:
- There are still the obligatory unlikeable characters.
- The puzzles are much more straightforward (you will probably never get stuck), and puzzle types are reused even more blatantly across rooms.
- Once again you get asked for passwords in one timeline and then have to find them in another timeline. The writers just expect players to accept it by now.
- You get to learn even more about that bad future in VLR.
- Quite a few of the plot threads in VLR end up turning into nothing in ZTD.
- The biggest twist is definitely the most convoluted one in the whole series.
- The story gets even further from the premise of 999 until it's barely recognizable.
- It will be even more obvious when the budget got stretched.

That honestly sounds ok. The lack of repetition and shorter game & likeable characters is really appealing. Don't mind if the puzzles are a little easier. Only negatives there that make me concerned about ZTD is the convoluted twist and story getting even further away from what made 999 good.

I actually don't care about if any of VLR's unanswered questions get answered because I thought VLR's plot was fairly dumb and there's nothing I still want to know about that story. In fact I'd rather erase that story from my mind as much as possible now

 

[Lemstar]

ztd is literally vlr part 2

 

[Bebpo]

ztd is literally vlr part 2

But does it have terrible character Dio and his clone army?
Wait, if the answer to this is yes, I do not want to play ZTD.

In more seriousness, I think the reason Dio is so frustrating in VLR is it's not like any of the routes made him more humanized or interesting. He's just constantly the bad guy in every route so if anything bad happens you know automatically it was Dio and the characters take forever to realize this in every route which is a little frustrating. I don't remember 999 having any characters that were so clearly shallow evil/bad. Like it's been a while but I vaguely remember 999 keeping it interesting in how it kept you guessing who was good or bad and who was behind things. VLR is like...it's Dio. I think it's Dio. Yup, it's Dio again.

 

[bobawesome]

If you didn't like VLR you'll probably hate ZTD.

 

[Flame Lord]

You should probably just pass on ZTD.

 

[Korigama]

But does it have terrible character Dio and his clone army?
Wait, if the answer to this is yes, I do not want to play ZTD.

In more seriousness, I think the reason Dio is so frustrating in VLR is it's not like any of the routes made him more humanized or interesting. He's just constantly the bad guy in every route so if anything bad happens you know automatically it was Dio and the characters take forever to realize this in every route which is a little frustrating. I don't remember 999 having any characters that were so clearly shallow evil/bad. Like it's been a while but I vaguely remember 999 keeping it interesting in how it kept you guessing who was good or bad and who was behind things. VLR is like...it's Dio. I think it's Dio. Yup, it's Dio again.

It has someone considerably worse than Dio, particularly when considering that person's impact on the story throughout the franchise as a whole.

For the record, I disliked VLR, but not ZTD (of course, my expectations were also lowered after playing VLR as it is).

 

[Soriku]

But does it have terrible character Dio and his clone army?
Wait, if the answer to this is yes, I do not want to play ZTD.

In more seriousness, I think the reason Dio is so frustrating in VLR is it's not like any of the routes made him more humanized or interesting. He's just constantly the bad guy in every route so if anything bad happens you know automatically it was Dio and the characters take forever to realize this in every route which is a little frustrating. I don't remember 999 having any characters that were so clearly shallow evil/bad. Like it's been a while but I vaguely remember 999 keeping it interesting in how it kept you guessing who was good or bad and who was behind things. VLR is like...it's Dio. I think it's Dio. Yup, it's Dio again.

Dio isn't in ZTD. That said you might (probably) will have problems with some of them, but YMMV.

I liked Dio for the EDGE he gave to the characters and dialogue even though he was obviously evil 99.9% of the time.

Eh, not really. I've enjoyed a lot of great games this year. I don't even think VLR is bad, it's just like 7/10 mediocre. For 2016 big Japanese games I've played, SMT4-2 and P5 are both fantastic near 10/10 quality games. Falcom's Tokyo Xanadu is great. Guilty Gear Xrd Rev is fantastic. Project Diva Future Sound is one of the best music games released in Japan. I finally got around to playing Nier and Asura's Wrath this year and they were both great. The only big Japanese game I've played this year that I actively disliked and think is kinda shit is Tales of Berseria, but that's for another thread.

Gotcha.

 

[aravuus]

Yeah. Skip ZTD.

