​

For a genre that relies so much on a fear of the unknown, horror franchises can become quite formulaic. They’ll often use the same settings, the same killers, the same motivations. Zero Escape, Kotaro Uchikoshi’s puzzle-horror visual novel series, bucks this trend by reinventing itself with every entry. While each one has a totally new cast and setting, that’s standard for this sort of horror series. What makes Zero Escape stand out is that it changes the rules, the tone, the art style and the structure every time. It tells a cohesive story, but each game still feels totally unique and has its own identity.

The first game, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, is about nine people trapped on a boat in something called the “Nonary Game.” Each is wearing a bracelet with a number between one and nine, which are used to open a series of doors, also numbered between one and nine. A group of three to five can open any numbered door that corresponds to their digital root--found by adding their digits together, then adding the individual digits of that number and so on until you end up with a single digit answer. (i.e. 9 + 8 + 1 = 18. 1 + 8 = 9. The digital root of 981 is 9.) The players have to split into groups to cooperate through a series of puzzles and find the number nine door that leads to the exit. While the emotional stakes aren’t exactly unique—people in a deadly situation would do best to trust each other but are tempted to betray each other for short-term personal gain—the basic math angle really adds a lot.

Zero Escape is based around escape room puzzles, and the digital root is a simple enough concept that can be plugged in to a bunch of different puzzle setups. There are some rely on the standard puzzle game fare of going off contextual clues and messing with objects in the room, but a lot of them require you to flex your math muscles, and I got used to having a pen and paper with me when I played. One standout puzzle faced me with a 3x3 grid and nine pins, numbered 1 to 9, and I had to arrange the pins in an order where any set of three--horizontal, vertical, and diagonal--would have a digital root of 9. It's a deceptively simple premise that brings real challenge, and it's so fun to see a puzzle that could exist anywhere, unburdened by so many of the things that can drag down video game puzzles; obtuse logic, obscured information, or adherence to a convoluted plot line to find the answer.

That's not to say that the plot is bad. It stays grounded in the emotional reality of these characters, never discarding the horrible situation they're in, but also not dwelling on it and becoming overly morose. Every character is well-rounded, and the mystery of what's happening on this boat is naturally engaging. The basic math plays into this, as well. The rules of the Nonary Game are so simple that anyone can understand and strategize around them, and you can easily start planning things out well in advance. When faced with any branching path or sudden plot developments, I couldn’t stop myself from doing quick calculations to see how a decision might come back to bite me, or where the game might be headed. It gives you a leg up in anticipating the story, which gets you more actively involved. It's a pretty genius setup.

​

Which is why I was so surprised to see the second installment, Virtue’s Last Reward, completely do away with it. Again nine people are kidnapped and forced to wear bracelets, but here the numbers on your bracelet represent your point total, and whoever gets to nine points first wins. Points are accumulated through a version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, where betraying someone will get you a lot of points, but trust will get everybody out the quickest. That theme of distrust remains, but almost everything else feels fresh. There's a visual overhaul that makes the game much brighter, and replaces the hand-drawn sprites with 3D animated models. The more expressive characters and brighter look leads to a generally lighter tone. That's not to say it's a complete farce, of course, but there's certainly a stronger emphasis on the comedic banter between characters. There's also a new host; replacing the disembodied, droning voice that commanded players in 999, Virtue's Last Reward is hosted by Zero III, a high-energy, mascot-style rabbit that makes puns while doling out despair.

There's no core mechanic like the digital root, and while that absence is strongly felt, the core structure of VLR is a sprawling, borderline-convoluted meta-narrative puzzle. Without getting too specific, 999 is fairly linear--there's a branching path and you need to do two endings in a specific order to get the true end. It's not the most intuitive thing, but it's manageable (the flowchart added to modern versions of the game make it even easier to do). VLR, on the other hand, has a whopping 22 endings, nine of which are required to see the true ending. The endings can't be done in any order, however. You might need some information from one ending to complete another, and if you try to do an ending without that information you could end up getting an early game over. There's a comprehensive flowchart that makes it easy to jump from point to point and keep track of which endings you've seen, and which ones were bad endings and which ones need to be revisited to see the good ending for that timeline. It doesn't keep track of the actual information you garnered or where you need to use it, though, so you may want to keep some personal notes to make it easier. Still, it's an incredibly ambitious and unique design. It may require a level of investment that's off-putting to some players, but for those that were into 999, it's fantastic.

