Board 8 > nonary nonsense: giggs plays zero time dilemma

(+) Yeah! (+)

Team Rocket Elite posted...

You mean in total you only failed that once? You got that on your second roll ever?

Life is simply unfair
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Ambidex

this intriguingly titled segment dumps us straight into the middle of a conversation, with team C locked in the nuclear reactor (?!) as the new year hits. after a nice awkward Akane/Junpei moment (it's been a while!), we solve the puzzle, which reveals that Zero is quite comfortable modifying a fucking nuclear reactor core mainframe with sliding block puzzles.

the decision game this time comes in throwback (or throwforward?) form, with the AB game making a reappearance! this time, it's a straight shootout between Carlos and Junpei, with Diana and Sigma's fate tied to Carlos and Akane and Phi's to Junpei. after another tender moment between Junpei and an unconscious Akane and a pep talk from Carlos, we enter the ambidex room and cast our votes.

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Assume everyone you meet is a thief

Carlos picks ALLY, of course. and he is betrayed. Junpei explains himself, as the betrayers always do, but it matters not for Carlos, as he falls to his lovely, peaceful end.

GAME OVER

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You're the one who killed me first!

Carlos picks BETRAY. he has to, right? Junpei's about to betray him! of course, in true Zero Escape style, he doesn't this time, and Carlos' appeal to morphogenetics doesn't make Junpei feel all that much better in his final moments (especially considering Junpei's fairly inexplicable apparent ignorance about all that stuff, despite 999). Carlos then stops in this fine moment to consider all that he's going through, just in time for Akane to sneak up behind him and bludgeon him to death with a fire extinguisher in a scene which is uncomfortably long to say the least. she then manages to make her way to Junpei before her own poison kicks in, leaving team D as a very shakespearean pile of corpses. hurray!

GAME OVER

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Junpei, if we die, I'm gonna kill you!

Carlos, quite hilariously, jumps back in time right in time to interrupt Junpei's emotional monologue. he then creeps him the fuck out by quoting Junpei's own story back to him. Akane wakes up, and decides to get weirdly meta and talk about her love of Back to the Future to explain the concept of SHIFTing and multiple universes.

after a long expository chat, Akane reaches her conclusion: team C, as a bunch of shifty individuals, should completely skip the issue of the AB game, and jump to another history that's much nicer. that's surely kind of cheating, but this game is fairly nuts, so I'll allow it. hopefully for these guys they end up in the nice universe where we won the coin flip at the beginning, but I doubt that somehow.

Akane basically decides to blow up the reactor to help them feel in danger, a chess move that is rendered entirely sensible in comparison to Junpei's next gambit, choosing to switch to the history where they all get gunned down in the games room. as total maniacs, the team go along with this, and the temporal disruption of this nonary game reaches a whole new level.

To be continued
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Team Rocket Elite posted...

Giggsalot posted...

I return to this impossibly fair setup, roll the dice, and... get three ones on my first try. Funny that!

You mean in total you only failed that once? You got that on your second roll ever?

I think I tried it twice back when I first played the segment, but... yeah, first time tonight. you're not seriously telling me this was a legit 1/216 chance, are you?
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The third roll (including from your first run) is rigged to give you three 1's. That's why I was surprised that you might have gotten it on your second.
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Team C realizing they all have dumb powers and can just break the game (and everything that follows) is one of my favorite points in the entire series. It's the sort of ridiculous shit that can only happen in a third entry.
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Team Rocket Elite posted...

The third roll (including from your first run) is rigged to give you three 1's. That's why I was surprised that you might have gotten it on your second.

To clarify, the other rolls are not rigged and thus also winnable

I really like Akane's whole dynamic with Junpei. "I am a pragmatic asshole with magic time genie powers and have no real connection to anyone because of said magic time genie powers. But if you hurt Junpei I will *beat you to death*"
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Akane and Junpei (especially) are like 100x better here than in 999. So glad they went in that direction.
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keeping this alive
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Anthropic Principle (Part II)

C team jumps back into their bodies in the 99.54% reality, and the gatling guns patiently wait for Junpei to unveil his plan before gunning them down. against Akane's wishes, Junpei and Carlos shield her from the bullets, while she survives and learns the X-Passes. all three then shift to the 0.46% timeline, new knowledge in hand. cheaters never prosper, guys!