It was... Okay, and this is coming from someone who absolutely adores 999 and VLR.

 

[Voras]

Then again, I also get that is the point of VLR. That VLR is the shitty future waiting for the 999 cast a year+ after 999's true good ending ends and ideally the whole point of ZTD would be to erase VLR from existence and make a good bright happy future for the 999 cast after 999's true good ending.

This is pretty much exactly the point of VLR, it's the middle chapter of a trilogy. Things get dark, but there's hope that there will be a way to fix it in the next game. Honestly though if you didn't like VLR I doubt you'll like ZTD. ZTD is much more like VLR than 999, it's not quite as long but much longer than 999. Considering your main issue with VLR's story seemed to be about the timeline jumping then you will almost certainly not enjoy ZTD.

Personally I completely disagree with you on the quality of VLR or the assertion that it is mostly just the same things repeated. 999 outright forced you a number of times to repeat exactly the same sections you had done before to get some of the endings whereas VLR generally has a much wider selection of combinations of characters that make the scenes different most times. They do sometimes explain some of the same concepts, especially how the watches work, but there is a lot more unique content than there is repeated content. Also calling it a 6 hour scenario stretched out to 20 hours is disingenuous when at least half that time is spent solving puzzles, the actual gameplay part of the game. The total amount of repetition or stretching is minimal compared to the game's length.

999 and VLR share a lot of the same basic structure but are ultimately pretty radically different games. Some people prefer one style over the other. ZTD falls much more in the VLR camp though so you might want to steer clear or at least just skim through the scenes on YouTube.

 

[Lumpy Onion]

I loved VLR and liked 999 yet ZTD was one of the biggest disappointments in my 30 years gaming. It was awful as a standalone and as a sequel to VLR it failed. I'd say you can skip. Biggest issue was how the fragmented presentation made it hard for me to connect to characters and plot progression. I was never sure of the correct order so the story felt confusing. And the character animation was off so people looked goofy, and the voice acting was way worse than VLR with stilted delivery everywhere. It was a befuddling mess of a story with glimmers of greatness but it never came together for me. Felt overly short too. Puzzles were so-so and there weren't many. Yeah I didn't care for this one.

 

[xevis]

Worse than 999? I didn't think that was possible

 

[purseowner]

The OP makes me sad, and not just because VLR is my favourite game of all time.

OP, your first and most major mistake was rushing through 999 and only playing two of the endings - you missed so much of the slow burn of the unfurling mystery and characterisation.

Although judging from your annoyance at what you call repetition in VLR, I doubt you would have enjoyed it much.

Why were you so intent on rushing through these games?

 

[Spieler Eins]

FINAL ROUTE + TRUE ENDING
Lots of bomb decactivations, blah blah blah GO TO THE PAST TO GO TO THE FUTURE TO GO TO THE PAST TO STOP THE BOMBS. K IS YOUR CLONE. YOU ARE OLD SNAKE. Man, this is kind of stupid. Like it'd be one thing if Akane set up some stuff to stop herself from being killed like in 999, but this is just on a whole another level of 999's time travel nonsense x 1000.

Oh, and this game takes place in the BAD END of 999, so good to know that after the nice happy ending of 999, a year later the world ends and everyone lives a terrible life and Junpei ends up in a shitty life of repairing junk and Akane ditches him to go to the moon and Clover is in cold sleep while everyone she knows dies and most of the world dies.

Yeah, uh, can we just like go back to before VLR came out and pretend this game never happened?

 

[PsionBolt]

I strongly disagree with all the folks saying "you won't like ZTD if you didn't like VLR". I think you'll like ZTD a lot more than VLR.
I'm of the mind that 999 > ZTD > VLR, and VLR is last place mainly for the exact reasons you listed.

Where VLR is long, plodding, and repetitive, ZTD is short, high-pace, and has no repetition.
Where VLR ends with an anticlimax about bomb defusal and "Sigma, look at this die", ZTD ends with a constant increase of stakes and twists. (Some of which are super dumb, but that's nothing you can't handle if you liked 999.)
Where VLR has you mash circle through text boxes, ZTD uses 3D cutscenes not unlike Time Travelers (though plainly lower-budget).

