
Review: We Don’t Want To Spend Much Time On This Hilarious Game Zero Escape: The Nonary Games. How much rating out of 10 can you give it?
March 24th, 2017
Spike Chunsoft
Two spine-tingling Nonary Games
Seek a way out
A remastered and revamped Nine Hours
Fascinating theories and pseudoscience
Nine people are kidnapped and taken to an unknown location, where they Nine people are kidnapped and taken to an unknown location, where they are compelled to engage in a diabolical Nonary Game “Zero Escape” by a mysterious mastermind known only as Zero. What was their purpose in being there? Why have they been chosen to risk their lives? Who can be trusted, and more importantly, who can be trusted? As the situation becomes more and more desperate, tensions rise, and the nine strangers must find out how to get out before they die
It wasn’t a bad game, but the more we played it and saw the several endings, the less we enjoyed it. We’ll do our best to describe the problems Zero Escape with as few spoilers as possible. We’ve only completed 999 and aren’t in the mood to play VLR anytime soon. The dialogue is weird, verging on psychotic at times, and frequently goes off on tangents about completely unrelated gibberish. There’s one theme that appears a half-dozen times (often feeling forced and out of character), only to be weakly mentioned in the “real” finale, which necessitates an exact specified sequence (looked it up online as we got too bored after three endings).
The writing isn’t outstanding, and the characters’ motives and behavior aren’t always consistent or rational; the tone is uneven, and the characters’ reactions don’t seem to be in line with their circumstances. The writing is far too verbose; this was presumably owing to alterations made to the DS version. The characters frequently repeat themselves and say very basic and apparent things for something that could be summed up in a single line of narration. An event will occur, and then numerous characters will repeat what just happened, or a very simple and obvious task will be unduly detailed, whereas one that is uncertain, unclear, or poorly translated will be hardly mentioned at all. This may appear nitpicky, but it was very common and rapidly grew tiresome, making the characters stiff and unnatural as they are now being used as props to convey their environment.
In Zero Escape certain endings, the writing, and conversation deteriorate to the point of becoming funny, with its cringe-worthy absurdity. We initially assumed we had gotten the worst conclusion, but after seeing more, many of the endings and explanations are such a comically confused jumble that they’re difficult to take seriously at all. We wish we had just stopped after the first conclusion. Because it’s so ludicrous, there’s no emotional weight to anything. If you were hoping for a more grounded plot that focused on the individuals and their interactions with one another, you will be disappointed.
Events feel forced, as though they were scripted rather than the characters’ genuine reactions. Without giving anything away, it often feels as if events are too convenient and constructed in a way that feels overly planned and gimmicky as if character intentions were simply bent to fit the contrived skeleton of a “plot,” rather than how their personality and experience would lead them to react. In Zero Escape, many narrative holes, or at least plot inconsistencies, or situations where a character’s actions seem completely irrational or baseless, can be identified. Major story details are swiftly brushed over, there is a lot of hand-waving, and plot “twists” are so inane and ridiculous that you can’t help but chuckle, and then the game sits there and meticulously goes over useless, manufactured minutia held together by a single string.
The flowchart, which displays where the important decisions are made and the specific limits of your decision-making, should not be presented until the game is over. The endings rely entirely on incredibly insignificant information that you would have no foresight or knowledge to be able to consciously alter in any way. There is potentially another decision-making technique that isn’t displayed in the first game of Zero Escape. Instead, it appears to be structured to simply go through the motions and repeat the same sections to accomplish each conclusion with this flow method. The point-and-click interface challenges are simple enough, although they feel a little forced (which makes sense we suppose). The characters are frequently blunt in their solutions, which can be a good or bad thing depending on your point of view.
One of the riddles isn’t properly imported from the original DS game and hence makes no sense. The character refers to something “above,” yet in the original game, he’s referring to the DS’s top screen (this version all takes place on one screen). Instead, in this version, you must use the “hint” as part of the mandatory information required to complete the puzzle (at least, we don’t see any other method that isn’t brute force). There are a few more riddles that appear strange and out of place in Zero Escape.
Auto is exceedingly slow, with long unpleasant pauses between each line, and there’s no option to change it, so you have to manually go through everything. That isn’t to imply there aren’t some advantages. It is, at the very least, a novel and enjoyable experience at first. The voice acting isn’t bad, and given the original game had none, it’s rather good, if somewhat campy and over-the-top (as you might expect from many Japanese games). Given the original material they are working with, we find it strange to critique the voice acting… There is also a range of control options with the ability to switch between them, as well as support for PS button prompts. Beyond that, it’s difficult to come up with many pros for Zero Escape.