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X-Passes from alternate timelines... are not applicable

in the 0.46% timeline, Akane breaks down and castigates Junpei for putting her through such trauma, and it slowly turns into a touching scene where Junpei essentially... proposes to her? d'awww. seeing Carlos with a quiet smile on his face on the other side of the room was a nice touch too.

the team approaches the X-Door with their newly acquired passcodes, and speculate that their presence together in the game is highly suspicious - maybe Zero had wanted them to do this, somehow? the team mutually agree that they don't care what Zero wants so long as they can escape - a sure sign of an uninsightful ending to come - but things don't get that far. Carlos enters Akane's X-Passes, and the door refuses to budge.

the voiceover kindly tells us that passcodes from alternate histories won't work, and Junpei hits a wall. he runs off in search of a method to kill himself so that Akane and Carlos can still escape, but his path is blocked by a demented Q clone. we have invoked a rule violation, we are informed, and we must be punished. with freakish strength, the clone takes down the whole team. just as Carlos is about to meet his end, however, he gets a vision of Q team, and frantically SHIFTs wherever he can, determined to return with a plan to save his team.

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Suspicion (Part II)

Carlos crashlands in a history where he has just killed Akane, driven mad by the loss of Junpei. putting his grief and guilt to one side, he bandages up his severed wrist, driven by willpower alone, and sets about warning Q team and trying to discover who the Q clones are.

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Pop Off (Part II)

just as Eric has narrowly decided against shooting a child in the face, Gab arrives, bearing Carlos' note. the two remaining Q team members run off to inspect the family portrait as Carlos instructed. they find a hidden golden door (of truth?!), inscribed only with the words "Twins' birthday", and upon inspection of Mira's body, find clues that she was killed not while asleep, but while able to put up a resistance - two clues which don't mean much to me now, but will undoubtedly fold into something larger very soon.

To be continued
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Transporter (Part II)

uh, wow. where to begin?

we return to Sigma and Diana, who started all this mess at Zero's instruction by activating the transporter device. over the course of a harrowingly slow cinematic sequence, the Sigma and Diana left behind in this cruel history slowly adapt to life in the permanently locked D-COM warehouse. over time, the two fall into despair and near madness, but from that precipice love and hope blooms. nine months later, just as the food supply is fading, Diana gives birth to twins, and the stranded pair choose to transport the twins, Delta and Phi, more than 20 years back in time to give them a chance of survival.

D END: 2

christ. big long thought post coming up.
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so where does that leave us? this felt like the first ending of real significance, but it's really hard to say what it actually means at this point. this will be a thinking out loud post.

1) the obvious suggestion is that baby Phi, sent back in time, turns out to be actual Phi. the ages, personalities and stories line up perfectly. it's actually kind of beautiful. on the other hand, this is not the historical timeline that led to the events of Virtue's Last Reward, and Phi still ended up there. I guess we've already had evidence that histories that "don't happen" can still impact those that do, though, so maybe that's not a contradiction.

2) if Phi is indeed Phi, so to speak, then Delta immediately becomes of vital importance. who is he, and why have we not heard his name so far (to my recollection)? there are two characters of incredible significance in this universe who go by aliases: Zero and Brother. unless we're being misled, Delta can't be Zero, because Zero has indirectly suggested he's an older person, and directly said that he came into possession of the transporter in 2009, when Delta would only be a child. but could Delta be Brother? it seems distinctly possible.

3) it would be a very Zero Escape-style plot for Delta to somehow mastermind the Nonary Game in order to try and stop himself being born - either out of sheer misanthropy if he's Brother, or if he felt like his birth indirectly led to the release of Radical-6 if he's not. but the VLR timeline implies that Phi and Delta are born regardless of which history transpires, and in any case Zero specifically instructed Sigma and Diana to use the transporter and start this sequence, so maybe that's illogical. this sequence would really seem to raise more questions than it did answers, which I guess shouldn't be surprising.

4) Phi's life is so wild. she's born, sent back in time, lives for twenty years, gets sent to the future to save the world, gets sent back to her own time to finish saving the world, dies, and nine months later is reborn and sent back in time to repeat the loop. it's too late for me to work out if any of this makes any sense whatsoever.

5) the last few scenes of that segment felt very biblical. if Sigma and Diana are Adam and Eve, does that make Phi and Delta Cain and Abel? it's bizarre how many messianic figures this series manages to maintain simultaneously.
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Giggsalot posted...