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Zero Escape is a chameleon of a series. Its transformations continued with the third game, Zero Time Dilemma, which adopts an even more serious tone than 999 and tells its story even less linearly than Virtue's Last Reward. Notably, it tells its story mostly through cutscenes and abandons the visual novel style of the previous two entries. For a game series made in a relatively short time, and retaining most of its core creative staff, it's astounding that they can experiment with the tone, gameplay and structure of each entry, but still create something that feels like a cohesive whole. It's one of the few series whose entries don't feel distinct because of the specific events that occur in them, or slight improvements to core mechanics, but because each game truly feels like it was created from the ground up as its own thing.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of GBAtemp Recommends. If you'd like to see more, leave your feedback in the thread below or check out our previous articles.

GBAtemp Recommends Issues

Metal Gear Solid - #26
Pocket Card Jockey - #25
Pokémon XG - #24
Assassin's Creed II - #23
Rune Factory 4: Special - #22
Super Seducer 1+2 - #21
Pixel Ripped 1995 - #20
Animal Crossing e+ - #19
Tall Bagel - #18
Jazzpunk - #17
Mario's Super Picross - #16
Dread X Collection Volume I & II - #15
Journey to the Savage Planet - #14
Collar X Malice - #13
Persona 4 Golden - #12
Call of Duty: Warzone - #11
Uno - #10
Frog Detective Series - #9
The Simpsons: Hit & Run - #8
Catherine - #7
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red & Blue Rescue Team - #6
Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku Series - #5
Dead Rising - #4
Classic Fallout - #3
Silent Hill 1 - #2
Danganronpa Series - #1

This issue of GBAtemp Recommends was written to coincide with the release of World's End Club, Kotaro Uchikoshi's new game made in collaboration with Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka. If you want to read our recommendation on his work--a series that, in direct opposition to Zero Escape, only reinvents its themes and keeps everything else the same--check out that article here.

 

[HaloEffect17]

Only played the DS one, and couldn't really get into it. For some reason, I was more engrossed with Last Window the Hotel Dusk sequel for games of this genre.

 

[Albireo6972]

Great series, loved each game so much that I have a shadow box dedicated to the games and the watches for each game.

 

[hamohamo]

pro tip: for the first game play the remaster otherwise you'll have to play the whole game like 5 times before getting the actual ending of the game. for vlr and ztd, consoles or pc version are both pretty good but the controls are kinda stupid and unoptimized for pc.

 

[Taleweaver]

999 was great. Inventive, smart, likeable characters and a strong whodunit. Its plot featured a few mental hoops to jump through at the end, but it was passable.

Virtues last reward started strong (stronger, even... And that's saying something), and the jumping through time loops was a welcome change at the beginning.
But not only was the game too long... The plot also seriously (and I mean SERIOUSLY) jumped the shark. It's like the makers scattered all sorts of pseudo science they could find into the first half and rather than admit they had far to many elements to resolve (and undo some of their stuff prior to release) , they throw everything at once to the unfortunate player reaching the latter parts. Lost highway made more sense than this, and I'm not even exaggerating.
Puzzles were kind of cool, though. It's not enough to save it, but there's that.

I haven't read/played the third one yet, but I'm not sure I even want to. I mean... LESS linear than virtues last reward? Seriously?
What is this... Slaughterhouse five directed by Christopher Nolan and edited by Quentin Tarantino?

