Zero Escape: The Nonary Games is a bundle of both 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward, finally allowing players to experience both games’ interwoven narratives back-to-back without worrying about switching between platforms. Thank God, then, that Aksys saw fit to repackage both titles and make them easier than ever to play. That’s always been very unfortunate to me, because Spike-Chunsoft’s weird, twisted visual novels were a clear predecessor to the wildly successful Danganronpa, and I’d argue the superior products thanks to less edginess and more cerebral writing. Its follow-up, Virtue’s Last Reward, sold exponentially worse, at about a tenth of the original’s numbers. 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors fell into the unfortunately massive pantheon of quirky, excellent DS titles that didn’t sell particularly well, like Ghost Trick or Lux-Pain.

Imagine if Your Name was given a sequel where Taki and Mitsuha’s psychic, body-swapping bond that spanned different points in time was explained as something that’s there because they were destined to use it to save the world (maybe from the perpetual downpour Hodaka and Hina caused in Weathering With You, idk), and that the real reason the future had to be altered and Mitsuha had to be saved in Your Name was for this purpose? Wouldn’t that just be ridiculous? Wouldn’t that retroactively sour the appeal of Your Name? But that’s exactly what Zero Escape does! That’s exactly what 999′s sequels do to it!Īnd out of all 999′s endearing cast of characters, the only returning ones are Junpei, Akane and Clover…and none of them feel like themselves.The Zero Escape franchise has never had an easy time of things. It reminds me of the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, where it was decided being bigger with higher stakes and more convoluted mythology was better despite it not gelling with the original story. And like….I’d be all for that if it was earned, but it really isn’t, it just comes the Hell out of nowhere. And see, that’s just it - it was ultimately the “bond” part, and NOT the “bypassing time and space” part, that made 999 compelling.Īnd then the inter-connected sequels come along, and suddenly 999′s story is rendered just the opening act of some big, epic “SAVE THE WORLD!” plot, where the science-fiction aspects balloon to ridiculous heights and become the story’s primary driving force. The heart of the story was just the simple, pure friendship two children had in elementary school, a bond most wouldn’t think much of but proved strong enough to bypass time and space. What was the ultimate objective? To escape and survive of course, but also to reunite with loved ones, find emotional closure and heal scars of the past, and of course to fulfill a time loop that will save one person’s life in doing so. Let me put it this way: a game where characters suddenly stop the gameplay to go on and on about random educational trivia about history, math and science can get really annoying if you don’t actually like said characters and not mind hearing this stuff from them. It was all about the characters and their relationships that’s what drove the plot and the intrigue forward and made the game so captivating. The involvement of a corrupt pharmaceutical corporation in the backstory put aside, 999 was ultimately a very personal story with personal stakes. Putting aside the downgrade to more generic imprisonment locations and the developers going way too far with the flowchart for my liking, the big problem with the sequels is that they aren’t remotely compatible with 999 as that story was actually written and presented. Because as it stands, I cannot enjoy or engage with Virtue’s Last Reward and Zero Time Dilemma because they just…don’t feel right to me. 999 ( Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors) should never have had any sequels.Īnd I don’t mean that there didn’t need to be any Zero Escape games afterward I just mean that the other games needed to be self-contained (like 999 is) and have no connection to the characters and events of 999 whatsoever.

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