Another positive review, this time from 1up.
"If you've ever wanted to explore the potential of gaming outside of the expected, let Zero Escape provide just the experience you need."
Zero Escape Review: Choose Your Own Misadventure
(Nintendo 3DS, Vita)
Chunsoft perfects their craft for one fantastic visual novel experience.
Visual novels haven't exactly seen overwhelming success in the United States; outside of thePhoenix Wright series, this particular brand of Japanese adventure game has rarely strayed from its country of origin -- after all, the whole "copious amounts of reading" thing pales in comparison to the immediate thrill of exploding buildings, vehicles, and heads with the push of a button. Fans who've explored this niche genre outside of its lawyer-based offerings, though, have found plenty to love, like last year's Corpse Party and 2010's 999: Nine Persons, Nine Hours, Nine Doors; each game mixes horror, puzzles, and completely unexpected (yet surprisingly logical) plot twists for an extremely memorable experience that rarely relies on visual elements to sell its narrative.
Chunsoft's Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward -- the sequel to 999 -- adds a bit more budget to the world of handheld visual novels, replacing the standard static images and text with full three-dimensional environments and voice acting for every character (In both English and Japanese!), all while offering a highly refined take on the routine conventions of a very familiar genre. If you have the patience for an experience that focuses on fastidiously feeding you bits and pieces of an incredibly complex and strange story over the course of several dozen hours, Zero Escape could be one of the most absorbing handheld games you'll ever play.
The premise of Zero Escape finds nine seemingly unrelated people trapped in a similar situation to that of 999; an evil mastermind named Zero has imprisoned these unfortunate souls in a dungeon of sorts, leaving them with no choice but to work together in a desperate attempt to stay alive. The game breaks down into "novel" portions, in which you watch the story play out and make vital plot decisions, and "escape" sections, where the game presents devious puzzles in the vein of those "escape the room" Flash games popularized by the Internet. And, as with 999, Zero Escape emphasizes replaying the game multiple times, since each decision sends the story down one of many different branching paths, many of which end in confusion and/or death. Getting the most out of Zero Escape's story involves seeing how each of these different paths play out, and using knowledge gained in certain timelines to solve mysteries found in others. This might not make for the most economical way to tell a story, but Zero Escape cares far more about intricacies and minutiae than pacing.
999 ran with the exact same premise, but a few fundamental flaws ended up making the experience much more tedious than it had to be. For example, playing through the different pathways of 999 involved starting the game from the very beginning; and while you could easily speed through previously read text, 999 still made you repeat past puzzles, and offered no in-game way to keep track of the numerous branching story paths. Thankfully, Zero Escape fixes every one of 999's nagging problems; at the outset, it presents a mostly full flowchart of the complete narrative, which fills with details as you reach the nodes within -- very handy for keeping track of who did what, and where, and in what timeline. And the game allows you to restart from any previously played scene at any time, which makes exploring the story's many possibilities nearly effortless.
Zero Escape presents an experience atypical to the instant fun expected of most video games; depending on your reading speed, the intro to the game -- which sets up the nine protagonists, their situation, and the rules of Zero's Nonary Game: Ambidex edition (which involves color theory, and later, a devious application of the prisoner's dilemma) -- can take close to an hour, and other "novel" sections of the game will steal just as much of your time, only asking for a single decision after watching so much story. And since the antagonist has made the rules of his/her game somewhat complex, characters spend a good deal of time restating information, which can be helpful in the context of a video game, but not so much when it comes to giving a sagging story a kick in the pants. That said, the Zero Escape does a fantastic job of keeping you wanting more, if only because it's so stingy with doling out vital information; since different pathways team you up with completely different characters, each time you explore a new side of the story, the small pieces of information you may pick up can help explain their actions in the past, or even in an alternate timeline.
The "escape" sections of Zero Escape end up being a bit more difficult than 999's, but for a good reason; each puzzle offers two solutions: a mandatory one, and an alternate that requires a bit more work, but rewards you with non-essential details in the form of files about various elements of the story. Zero could be a bit more imaginative with his puzzles, though, as the uncreative villain relies on old standbys like sliding tiles and takes on Lights Out rather than cooking up some imaginative Laytonesque scenarios for his murder dungeon. Strangely, though, the game portions of Zero escape often feel like roadblocks in the way its slowly moving story, as you'll find yourself forced to plow through another puzzle just as things are getting juicy. And despite the "anime-ness" of a few characters -- along with an occasionally inconsistent tone -- Zero Escape doesn't have to work hard to get you to care about its cast, whose likability is aided by a wonderful localization and some surprisingly good voice acting. Simply put, Zero Escape makes for one of the biggest, boldest visual novels to ever hit America, and one that provides the perfect jumping-on point for anyone who's ever expressed interest in this obscure little genre. If you've ever wanted to explore the potential of gaming outside of the expected, let Zero Escape provide just the experience you need.
3DS Friend Code: 0645 - 5827 - 5788
WayForward Kickstarter is best kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1236620800/shantae-half-genie-hero