Transporter (Part II)

FINALLY
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D-END 2 is the beginning of the best part of the game, as you can clearly see.

That sequence in particular is arguably the best scene in the game - going through the personal drama of Sigma and Diana, seeing their babies being born, and following through to the conclusion of their story. It's sad to think about, but that Sigma and Diana - as well as the babies, who were duplicated into another history but also remain in that one as well - all starve to death not long after this.

There's a parallel here between the way the Transporter works and the "Reality" fragment, if you pay close attention - in "Reality", you're given the option to hit the button and duplicate your personality. One of the "duplicates" gets to go into "another history" of the virtual world where Sean survives his surgery and lives happily ever after, while the other remains trapped in the facility with Zero as a headless robot.

Similarly, when Sigma and Diana use the Transporter, one "duplicate" of them comes out in the Door of Truth fragment, while the other remains trapped in the facility after Akane left. The ones that remain have the twins, and the twins also get Transported - one set of "duplicates" goes to another history for a chance to live a normal-ish life, while the others stay with Sigma and Diana in the facility.

Anyway, now you should have all the clues you need to open the Door of Truth.
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yay, progress.

side note: the origin of Phi's locket is a total time loop paradox, right? Phi gives it to Diana, who gives it to Phi.
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And of course there is the more hilarious revelation of all of this. Sigma spent the entirety of VLR relentlessly trying to fuck his daughter
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Ah yes the babies ever after ending.
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DeathChicken posted...

And of course there is the more hilarious revelation of all of this. Sigma spent the entirety of VLR relentlessly trying to fuck his daughter

Yeah, think back on lines like "If you're a C-cup, I'm packing twelve inches!" that take on a whole new, even more disgusting meaning.

Side note about that line in particular, Uchikoshi apparently clarified Sigma's... uh, "size" on Twitter. And his explanation is both impressive and gross.
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ha, that is pretty amusing. I wonder how much of the ZTD plot was planned out pre-VLR?

I'm actually enjoying the mad plot twists here a lot (maybe even more so than VLR) but a lot of it doesn't strike me as being perfectly thought out.
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I guess it could be a consequence of the way the series developed...or didn't. You had VLR, when that finished writing started on ZTD. And stopped as the project was killed for lack of VLR sales.

Then four years later(!) someone goes "Alright we're on again"
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Yeah, I think the biggest consequence of that is the secret Another Time ending of VLR becoming entirely non-canon.

Like... nothing actually happens with Kyle/?. Or any of the other story hooks it introduced. Or whatever Phi meant about being an X-Factor (since that would ostensibly be D-END 1 Phi who jumped forward to the end of VLR, she would have no idea about the circumstances of D-END 2).

Seriously, if you cut that scene out entirely, ZTD does a much better job of wrapping up the mysteries left after VLR.
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Giggsalot posted...

yay, progress.

side note: the origin of Phi's locket is a total time loop paradox, right? Phi gives it to Diana, who gives it to Phi.

All of Phi is a paradox
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Door of Truth (Part II)

armed with the Twins' birthday (even if Sigma shouldn't have any idea about that clue), I return to the timeline where Diana and Sigma transported away from their fates, and open the Door of Truth. I find myself, unsurprisingly, in the ward Q pod room, and more surprisingly, find the three members of Team Q trapped in the titular pods. nice to see some face-to-face interaction!

amnesiac Eric understandably freaks out once again upon the rediscovery of Mira's strangled corpse, but it gets worse. Akane's bloody body and the dismembered remains of Junpei are also in the later pods, as are the cadavers of this timeline's Diana, Sigma and Phi, executed due to the 13:30 vote.

just as Diana and Sigma despair at all of their attempts at finding a timeline with Phi being for naught, Zero helpfully beams in a video of Carlos killing Akane, and reveals six X-Passes! apparently transportation is allowed, even if SHIFTing isn't. the team runs for the X-Door, where they meet Carlos (how the hell did he get there?), and after a brief confrontation, they discover the passcode entering device is blown to pieces.

psychotic Eric shows up brandishing his shotgun, and demands to know who killed Mira. after the standoff devolves into Sigma and Carlos nerding out over SHIFTing and Eric gets understandably irritated, Diana has a brainwave about the ward setup and asks him to shoot the wall.

the colour from the walls immediately fades, the projection broken. Diana then goes on to prove the secret of the warehouse - the three teams have been sharing a common space, and they have been waking up sequentially, not simultaneously. this feels like a huge revelation, but I'm not actually sure what the significance of that is yet. so people can in principle move between rooms easily? Zero can set up each segment in turn? none of those feel too shocking to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

Sigma and Diana then avoid their scheduled sleep by tampering with their bracelets (Akane's Zero would never have allowed for that), and the story goes on...

