999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

Escape rooms puzzles in the context of a visual novel about strangers trapped in a death game. The story kicker is that only certain combinations of them can progress together through different rooms, and the group tension as they're unsure who to trust in teaming up with. Highest possible recommendation for anyone interesting in escape rooms. Unless you absolutely cannot stand visual novels, it is a must buy. One note, that there are two format options for dialog in the first game, 999: Adventure Mode (spoken dialog only) and Novel Mode (narration included). I cannot stress enough on how everyone should only choose Novel Mode. The original Nintendo DS version had a late game story element that is one of the most brilliant reveals that I've ever seen in a video game. Unfortunately, while this version made a lot of quality of life improvements over the original, it did fumble that late game story aspect pretty badly. Playing on Novel Mode at least somewhat helps mitigate the fumble. Beat the True Ending, then look up a video on the final puzzle in the DS version to see how it handled it. Virtue's Last Reward I would give a 9/10 to compared to the 10/10 for the first game. Puzzles are still great and there is still a compelling story there. It loses a point though for very annoying location transitions (you will curse the map animations) and late game twists that strain credibility (even by magical Nonary standards).

Note : DO NOT LOOK UP ANY SPOILERS. The twists and stories are an integral part of the enjoyment (as far as I'm concerned). Do not ruin that for yourself. Small note : I am not a puzzle game maniac, this might be my first few puzzle games so i lack any true ability to rate this game as far as puzzle gameplay goes. As such, I will mainly be discussing the story aspect of the games. ---------------------------------------- Would 100% recommend. 2 games in 1. Both are very much worth it imo (though opinions may differ of course, notably on the second game). 999 is the first story and should definitely be played before VLR (VLR contains spoilers of 999) It has got a much more simple and easy to follow narrative and the puzzles dont require Einstein to get through. The story got me hooked from beginning to end and the ending twist clears up all the questions raised over the different routes. As some other reviews may mention, the game was designed for the DS, and porting that over to PC did raise a number of choices and changes. Most notably reflected in the ending but also the relevance of the Novel mode giving much more information and description which could not be converted to dialogue. I can see why people would recommend the DS version but it did not disrupt my enjoyment of the game. 999 is overall a simple but solid piece of work that i will strongly recommend to anybody. VLR offers a sequel to 999. Whilst similar conceptually, there are a number of ambitious and drastic changes, which some may find jarring. Most notably in the story setup as well as the shift in graphics towards 3D models. As i was here out of enjoyment following the first game's story, I did not get too bothered by these changes, but i can understand some people being disturbed by them. The addition of hard/easy mode on the puzzle aspect makes this game somewhat harder to get through, at least on hard mode. Whilst generally I still wouldn't consider them extremely complex, with fewer hints and less precise guidance a few of them are a bit harder, and some others are also just simply a bit convoluted in my opinion. Difficulty mode is individual to each puzzle room however and easily adjusted if struggling, offering some achievements and additional lore on the harder difficulty. Note that you can just return to clear the room again on hard right after finishing it on easy if you really want to. If all else fails, the internet exists. As far as i'm concerned, if you are here for the story, don't let the puzzles gatekeep you from it. As far as the story goes, where 999 was far more straightforward and condensed, VLR, as mentioned before, took a more ambitious approach. With a far wider variety of choices/routes to explore, as well as a much greater number of story locks present, the game is definitely harder to get into. It can get a bit harder to keep track of certain plot points (for me at least, as you may have to ping pong between various routes to unlock continuations) and the quality of routes have a much higher variance between its highs and lows. Nonetheless, after witnessing the finale, i believe the payoff is entirely worth it. Spoilers would absolutely ruin this game though, so get yourself a restraining order against those. Overall, VLR does pay a price for its ambitions, which may push away some players, even those who enjoyed the first installment, but i very much enjoyed myself and my experience in this game as well. I would definitely recommend giving it a try and completing the story if you loved the first game.

This is a collection of two escape room death game visual novels with a heavy focus on puzzles. The first game, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (999 for short) is a pretty short and tight story while the second game, Virtue’s Last Reward, is significantly longer and more ambitious in scope, unfortunately to its detriment. Both games share frequent pseudo science infodumps, as if a character giving the lecture was a walking Wikipedia page. These scenes may sometimes come off as a bit awkward when they happen in the middle of a puzzle in a time-sensitive death game. They also share the ambition to present the most mindbending twists and while 999 pulls it off decently, VLR is very clunky. The plot twists in Virtue’s Last Reward remind me of the writer’s (Kotaro Uchikoshi) another game, AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative. In both cases, the plot twists are so insane and bold that pulling them off requires bending the story and characters over so much that they begin to crumble upon deeper consideration. I have some additional problems with VLR, the pacing is much slower, the atmosphere is far less deadly. There is a literal mascot character introduced right at the beginning of the game, which immediately set a bad tone for me. The visual style changed from 2D sprites to awkward looking 3D models. Coming back to 999, I felt it was a perfectly serviceable death game story. The pacing was tight, there was a good balance of story and puzzles. A lot of the prose felt victim to the usual wordiness present in visual novels. The issue is most prominent when playing using the Novel mode instead of the Adventure mode, in which a single thing may be repeated two, three or even more times in quick succession, sometimes to describe something that is already presented through the visuals. However, the short runtime and fun puzzles prevented the game from becoming tiresome. Overall, I consider 999 to be a good puzzle-heavy visual novel, while Virtue’s Last Reward was an ambitious swing and an unfortunate miss.