Bloat is the biggest problem with VLR, and outside of some puzzle reuse, ZTD is lean as can be. Give it a try, OP.
Do play the game yourself rather than watch an LP, too -- ZTD uses a Mega Man-style progression, and as such it benefits from choice in a way that the previous two games did not.

 

[Mista Koo]

I don't even think VLR is bad, it's just like 7/10.

That's how I feel too. But it seemed to me like everyone else who played the first two games loved them.

The only thing I missed about 999 is the tone and setup. As intense as prisoner's dilemma is, the tone and setup in VLR weren't nearly as intense or engaging to me. The mechanics and game design are much better in VLR though. I didn't necessarily like either of the games' true endings, but 999's came out of nowhere (to me) and VLR's was more plausible but too much. Also Sigma is gross (and no, the reveal doesn't justify it).

I was going to play ZTD just for closure knowing that I wouldn't care for it. But when I saw that most fans of the series didn't love it I decided to watch a playthrough of it. I watched less than half of it, including the entirety of one team's scenes and the epilogue. I was disappointed with the lack of a real nonary game. And I thought the true ending was

Spoiler

ridiculously funny

. I'm glad I didn't play it (even though I feel a bit guilty for watching it, should've read a wiki).

 

[RedToad64]

Did we even play the same game? It sounds like you skipped a lot of important "repeated" text.

 

[Thud]

For OP:

 

[Bebpo]

Also Sigma is gross (and no, the reveal doesn't justify it).

Yeah, I actually was talking about this with a friend while playing after I got past the Sigma sniffing Clover's sweaty clothes joke. Like for a serious life or death storyline, all the pervy Sigma stuff feels really out of place. I found it kind of funny in a wtf is this reaction, but yeah it was weird having Sigma be a pervert. Since it was on Vita at launch I guess it had to set the Vita games are pervy reputation for the system.

I strongly disagree with all the folks saying "you won't like ZTD if you didn't like VLR". I think you'll like ZTD a lot more than VLR.
I'm of the mind that 999 > ZTD > VLR, and VLR is last place mainly for the exact reasons you listed.

Where VLR is long, plodding, and repetitive, ZTD is short, high-pace, and has no repetition.
Where VLR ends with an anticlimax about bomb defusal and "Sigma, look at this die", ZTD ends with a constant increase of stakes and twists. (Some of which are super dumb, but that's nothing you can't handle if you liked 999.)
Where VLR has you mash circle through text boxes, ZTD uses 3D cutscenes not unlike Time Travelers (though plainly lower-budget).

Bloat is the biggest problem with VLR, and outside of some puzzle reuse, ZTD is lean as can be. Give it a try, OP.
Do play the game yourself rather than watch an LP, too -- ZTD uses a Mega Man-style progression, and as such it benefits from choice in a way that the previous two games did not.

I was curious and so I picked up ZTD last night on Vita and played about an hour before I went to sleep. Obviously, can't tell much in an hour, but right off the bat I'm liking ZTD more than VLR in presentation and presentation goes a long way with me. I didn't realize ZTD's story was entirely told in 3d cutscenes. I really like that, not only for the more dramatic effect, but because from a developer's perspective, if every story scene is a cutscene, then for every line of dialogue you need to program cutscene direction in which in turn reigns in the dialogue & writing substantially. This usually keeps the bloat in check. It's why Time Travelers is six hours, because with the quality of the 3d cutscenes they didn't have the budget to do more than about that, so the script is very lean.

The other thing I like about ZTD so far is how fast everything is. Like with text skip on, even though they're cutscenes, you can still just hit O to advance if you're a fast reader, so the 3d cutscenes didn't detriment that aspect (I really dislike games that don't let me advance to the next line since I tend to read quickly). The menus so far and presentation seem quick and slick. Also I actually prefer the graphical style in this one. Looks more interesting than the standard anime stuff of VLR which I found kind of jarring from the nice 2d art of 999.

Only things that are hmmm about ZTD off the start is the Akira Ishida voiced kid with the emo hair in the intro seems like he's gonna be whiny, and I don't really get why Junpei is a dick in this timeline even if it matches up more with his Tenmyouji VLR character. I mean in 999 I don't remember Junpei being a total dick and ZTD is just a couple of years later. Maybe they'll explain it or something.

Why were you so intent on rushing through these games?