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side note: whoa, my flowchart got all chronological! that's a nice touch.
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Get Back

Eric fairly reasonably asserts that for all Diana's excellent deductions, all she's done is blown everyone's geographical alibis away. Carlos, Sigma and Diana assert their innocence in the most ridiculously sci-fi way possible, and Eric's anger only grows. he threatens to shoot Carlos, and Carlos tells him he should so that he can SHIFT back to save Akane and Junpei. I have no idea what he's learned from this history that can help him, but I hope he got something, because Eric shoots him in the chest anyway. what a psychopath.
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Giggsalot posted...

this feels like a huge revelation, but I'm not actually sure what the significance of that is yet. so people can in principle move between rooms easily? Zero can set up each segment in turn? none of those feel too shocking to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

Giggsalot posted...

which apparently answers one question - our assassin is almost certainly Mira - but raises several others. firstly, how did she get into Ward D?

This, for one.

It also answers a few other questions you may not have realized you had. For example - at the beginning of the original Transporter fragment, Sigma and Diana wake up to learn that Akane has already escaped. Why didn't they escape at the same time as her? Because they're never awake at the same time as her. This goes for every scene where anyone gets enough X-Passes to open the door - the other teams are unconscious, so only members of one team have ever been able to escape simultaneously.

It also sets up a little horror sequence and flowchart logic. Remember First Come, First Saved? The button in the decontamination chambers? There was never any pressure of having to press the button before the other teams did - if C Team pressed it at all, it would be two hours before Q Team would even get a chance, for example, and at that point they've obviously already been beaten to the punch and get to take an acid bath.

It's also important for the sequences that follow, too, but this is really what has been "revealed" to you.
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Yeah I didn't think the same space twist was too strong. It's necessary for a lot of things that happen, but it's not it had to be kept a secret from everyone. I think they just wanted to throw in yet another twist, and it also works with the themes of perception vs reality and such.
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Also at what point can he do the thing in Triangle? He should asap cuz it's way better that way imo
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foolm0r0n posted...

Also at what point can he do the thing in Triangle? He should asap cuz it's way better that way imo

As soon as he actually knows the answer. He's close, just needs Q-END 2. No more puzzle rooms.

He has no reason to try for it when he doesn't even know.
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Anthropic Principle (Part III)

HAHAHAHA.

what a bold and clever plan, Carlos. just as Evil-Q is about to land its supercharged deathblow on him, Carlos' consciousness lands back in his body, causing him to collapse to the ground. Evil-Q slams into the wall behind him, not only destroying himself but also ruining the mirage wall projections.

"You're fucking kidding me", responds Junpei. I like jaded Jumpy as a sort of player proxy, it works well. Carlos and the team run for it to the transporter room to make their escape (I'm not sure how Carlos calculated this, but we're earlier in the overall timeline than when team D did it, so the machine is still active), where they are greeted by hologram Zero. he informs us that he is no longer alive, because Carlos has already killed him in this timeline (?!), but if we go find him he'll tell us lots of exciting information.

this suggests that Zero must be in team Q, since the execution vote is the only "killing" Carlos was involved in this timeline. could Zero really be Mira or Eric? despite what I posited earlier, the thought seems so ridiculous.

Evil-Q shows up again, and Carlos urges Akane and Junpei to transport to the history in which they were executed while he holds him off. Carlos seems to know well that he can't get to that history by any established means, but he promises that he will meet them there anyway. after the two successfully transport, Carlos has a moment of inhuman willpower to overpower the doll, and damages the transporter in the process. as everything around him begins to rupture, Carlos spots an opportunity.

Light floods around him, and the machine explodes as he makes his uncertain escape.

To be continued
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FFnut posted...

As soon as he actually knows the answer. He's close, just needs Q-END 2. No more puzzle rooms.

He got the answer already in D END 2. I'm just wondering if he's locked out of it until a certain point.
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that's enough for tonight, I think! a few big revelations tonight, but I don't think I fully understand them yet. might be a couple of days until I can continue too, so I hope this is a vaguely reasonable place to pause.

any thoughts or questions outside of spoiler tags for the time being?
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Your topic title is getting more accurate by the post.
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tell me about it! i'm enjoying the nonsense though.

