A masterclass in adventure design, 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors delivers an unforgettable experience from start to finish.
91
Verdict
93%
Steam
90
IGDB
Verdict score based on confidence-adjusted Steam reviews?
Very Positive on Steam (93% positive from 7K reviews)
Critically acclaimed (90/100 critic average)
No significant drawbacks reported
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is a visual novel and adventure video game developed by Chunsoft. It is the first installment in the Zero Escape series, and was released in Japan in December 2009 and in North America in November 2010 for the Nintendo DS. The story follows Junpei, a college student who is abducted along with eight other people and forced to play the "Nonary Game", which puts its participants in a life-or-death situation, to escape from a sinking cruise liner. The gameplay alternates between two types of sections: Escape sections, where the player completes puzzles in escape-the-room scenarios; and Novel sections, where the player reads the game's narrative and makes decisions that influence the story toward one of six different endings.
Runs well on modern hardware.
Last updated 8d ago
999 is a brilliant game with kookie stupid reveals that make you laugh but ultimately mostly all make sense together. its characters are likeable and while its scale seems vast and convoluted, ultimately it's understandable and funny with lovable characters. worth it for that game alone. **those who say this game is better on DS are referring to one single story moment which is cool, but you can probably figure out exactly what it is while playing on PC. not major loss if playing on a physical DS with OG game isnt reasonable for you. emulation and all isnt worth it with multiple windows and all compared to this steam version.** Zero's Last Reward one ups 999 in every imaginable way, and not always for the best. Way longer, WAY more convoluted to a fault at time, and way more to keep track of. overall i really enjoyed it but there's some details near the end of the game that are clearly just there to flex how far thought out the story line is. while impressive. the game's content could legit be cut down 30% and nothing of value would be lost. you'll also find yourself enjoying the art and character designs but lamenting that it's now a rough 3D that is far less expressive and clean looking than 999's 2D sprites. im conflicted but i do love ZLR. it's just not as good as 999 overall imho due to where it trips up trying to outdo itself.
I keep forgetting to review games I played on another platform until I see a moot do it Anyways you're better off playing 999 on DS/3ds because of a spoiler near the end game that isn't as good in the port but this is fine too I guess VLR is mostly the same game and I still ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate Dio.
The first game? Incredible, I have no notes. Please play it. The second one? I feel like my brain has turned into a forgotten ball of yarn that had a rendezvous with three street cats. ...Still really good tho! Wished the games would have stayed 2D, as the art kinda suffers from the clunkiness sometimes, but at least they managed to fix it in AI: The Somnium Files :)
Reviews sourced from Steam. All reviews belong to their respective authors.
Data sourced from RAWG, Steam, IGDB, CheapShark, Wikipedia, HLTB, and GX Corner. Sources: rawg, steam, igdb, wikipedia.
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