I have always been fascinated with quite a few strange things. Choices, parallel universes, serial killers, bizarre scenarios, internet obscura, and pseudoscience have always captivated me fully, keeping me up at night with thoughts of how far the human psyche can go and how we can impact the world with just a minor action we think of for only a second. I'm always in search of more information and more content that delves into the realm of choice, madness, and the hypothetical, but I didn't find these games in my search.
I don't know when I first heard of 999. I've always known that it existed, and was supposedly extremely high quality, but I never really paid attention to it. I probably wouldn't have played these games if the stars hadn't aligned in such a way to lead me to this purchase. First, I was really enjoying my Nintendo Switch, and left my original red 3DS I purchased on launch date in the dust. So, thinking of uses for it, I decided to put Home brew on the console so I can show it off to my friends and fiddle around with the extra customization it provides. However, Nintendo patched out the current exploit to get home brew on the system. So, being the patient soul that I am, I threw down ten bucks on a seedy-looking Chinese website to have a flash cart delivered to me.
So, Flash Carts are basically hacked cartridges that have a micro SD port in them. You put stuff in the micro SD, and then you can view it on a DS, 3DS, GBA, whatever. It was a guaranteed way of getting Home brew on your system. Now, you could also put DS ROMS on the cartridge, giving you the ability to play any DS game you want for free. Sadly, I fell to the temptations of piracy, and downloaded several ROMS onto my flash cart of games that I might want to play in the future. In that list of any game that I thought looked interesting was 999. Sitting down with my newly modified 3DS, I decided to take it out for a spin, and launched 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors for the first time.
The game starts off with you being kidnapped and thrown into a ship cabin being filled with water. The game explains the main mechanics to the players, and then you have to search through the room to try to escape. I love escape rooms, and are quite good at them, so I had a blast solving the puzzles in the room with the constant threat of death sneaking behind me. Then, opening the door puzzle, the real game begins.
999 is a visual novel. It's basically a book with an image plastered behind the text, illustrating the events occurring on screen. Reading on, I eventually met with the cast of colorful characters, learned the rules of the game, and was prepared to open one of the doors to solve another escape room. Then, the game became a black hole. The event in the beginning of the story sets a precedent for future events, and sucked me into this wild ride. Suddenly, I was Junpei, the Japanese college student trapped in a Saw-like game to save his life. Yes, it was pixel art anime characters and low-resolution 3D models on a small 3DS screen, with paragraphs and paragraphs of text describing the events of the game, but the developers of this game managed to make me more immersed than I have ever been. The characters feel like real people and the music set a thick atmosphere of hopelessness and helped orchestrate an experience that made a game that delves into the depths of absolutely ridiculous conspiracy theories and proves them real feel like it's actually happening. The tension was always present, always increasing, always building up to something. Escape room puzzles usually come after bombshell progressions in the plot, giving you plenty of time to think through what happened while you meet face-to-face with mind boggling puzzles that take real outside-the-box thinking and close reading to solve.
I played about seven hours and reached one ending in one or two days. Eagerly, I started to replay the game to make different choices, but I was suddenly filled with guilt. This was a ridiculously high-quality experience, and here I was, pirating it. Did I really deserve the enjoyment of playing this game through to the end? No, I did not. So, I watched a video spoiling the entire plot. It revealed the game to be full of twists and turns I never could've predicted, and I was really sad that I could never play something like it again without spoiling myself. I think that punishment for my piracy was good enough, and I recommend that you don't spoil yourself. It's bad.
Now, 999 was the perfect game for me, and I ruined the experience for myself. However, god smiled upon me on that day. Looking up information about the game, I learned that the game had a sequel. A sequel with twenty endings. That was available alongside a remastered version of 999. On Steam. For $45. Luckily, I had recently acquired $60 in Steam gift cards, so I made my purchase.
That two-pack was Zero Escape: The Nonary Games. Yeah, I know, we're finally talking about the game now. For $45, you got a remastered version of 999 with voice acting and HD graphics, plus 999's sequel, Virtue's Last Reward. Now, 999 alone is worth the cost, and while I haven't played through the whole game on the PC side, but the voice acting is consistently great, and the new flow chart system eliminates the need to read the same text and complete the same puzzles over and over again, which would've been an absolute pain and the only real detriment to the original game on the DS.
Virtue's Last Reward might be my favorite game of all time. I completed it 100 percent in six days. I spent about one third of those six days playing this game. I spent my day thinking about this game, and when I got home I played as much as I could before I had to go to sleep. For those six days, my entire life was this game! The cast of characters were top quality, and it hurt me to make certain choices in this game. Speaking of choices, you have a lot of them.
That's the flowchart, the main menu of the game. Each branch represents a choice you have to make in this game. Like 999, Virtue's Last Reward involves nine great characters being trapped in a facility, forced to play a game of life or death. The music is even better than 999, contributing to the even tenser atmosphere in this game. There are more choices, more escape rooms, more everything! Plus, one of the coolest game mechanics I have ever found in a video game makes its appearance here. When you get an ending, you can use that information in another timeline to help you, creating this experience of crawling through space and time to get enough info the reach the true ending of the game. I'm purposely leaving out details because the entire game is just one big plot twist after another, and none feel artificial, forced, or unnatural. It's the most immersive storytelling I have ever seen, and the less you know, the better this experience will be.
I'm rating this package an easy 10/10, starting my review career on a high note. Please, buy these games. Even if you are a soulless, horrible person who doesn't like these Japanese visual novels, you atleast give money to these genius developers to make their next project, which I will be anxiously waiting for.
Pielover out.