I was actually quite turned off by the more outlandish plot twists in VLR when I first encountered them, in part because the tone of the game was so grave and it forced me to take them entirely seriously. in this one, even the characters within the game seems to realize that this shit is totally absurd, so I can actually get on board with the silliness this time.
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Giggsalot posted...

I was actually quite turned off by the more outlandish plot twists in VLR when I first encountered them, in part because the tone of the game was so grave and it forced me to take them entirely seriously. in this one, even the characters within the game seems to realize that this shit is totally absurd, so I can actually get on board with the silliness this time.

This is why I rate ZTD over VLR even though that seems to be a contentious, if not outright unpopular opinion.

hahaha

so, uh, guys, I just returned to the Triangle Q-team standoff and entered "Delta" on a whim.

i have no idea what I just watched, but I can't help but think that I might be on to something.

"Perceptive End"

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...alright then!

(I hope that wasn't what you were chatting about in your spoiler tags, I honestly haven't read them)
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Aw yeah
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ZTD is far more enjoyable than VLR, especially through the ending. VLR might be "better written" maybe, whatever that means. 999 is always gonna be the best in that regard so I'm glad they went for the cheese on this on.
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Yeah, I like how a good chunk of these guys (Junpei/Akane/Phi/Sigma) have been through this nonsense enough that they know perfectly well all of this madness is just a thing. Hell, two of them used to be Zero
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foolm0r0n posted...

FFnut posted...

As soon as he actually knows the answer. He's close, just needs Q-END 2. No more puzzle rooms.

He got the answer already in D END 2. I'm just wondering if he's locked out of it until a certain point.

Oh, no, he's not locked out of it at all. Ever. You can put it in your first time there, even if you haven't seen anything else yet.

But you don't actually connect that it's a viable answer for that question until Q-END 2. I mean, why would you ever try that answer if you don't know, except that you can see a fourth answer on the flowchart?

foolm0r0n posted...

ZTD is far more enjoyable than VLR, especially through the ending. VLR might be "better written" maybe, whatever that means. 999 is always gonna be the best in that regard so I'm glad they went for the cheese on this on.

999 probably has the worst way of handling the multiple timeline thing, though. I mean, it's a good thing that they did it that way so that you aren't aware of the whole timeline thing (and honestly, adding the flowchart in the rerelease kind of ruins that surprise), but it makes it a tough sell to try to get new people into the game. "No, I promise that it makes sense. But you have to play the game over a bunch of times before it does. And possibly get the same bad endings over and over."

Also,

Fuck. Stupid PERCEPTIVE END. It seriously undermines how utterly insane Q-END 2 is. Now he'll be expecting some kind of crazy reveal when it comes time to enter "Delta".

I know a lot of people prefer the utter confusion PERCEPTIVE END when they have no idea what the fuck, but it has nothing on the slowly dawning realization of what's going on in Q-END 2 if you do that first. The slow burn of everything you thought you knew being revealed for what is truly is is an incredible feeling, and I legitimately wish I could erase this section of ZTD from my brain just to experience that feeling again.

Why don't people listen when I say "You'll definitely know the right answer for Triangle when you find out?" Why do they keep guessing?
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I got early perceptive end and regretted it. It feels like it was supposed to be a reward for figuring out the mystery early but I just guessed the answer so it was completely unsatisfying.
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I wish ZTD had a bit more colorful character designs. Something in the vein of 999 (or even a bit tamer) would be nice. VLR went ham with K, Flintstones!Clover, nudist Alice, and giant hat Quark (did they sack the character designer? wouldn't really surprise me). In ZTD everyone is so bleak and pedestrian. You can cosplay them and be unrecognized. It's just such an extreme departure that I'm a bit...lost for words.
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I dunno, I think if you cosplayed as Q you would get some stares
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FFnut posted...

I mean, why would you ever try that answer if you don't know, except that you can see a fourth answer on the flowchart?

Uhhh because it's the first new name you have heard in like 20 hours, and names are literally keys in this game. It was the FIRST thing I did after I heard the name Delta.