One thing I didn't mention in my original post was VLR took me three months to get through. I started playing it when ZTD came out. The slow plodding narrative, the repetition and the overwriting just never made VLR exciting to play, so I'd play a little each day. The only time I was engaged and couldn't put VLR down was the first 4 hours or so and the last branch just to see the ending, although the end of the last branch was so unexciting that I actually saved midway through the ending and and came back another day to finish it because watching the ending wasn't a high priority since by halfway I'd guessed most of the ending and the rest was just the game explaining it to me.

I think part of my issue with the ending of VLR is that because the game was such a long haul, I felt like the end had to payoff for all the bloat and it didn't do it for me.

 

[jay]

999 was stupid but had great atmosphere and tension. Producers told the writer to tone down the violence and horror, so VLR was stupid and did not have great atmosphere or tension.

 

[Mista Koo]

Yeah, I actually was talking about this with a friend while playing after I got past the Sigma sniffing Clover's sweaty clothes joke. Like for a serious life or death storyline, all the pervy Sigma stuff feels really out of place. I found it kind of funny in a wtf is this reaction, but yeah it was weird having Sigma be a pervert. Since it was on Vita at launch I guess it had to set the Vita games are pervy reputation for the system.

I'm pretty sure its the Japanese old perv stereotype. But hey, we are talking about a game that was marketed with a breast groping flash game ¯\_(&#12484_/¯

 

[Waxwing]

One thing I didn't mention in my original post was VLR took me three months to get through. I started playing it when ZTD came out. The slow plodding narrative, the repetition and the overwriting just never made VLR exciting to play, so I'd play a little each day. The only time I was engaged and couldn't put VLR down was the first 4 hours or so and the last branch just to see the ending, although the end of the last branch was so unexciting that I actually saved midway through the ending and and came back another day to finish it because watching the ending wasn't a high priority since by halfway I'd guessed most of the ending and the rest was just the game explaining it to me.

I think part of my issue with the ending of VLR is that because the game was such a long haul, I felt like the end had to payoff for all the bloat and it didn't do it for me.

That's the part I really don't get. VLR has this murder mystery that you're invited to try and solve through different permutations of possible events (not unlike another very long, amazing VN). The tension of trying to figure that out...

Plus, I really like the bracelet game in that one as well as the complicated rationales for why people choose different voting options. It's a shame that the team game in ZTD was so simple.

 

[visiblemode]

Wow OP...wow...

Don't bother with ZTD if you felt that way about VLR, but man, I don't get your feelings about that game...at all.

 

[Bebpo]

That's the part I really don't get. VLR has this murder mystery that you're invited to try and solve through different permutations of possible events (not unlike another very long, amazing VN). The tension of trying to figure that out...

Wait, what? Sure a few routes have brief scenarios of "who killed this person (Akane or someone else who is murdered in a route)?" but overall that wasn't a major plotline and I wouldn't call VLR a murder mystery at all. VLR's lingering plotlines were imo what's the point of the AB game? What is this facility? Who are these people? Who is Zero? But then the latter half became about How do we defuse the bombs? Which wasn't really a mystery.

Plus, I really like the bracelet game in that one as well as the complicated rationales for why people choose different voting options. It's a shame that the team game in ZTD was so simple.

Yeah, I really enjoyed the AB game part and the rationals behind characters and their choices. I agree this was one of the highlights along with the puzzle rooms.

I'm pretty sure its the Japanese old perv stereotype. But hey, we are talking about a game that was marketed with a breast groping flash game ¯\_(&#12484_/¯

But err, the Sigma you are playing as is his teenage consciousness! So he's not an old perv, just a perv

999 was stupid but had great atmosphere and tension. Producers told the writer to tone down the violence and horror, so VLR was stupid and did not have great atmosphere or tension.

Well, VLR's atmosphere feels like it should, a stale empty moon base (Dio's ending is the first ending I got like 8 hours in where you realize it's on the moon. I think this reveal probably should've been later since the characters don't figure this out until the final ending, but knowing their on the moon doesn't really spoil anything so I guess it doesn't matter). It still had some violence with some horrific deaths, but yeah it lacked the edge of your seat tension of 999. It also lacked some of the mystery since it'd be kind of done before.