 

[GothicIII]

Virtues last reward was such a surprise. It started as a 6/10 with an interesting plot and lots of good puzzles.
It is comparable with Danganronpa or the Phoenix Wright series. The puzzles are sometimes pretty challenging but fair (with bonus solutions). It has an excellent mix between actual game play and visual novel. The story got me hard. I liked it a lot and can't say anything negative about it. It felt very well thought out.
After I was done with the game I would rate it 10/10. Hands down.

It was one of the best games I ever played.

I returned to the first game (999) and it was also excellent, but could not reach the masterpiece virtues last reward.

There is also a 3rd game called Zero time dilemma. It was better than 999 but also could not surprise that much like virtues last reward. It was a bit short, too.
However the complete trilogy is worth every penny.
I could not find anything like that anymore. All visual novels I played up to virtues last reward just sucked in comparison. And now I have yet to find a series of games which can deliver so much entertainment.

 

[MaxToTheMax]

The GBAtemp writers must be watching my backloggery. Very suspicious.... hrmmmm

 

[JeffRuLz]

pro tip: for the first game play the remaster otherwise you'll have to play the whole game like 5 times before getting the actual ending of the game.

The game lets you fast-forward through text you've already seen so you're not sitting through the entire game again.
It's true that the remaster does save you time but the game was designed for the DS and you'll miss out on a big "whoa" moment near the end.
It is also written in a way so certain characters learn certain things depending on which path you take, and being able to jump around each path freely makes it hard to keep track of who knows what.

 

[Essometer]

On my list of best games I’ve ever played. Highly recommend.

 

[hamohamo]

The game lets you fast-forward through text you've already seen so you're not sitting through the entire game again.
It's true that the remaster does save you time but the game was designed for the DS and you'll miss out on a big "whoa" moment near the end.
It is also written in a way so certain characters learn certain things depending on which path you take, and being able to jump around each path freely makes it hard to keep track of who knows what.

that whoa moment is very very not worth it tbh. cool nice gimmick and nothing more tbh. and the fast forwarding with the text made me quit the game cuz not only is it slow as hell but you still need to do the same rooms more than once which is torture on second try. so yea remastered is much better and the character art looks awesome not to mention the voice acting which is a game changer.

 

[pokemoner2500]

Virtues last reward was such a surprise. It started as a 6/10 with an interesting plot and lots of good puzzles.
It is comparable with Danganronpa or the Phoenix Wright series. The puzzles are sometimes pretty challenging but fair (with bonus solutions). It has an excellent mix between actual game play and visual novel. The story got me hard. I liked it a lot and can't say anything negative about it. It felt very well thought out.
After I was done with the game I would rate it 10/10. Hands down.

It was one of the best games I ever played.

I returned to the first game (999) and it was also excellent, but could not reach the masterpiece virtues last reward.

There is also a 3rd game called Zero time dilemma. It was better than 999 but also could not surprise that much like virtues last reward. It was a bit short, too.
However the complete trilogy is worth every penny.
I could not find anything like that anymore. All visual novels I played up to virtues last reward just sucked in comparison. And now I have yet to find a series of games which can deliver so much entertainment.

Did you ever try Somnium AI? Made by the same guy and has similar elements, while being a completely different game. I'm in the same boat as you with almost no games scratching my ZE itch, but AI def did it.

 

[BlastedGuy9905]

I can highly recommend playing the first two games (ZTD, the third game, is also good and vital to the story, however, due to budget cuts, it's overall less polished and the writing isn't as good as the previous games. Still play it if you like the first two games!)

999 is a really good self-contained story, with great writing and characters. It does well even if you don't play VLR, the sequel.

However, the sequel really expands upon the universe and I think its payoff makes VLR amazing too. VLR's characters might not be quite as great as 999's, however I still think they're good, but the story is, in my opinion, really well written and the ending blows your mind (I was obsessed with the game for about an entire week after finishing it).

Overall, I highly recommend anyone who enjoys a good story to play these games. I wouldn't quite describe them as terrifying or scary, but they can get a bit tense and there is blood. Have fun!