And it's fucking awesome seeing it early. I'm sure seeing it after Q2 is also awesome, just a matter of preference/first-time experience. But it's SO ridiculous and makes you SO interested in the final reveals. It's the best appetizer ever, for a Zero Escape fan.
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It is weird that they got that new character designer. I remember when they revealed the designs and they were sooo weird/bland, especially the returning characters. But the writing is so intense, and the animation and voice acting is surprisingly good, that by the end of the game I actually was pretty attached to the new designs.

999 is also the best in that regard though.
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FFnut posted...

but it makes it a tough sell to try to get new people into the game

This is why it's so good. The fact that there are dozens of reasons for you not to play the game, let alone finish the entire true end, makes it that much more impactful. It's the same philosophy Uchikoshi used for Ever17, which has literally 100 hours of garbage nonsense building up to the reward. The balance of build up to payoff is perfect in 999 though.
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foolm0r0n posted...

FFnut posted...

I mean, why would you ever try that answer if you don't know, except that you can see a fourth answer on the flowchart?

Uhhh because it's the first new name you have heard in like 20 hours, and names are literally keys in this game. It was the FIRST thing I did after I heard the name Delta.

And it's fucking awesome seeing it early. I'm sure seeing it after Q2 is also awesome, just a matter of preference/first-time experience. But it's SO ridiculous and makes you SO interested in the final reveals. It's the best appetizer ever, for a Zero Escape fan.

But you shouldn't even know that there's a fourth answer at all. It's hardly "perceptive" that you brute forced a situation with every single name you came across just because you saw a fourth branch.

I see it like people who looked up the password to the Director's Computer in VLR. Sure, some people might say the Luna Ending's reveals are a "great appetizer" because they're "so ridiculous", but now you already know that there are reveals in that vein to be had in other endings that are supposed to lead up to that.

foolm0r0n posted...

FFnut posted...

but it makes it a tough sell to try to get new people into the game

This is why it's so good. The fact that there are dozens of reasons for you not to play the game, let alone finish the entire true end, makes it that much more impactful. It's the same philosophy Uchikoshi used for Ever17, which has literally 100 hours of garbage nonsense building up to the reward. The balance of build up to payoff is perfect in 999 though.

Hey, I agree. Like I said though, the problem is the sell to others. My wife is a big fan of sci-fi stuff, and she has a soft spot for the mindfucky type of twists that ZE is known for.

But she played through 999 once, got the Sub Ending, and refuses to spend time replaying the same game over and over with no promise that anything will get better. So I have nobody to discuss the game with, or make jokes about it, etc. in real life.

How would you rectify this? Should I just spoil everything for her? Tell her to play through again, but this time I'll make all the decisions for her and also she still has to play it twice more anyway (Safe and True)? Or just give up and accept the fact that she'll never get to the cool morphogenetic field stuff because of the frankly unreasonable slog of playing through what appears to be pretty low-stakes horror-themed visual novel repeatedly?

At least with VLR and ZTD the Flowchart shows you where you still have progress to be made plus or minus ruining the fact that there's a fourth answer to the Triangle fragment, but that's just my bitterness talking again so you know you're accomplishing something, even with bad endings. But with 999, you really need a specific mix of wanting to uncover mysteries and utter boredom (to play the same game over and over again hoping for a different result) in order to get the payoff. Again, it's a great feeling as everything is revealed to you like Q-END 2 before PERCEPTIVE END, but it's hard to keep someone on track until they get there.
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Well, the remake collection at least lets you skip through dialogue you've already seen, so you could play that
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DeathChicken posted...

Well, the remake collection at least lets you skip through dialogue you've already seen, so you could play that

And give up the bottom-screen-Akane top-screen-Junpei duality that made the DS version so cool? I think not.

Besides, it was so long ago that I don't remember her door choices, so with my luck even if I pre-ran the game to get the Sub ending once I'll probably mix up a choice and then she'd complain about it.

Also I'm not dropping $45 on games that I already own and still keep in my 3/DS 18-cartridge case that I got from Club Nintendo (before it shut down) to keep my favorite games easy to transport for vacations.
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She's not big on the puzzle rooms? It's one of the things that kept me going (other than knowing that there were multiple endings).

Also regarding the character design yeah of course that's not counting Q and Zero lol. Though I also agree that they grew on me. Maybe I should do a fan redesign someday.
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Eh, the loss of the split screen is made up for by the voice acting. They even have the same voices for this game's Junpei and Akane, which I thought was awesome

Also the game is made immeasurably better with the addition of the timeline map, so you can jump between scenes instead of having to retread everything.
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