Current Events > Playing the Zero Escape games (999) for the first time (Ongoing spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

I had a lot of fun with my playthrough topic of Danganronpa, and after loving that series, I decided to go ahead and dive right into Zero Escape after multiple recommendations.

I put a spoiler warning in the title to make it easier when I'm posting spoiler stuff as I go, but I do ask that everyone else please be diligent with spoiler tags about stuff I haven't gotten to yet. I'm going in pretty blind, so I'd like to keep in the dark about specifics as much as possible.

Bout to boot it up now. Probably wont get very far tonight, but I wanna at least start it and get a feel for it.

Great games.

999 is one of my favorite VNs

it's incredible

The game is reasonable to do in "chunks" so you'll be sort of fine there. There are some general things that you need to remember but by and large I recall them mostly being pretty self-contained or largely something that you would remember pretty hard regardless. About the only thing that comes to mind that would be a bit funky is something that is from the third game and thus isn't something that you really would have any chance of seeing tonight.

Otherwise these will be pretty awkward to talk about spoilers as they have branching paths.

Got past the intro escape room, met all the other characters.

Haven't played a legit puzzle game in a while so I'm a bit rusty, but this should be a lot of fun if the puzzles keep ratcheting up, which I'm sure they will.

Curious to see how the branching paths play out, that should be interesting.

A remake of that first escape room you played is actually an unlockable reward in the recent AI game from the same creator. After you finish Zero Escape that series is worth checking out.

Tag

Some of the puzzles were pure bs iirc, but that kind of fit with the plot and the way the branching paths worked.

The VN scenes could be fun, especially some of the joke scenes.

They're great games

TC, if I read the other topic correctly you're playing on Steam, right? There's a bundle with the first two games and you can buy the third game as a standalone - Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma. I'll post a link when I'm on my PC

Don't waste your time with the last game (Zero Time Dilemma), what a fucking waste of time that was.

Trelve posted...

Don't waste your time with the last game (Zero Time Dilemma), what a fucking waste of time that was.

I actually really liked it (though the production values are truly awful, terrible graphics and somehow the lips aren't in sync with the Japanese audio).

I love 999 and steins gate because they take like every single conspiracy theory you can think of and put in a blender. They are like American horror story but instead of horror tropes it's conspiracy tropes and they just constantly stack tropes on top of each other

NintendoFraud84 posted...

I love 999 and steins gate because they take like every single conspiracy theory you can think of and put in a blender. They are like American horror story but instead of horror tropes it's conspiracy tropes and they just constantly stack tropes on top of each other

Have you read the other entries in the SciAdv franchise? (like Chaos;Head, Chaos;Child and Robotics;Notes).

Tag

Trelve posted...

Have you read the other entries in the SciAdv franchise? (like Chaos;Head, Chaos;Child and Robotics;Notes).

Chaos head sounds super familiar is that the one about the neet? Might have seen the first episode but that's it

JKwaffle posted...

I had a lot of fun with my playthrough topic of Danganronpa, and after loving that series, I decided to go ahead and dive right into Zero Escape after multiple recommendations.

I put a spoiler warning in the title to make it easier when I'm posting spoiler stuff as I go, but I do ask that everyone else please be diligent with spoiler tags about stuff I haven't gotten to yet. I'm going in pretty blind, so I'd like to keep in the dark about specifics as much as possible.

Bout to boot it up now. Probably wont get very far tonight, but I wanna at least start it and get a feel for it.

I love the the Zero Escape Trilogy. Liked how dark it was.

Never played Danganronpa though. Once you fi ish the Trilogy of Zero Escape do you mind posting your take on if Zero fans would like Dangan?

NintendoFraud84 posted...

Chaos head sounds super familiar is that the one about the neet? Might have seen the first episode but that's it

Yes, but the anime is awful! Please stay away and read the visual novel instead!

Chaos;Child is about a newspaper club investigating a series of strange murders and wanting to find the culprit before the police.
Robotics;Notes is about a high school girl who wants to build a real life giant robot and her best friend who just wants to play his fighting games.

All of these have a overarching villainous group (the Committee of 300) and the conspiracy theories that get thrown around turn out to be true. I've paused reading multiple times to go down a Google conspiracy rabbit hole based on things that get mentioned!

I need to read the rest of SciAdv. S;G and 0 were both top tier VNs

They're pretty damn good, but the last one was the weakest and the art shift sucked.

I played 999 on DS and I even played the psp port during the pandemic. Apparently some things are changed due to the lack of 2 screens but it was a decade between my playing the DS version so I barely remember the experience.

I also finally played VLR during the pandemic. Flawed but good game... up until I was told that the 3rd game literally resolves nothing and since the 2nd game introduced even more mysteries than it wrapped up from the 1st game (not that they really resolved any of the mysteries there either) it basically was a waste of time.

