#The Third Nonary Game [Virtue's Last Reward Verse]

[back-katalogue]

Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma

Zero Time Dilemma is the third entry in the Zero Escape series, preceded by Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue’s Last Reward. The games are half-visual novel and half-escape the room, depicting nine people trapped in a game of life or death (known as a Nonary Game) by a mysterious figure known as Zero, asking the player to follow a branching narrative and solve complex puzzles to reveal the truth. The series embraces scientific and philosophical theory, with characters being so well-versed in these that they regularly drop them into casual conversation. You may have seen the following Tumblr post:

I mean, they don’t usually talk about asses, but this is the kind of thing you can expect from a Zero Escape game.

Much like my last entry, ZTD is one of those games that I’ve technically already played, clocking in a 50 minutes playtime. But that’s less than an hour, and I was looking for something to play for a couple of hours to fill the time, so I thought, hey, why not?

The problem with Zero Time Dilemma is that, unlike the series’ previous entries (which I’ve played), the visual novel segments have been swapped for animated cutscenes. There is a skip button that propels you from one spoken line to the next, but it’s always way too easy to accidentally keep skipping, which in turn forces you to sit and watch the cutscenes. And the problem with that is, well, the animation kind of sucks.

A sequence that I’ve just played involved one character becoming enraged whilst wielding a chainsaw and attacking another character with it, and the entire thing was (unintentionally) hilarious because the animation is so stiff and uncomfortable. I honestly don’t know why they didn’t stick to the visual novel style, particularly when VLR included 3D animated models in place of 2D sprites, and they looked much better and embraced the anime art style a lot better. I guess you could argue that this game is kind of darker than the first two, except the first two also included death, murder, and Saw-lite torture games (although there’s no gory shots in these games, the camera tends to cut away), so that’s not much of an excuse.

Much like its predecessor VLR, ZTD utilises that branching narrative (or “flow”, as VLR dubbed it). Unlike its predecessor, there’s no clear timeline of events, because this game’s Zero has also included an amnesiac in the game’s mandated sedative-filled bracelet. These fragments can be played at any point (so long as you’ve unlocked them), but it’s unclear how and where they fit into the wider, chronological order of events. This is fine, because Zero Escape is good at showing you how these events tie together through further playing.

But.

The issue here is that these fragments are sometimes made entirely of cutscenes and then a decision (do you choose to kill this team or another, do you accuse one person or another, etc.) that creates a branch within that fragment. Again, this is fine. 

BUT.

It took me over an hour to play through the initial opening cutscene and decision, then the get-to-meet-the-teams (the nine characters are split into teams of three in this game) cutscenes and vote, before I even hit a fragment where I could play an escape room, and that was mostly by luck (i.e., I was following a flowchart guide for the game). Compared to 999 and VLR where your character wakes up and is immediately thrust into a situation they have to escape from as a basic tutorial... that kind of sucked, I guess. 

That said, when I did get to the actual puzzle-solving gameplay, it was a lot of fun. I just wish it hadn’t taken me so long to get there.

Fin or Bin: Definitely a finish, because I played the first two games and this one (as I already know) sits between the two of them to branch the gap and retroactively explain the loose ends of the second game (which is probably my favourite one). THAT SAID, BOY, you can tell that there’s a drop in quality compared to the first two.

[shiftingxjune]

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