 

[Tunahead]

I disliked VLR because it exists in the exact same kind of contrast to 999 as "main plot" episodes of The X-Files did to the fun standalone episodes. It was dour and grey and all the exciting high concept sci-fi fantasy nonsense just faded away.

999 introduced psychic time travel and water that learned how to freeze on its own and a mummy, probably, off screen.

VLR introduced terrorism and diseases, and they retconned the mummy out of 999. Fuck you VLR! Go live in the part of my memory center labeled "garbage" with cancermen and alien clones!

 

[NinjaCoachZ]

Yeah, I liked 999 better than VLR.

The pacing in 999 was far better. There were only 6 (5?) distinct routes. Each one gave further development and bonding with the characters. You were stuck with total strangers in a claustrophobic situation, and that sense of intimacy and unknowingness created a really cool atmosphere. Sure, there were QOL issues, but overall, the game progressed naturally and you felt motivated to make it to the end.

VLR and ZTD have so many variables that it wrecked the pacing. There comes a point where you're just repeating stuff for the sake of seeing what happens instead of legitimately developing the story, and most of the character development and worldbuilding don't happen until the endgame.

I still liked VLR overall, but I get your flaws, and especially considering how ZTD dropped the ball with its lingering plot threads, I think it was a mistake to make its climax as convoluted as it was. Especially after how 999 was a very tight, neat-and-tidy storyline and VLR and ZTD just threw a ton of complex shit into the universe to the point where it just got excessive.

I was going to warn you against ZTD since I didn't like it at all (pacing was even worse - nothing happens until D-End 2 and the very ending, the dialogue is robotic, the characters were flat and its "twist" was hilariously awful), but you've already begun and seem to like the cutscene approach. Well, all I can say is I hope you make the most of it.

 

[bilas]

Yeah, I actually was talking about this with a friend while playing after I got past the Sigma sniffing Clover's sweaty clothes joke. Like for a serious life or death storyline, all the pervy Sigma stuff feels really out of place. I found it kind of funny in a wtf is this reaction, but yeah it was weird having Sigma be a pervert. Since it was on Vita at launch I guess it had to set the Vita games are pervy reputation for the system.



I was curious and so I picked up ZTD last night on Vita and played about an hour before I went to sleep. Obviously, can't tell much in an hour, but right off the bat I'm liking ZTD more than VLR in presentation and presentation goes a long way with me. I didn't realize ZTD's story was entirely told in 3d cutscenes. I really like that, not only for the more dramatic effect, but because from a developer's perspective, if every story scene is a cutscene, then for every line of dialogue you need to program cutscene direction in which in turn reigns in the dialogue & writing substantially. This usually keeps the bloat in check. It's why Time Travelers is six hours, because with the quality of the 3d cutscenes they didn't have the budget to do more than about that, so the script is very lean.

The other thing I like about ZTD so far is how fast everything is. Like with text skip on, even though they're cutscenes, you can still just hit O to advance if you're a fast reader, so the 3d cutscenes didn't detriment that aspect (I really dislike games that don't let me advance to the next line since I tend to read quickly). The menus so far and presentation seem quick and slick. Also I actually prefer the graphical style in this one. Looks more interesting than the standard anime stuff of VLR which I found kind of jarring from the nice 2d art of 999.

Only things that are hmmm about ZTD off the start is the Akira Ishida voiced kid with the emo hair in the intro seems like he's gonna be whiny, and I don't really get why Junpei is a dick in this timeline even if it matches up more with his Tenmyouji VLR character. I mean in 999 I don't remember Junpei being a total dick and ZTD is just a couple of years later. Maybe they'll explain it or something.



One thing I didn't mention in my original post was VLR took me three months to get through. I started playing it when ZTD came out. The slow plodding narrative, the repetition and the overwriting just never made VLR exciting to play, so I'd play a little each day. The only time I was engaged and couldn't put VLR down was the first 4 hours or so and the last branch just to see the ending, although the end of the last branch was so unexciting that I actually saved midway through the ending and and came back another day to finish it because watching the ending wasn't a high priority since by halfway I'd guessed most of the ending and the rest was just the game explaining it to me.

I think part of my issue with the ending of VLR is that because the game was such a long haul, I felt like the end had to payoff for all the bloat and it didn't do it for me.

If you're skiping text be aware that you're missing some dialogue as it's tied with camera angles!