Which wouldn't bother me as much but the 2nd game had great voice acting and I liked the artstyle ok enough. But when I tried the 3rd game it looks so damn cheap with terrible voice acting right off the bat so I basically closed it and didn't look back

I found it!

teep_ posted...

They're great games

TC, if I read the other topic correctly you're playing on Steam, right? There's a bundle with the first two games and you can buy the third game as a standalone - Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma. I'll post a link when I'm on my PC

I'm actually playing on my PS5, but I do have a PC, so if I wanna snag the 3rd game after I beat the first 2, I can switch over if I have to.

asdf8562 posted...

I love the the Zero Escape Trilogy. Liked how dark it was.

Never played Danganronpa though. Once you finish the Trilogy of Zero Escape do you mind posting your take on if Zero fans would like Dangan?

Absolutely!

I did have a lot of people reccomend Zero Escape to me after I beat Danganronpa tho, so I think it'd probably be a fair guess that it'd work out vice versa.

i played a bit of that before
never got far
visual novels just arent my favorite genre of video game
unless its porn
then id prefer it be in visual novel form as other types of gameplay requires 2 hands which defeats the whole point

Oh shit, I think I just got to my first major decision.

I chose to go into room 5 >_>

We'll see how this turns out I guess.

Either way have to do all routes anyway

Play Ghost Trick whenever you get the chance, TC.

But for now, Clover best girl.

Does the PS5 version have the flowcharts?

Trelve posted...

Don't waste your time with the last game (Zero Time Dilemma), what a fucking waste of time that was.

It was weaker than the other two, but I think it's still good.

JKwaffle posted...

I'm actually playing on my PS5, but I do have a PC, so if I wanna snag the 3rd game after I beat the first 2, I can switch over if I have to.

The PS4 version of ZTD is actually graphically superior to all other versions, strangely.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Every Sciadv game is shackled to either C;H (almost all of them) or S;G in some way. I've only played S;G, but I'd recommend it, even if I personally don't like some of the things it does. I've heard much more mixed things about C;H, so I'd just play S;G to see if Sciadv is your thing, and then play from C;H (or S;G0) if it is.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I think all of the SciAdv games are fantastic and there's two spots you could start with. Chaos;Head Noah or Steins;Gate.

Chaos;Head Noah connects the whole series so it's a good way to start, as every subsequent entry relies on things that are established in Chaos;Head. The translation for Chaos;Head is pretty shocking at the moment so I'd recommend waiting for November when the fan improvement patch is released.

Steins;Gate is the stronger entry over C;H and while it still connects to C;H, it's not necessary to have read it. (While titles like Chaos;Child and Robotics;Notes rely on you knowing what happened in Chaos;Head). If you want a creepy murder mystery, then go with Chaos;Head but if you want a time travel adventure, go with Steins;Gate.

You can't go wrong starting with either game really. If you can wait another month, go with Chaos;Head Noah - with the improvement patch. If you want a good VN to delve into now, go with Steins;Gate. There's also an improvement patch for S;G if you're on PC. (Just search for Committee of Zero and you'll find downloads for all of the patches)

Just as an FYI, the games came out in this order:
Chaos;Head Noah > Steins;Gate > Robotics;Notes > Chaos;Child > Steins;Gate 0 > Robotics;Notes DaSH > Anonymous;Code (not translated yet)

Picked my next door. Now I'm with Seven and Clover. Sad to see Ace go out, I liked him. And no idea what happened to Snake.

Part of me was REALLY tempted to pick door 3 just to see where the fuck the game would take me, but I figured I'd likely get a bad ending or something if I sacrificed 3 people.

Don't expect to get the golden ending your first playthrough. Even if you stumble into the correct path by accident, the game won't let you progress

Bump, hopefully can play more tonight

You playing this on PC TC?

I thought the Voice Acting was especially well done in this game

I'm playing on my Playstation

You're in for a ride tc it's my favourite visual novel to watch (read?) People play
Second favourite visual novel series in general too.(first is ai)

I like ai the somnium files more cos I like character focused stories not that ze is bad with characters no I think they have well done characters but ais characters are just embracing the meme and goes into their psyche more

I enjoyed AI: The Somnium Files, but too much of the game was spent just going through the game. The player doesnt really do much except go from place to place and progress the story the only real gameplay is when you link up with someone and piece together what happens (which is fairly infrequent).

Again, I liked it, but for me, it falls short of other games (Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, Zero Escape) due to this factor.

The_Popo posted...

I enjoyed AI: The Somnium Files, but too much of the game was spent just going through the game. The player doesnt really do much except go from place to place and progress the story

Isn't that what a (classical) VN is?

^Yep. I just prefer them with more interaction.

Fair

Bump, out of town for a couple of days but I'll hop back into it when I get back.

Courtesy bump

The_Popo posted...

Courtesy bump

Thanks friend <3

Get back and play the dang game (please).

Really sorry; hopefully will get a chance to play tomorrow night