 

[Beerus]

This series is amazing I highly recommend 10/10 bannger

 

[GothicIII]

Did you ever try Somnium AI? Made by the same guy and has similar elements, while being a completely different game. I'm in the same boat as you with almost no games scratching my ZE itch, but AI def did it.

Thanks! I added it to the wishlist. Will buy it soon :=)

 

[AHB]

999: 11/10
VLR: 10/10
ZTD: memes/10

 

[gempugs]

999: 11/10
VLR: 10/10
ZTD: memes/10

This is pretty accurate LMAO

I would recommend anyone trying out the series to finish each game in one go, as in take a break if you want but don't take a break and play something else and come back to it, just finish it until you play something else or it can be confusing when you are reloading the game for different playthroughs.

999 and VLR are decent visual novel. ZTD is a fucking mess of a video novel. ZTD massacred the impactful character portraits and static scenes, in favour of lifeless 3D animated scenes for you to go through. In 999 and VLR you play it like a typical visual novel, encountering a scene and click through all the text with portraits showing what's going on while in ZTD you go through the story in a terribly slow, animated 3D video cutscenes, so you have to concentrate on the whole conversation going on and if you missed something or want to ponder a bit, you pause and look at the transcript of what's going on and resume the video again. It just don't work for me, I am forced to watch every new scene without the ability to fast forward and in the past two games you just click through quickly as fast as you can read or as slow as you want at your own pace.

ZTD's gameplay is so unbearable that I went on YouTube and watched a full playthrough of all endings at 1.75x to 2x speed, finished in around 6 hours and not missed out on anything, just cause I want to know the proper ending to the series without going through the pain of staring at awkward polygons any longer. Since I have played the first two games, I expected a properly laid out and logical reasoning for all the complex motives of the core plot, I got a meme instead. That's it. Not much meaningful wrap-ups of complex motives to be felt like in the first two games. Underwhelming and disappointing.

Answers from Google say the third game is a close call to even be released under a major budget constraint so choosing 3D animations to deliver the story don't even make any sense. Is a traditional visual novel with portraits supposed to cost even more to produce? It made even less sense to only make such change to the gameplay of the last game of a trilogy.

ZTD ironically feels like the least serious of the trilogy because of the amount of plot convenience introduced.

Basically in 999 and VLR if you were to ask the question of how do you light a candle, the answer will be something like oh it's because I used a match that triggers a chemical reaction driven by the fuel source and oxygen and transferred it over to the wick. In ZTD: IT'S BECAUSE I CAN.

Mind you guys, I played the first two games and watched the last under a week so my impression of the whole series is quite fresh throughout therefore the third game is as anti-climatic as it can get for me.

TL;DR:
999: Articulated motives.
VLR: Articulated motives.
ZTD: Complex motives.

 

[Kwyjor]

I had a smashing good time with 999 on the DS. Looking forward to playing the Steam version sometime; the graphical update looks very nice indeed. I definitely way overpayed for those first two games. (I thought Virtue's Last Reward was going to become one of those rare and expensive things. I keep betting the wrong way.)

Anyway, I got used to the text speed, but someone made a hack for the DS version to speed it up:
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3282/

 

[RichardTheKing]

The first two games (available on PS4 and Steam via The Nonary Games collection - it doesn't include the third because that doesn't have a Nonary Game) are bloody excellent games. I myself highly recommend those two; the story's grisly, yet not overly so, and the characterisation is top-notch.

I don't recommend the third game, though - Zero Time Dilemma, I believe it's called; not only is it quite a bit more visceral and gory than the other two, but it also retcons how the world's psychic powers work (Virtue's Last Reward explains that more powerful psychics effectively 'drown out' and negate the powers of less capable psychics; ZTD changes this to a magnifying effect), and forgets about a few story details from VLR for some reason.

Stick with the duology collection, and you'll have a blast with this series.

 

[BlazeMasterBM]

why would u reccommend me this

 

[relauby]

why would u reccommend me this

because i liked it