999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (US DS)

[abigsmurf]

Searching is disabled but I went back a while and didn't see a first play (although there is a review of it).

This has got rave reviews everywhere which is very strange for a visual novel type game so I thought I'd check it out until the 3DS gets titles worth buying. Just played an hour of it so the impressions are fairly basic so far.

The plot seems to be that you wake up in a sinking ship with 8 other people and you've 9 hours to escape which will be done through a mix of exploration and puzzle solving. The story is told entirely in text (which is written from a strongly third person perspective which is unusual for a game).

As to how the game has played so far, it reminds me a lot of that Crimson Room flash game that was popular a few years ago, lots of navigating around, looking for hidden objects but with a stronger focus on logic puzzles. It's a bit of a slow start, largely due to large amounts of incredibly obvious tutorials (that keep repeating themselves).

Annoyances so far:

- sloooooooow text. It crawls along the screen at a snails pace and you can't press a button to skip it.

- only a single save slot. Considering the story supposedly branches a lot, this is really bizzarre and irritating.

-clunky design. Puzzle tutorials repeat every time you attempt them. You can't view your inventory when doing puzzles, even if the puzzle requires you to refer to something written on an item.

The game's interesting at the moment and looks a respectable puzzle game but at the moment I can't see why it's got such amazing reviews. I'm guessing it really sucks you in once you get into the meat of it.

[fuse]

It certainly gets more interesting as you get further in, do stick with it Can see why the single slot would seem counter-intuitive, but the game is designed for replays from scratch where you get the option to speed up dialogue you've seen before. It's still far from a perfect implementation, but it's not as painful as it seems at first.

[abigsmurf]

This game really really draws you in, loving it at the moment.

Getting a fair way through it now, it really gives you some tough choices to make.

The lack of note taking in this game is fairly inexcusable (as is only making the calculator available at certain points). I should have to go look around for a pen and paper in order to enable me to do some arithmatic.

[abigsmurf]

Finished it... Got the worst ending (or at least I assume it was, hard to see an outcome much worse). I like the way it greys out dialogue choices you've picked already in the second playthrough, hopefully this time I'll get a good or best end.

[abigsmurf]

Another bad end dammit!

Though I was going really well that time too, making smart choices.

Third time's the charm! Running out of routes where I haven't already done the puzzles...

[fuse]

There is a spoiler-free "ending guide" on Gamefaqs, and I would strongly recommend looking at it to find out what choices influence the endings. I probably would've ended up doing a million playthroughs before getting the true ending otherwise. Glad you enjoyed it though!

[abigsmurf]

Yeah, think I'll go the GameFAQs route now. A couple of full, independent play throughs are enough. The puzzles are too painful to repeat over and over once you've done them.

[abigsmurf]

Got the true ending now, fairly satisfying ending. Made the mistake of when I got close to what I thought was the end, deciding to keep playing before I went to bed. That was at 11:30. I eventually got to bed at 3:00am, the game not completed. The true ending segment doubled the length of the game.

Think that they perhaps should've thrown a bone to non-obsessive/GameFAQ players and included 1 or 2 'normal ends' rather than lots of bad ends.

Overall, a good game, slightly clunky at times but deserving of the glowing reviews.

I will say that the mummy stuff was really out of place though.

[fuse]

Haha, yeah, it does go on for some time. Glad you enjoyed the majority of the ending too, it was a bit of a slog getting there but totally worth it IMO.

[abigsmurf]

Reading some of the background stuff, there was one thing that blew my mind:

->Open Spoiler<-

The bottom screen is actually you playing as June the first time she was in the game and she's helping Junpei. The reason you flip for the final puzzle is because that's the only one you solve as Junpei

[Sketcz]

Started this based on someone I know describing it as being terribly written. They weren't wrong. I'm about 5 screens into it, and some of this stuff would never fly at the publisher where I worked as copy editor.

Does the writing get better later on? What do other people think of the writing? I think it's overwrought and too wordy, and in desperate need of an edit. Like an A-Level student's English essay.

[danstan21]

My first impression was also that of someone trying a bit too hard to put effective storytelling devices in there, and it came off as forced. However after the first hour or so I stopped noticing it so either it got a lot better or I became accustomed to the writing style (or deadenned to its shortcomings, depending on how you look at it). Despite my cynicism I'm fairly sure it's the former because I was really, really engrossed by the final ending.

[ItsThere]

VLR has better writing IMO. Worth playing them both for sure.

[fuse]

I appreciate that it's not especially concise and might be trying a bit hard, but I quite liked the writing - it definitely did a good job of getting across the nastiness of some of the scenes you come across. Do you know what your friend thinks about Virtue's Last Reward? It's a shame that the writing is putting you off, as I personally loved the game as a whole. I can't wait for the third game.