So I've heard great things about the Zero Escape series. Since it concluded last year...

So I've heard great things about the Zero Escape series. Since it concluded last year, I've been meaning to play through the whole thing. However, I know very little about the games - I know they're combination Visual Novels and puzzle games (kinda like Layton? Which I've also never played...), but dark in tone. I've heard it compared to the Saw movies where strangers in an area/room/building are forced to play a sick game but that they're more connected than they realize, etc.

So should I play 999? That's the first one, right?

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They're room escape puzzle games. 999 is my personal favorite and the first in the trilogy. Also play it on a DS for the best experience

Don't get into it. 999 was neat but the rest of it was thoroughly disappointing and there is not a satisfying conclusion.

Yes.
999 is great.
VLR is great IMHO, but it's up for debate.
ZTD, the last one, is mediocre at best.
I would definitely play them, but don't get hopeful over resolutions to plotlines from VLR. I made that mistake when I was waiting for it to be released.
And they're a mixture of room escape games and visual novels.

Okay I haven't posted in a while, first of all.

【F】

And this 【F】 is special because 【meme brackets】 died in the 999 PC port.

Also, I heard the final puzzle in 999 was changed to something that makes sense in the context of the ports.

999 and VLR are both god tier; I personally like VLR more. You're better off never playing ZTD.

999 is one of the few games that justify the existence of the DS. If it released on any other platform, I doubt it would have gotten the cult classic status it has due to how impactful the ending was.

VLR (play this on any platform though I prefer the controls of the 3DS) tones down the dark atmosphere in effort to grab the Japanese audience. It didn't work, but it was one hell of a ride and will get you psyched for ZE3, Zero Time Dilemma.

ZTD sucked.

>Also, I heard the final puzzle in 999 was changed to something that makes sense in the context of the ports.

Oh. That's interesting.

>tfw Blick was live a little over a week ago

Definitely play 999 and VLR, do not play the true end of VLR and expect any of that shit to actually matter in ZTD. Then play ZTD if you really really want to.

aaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WHAT FUCK YOU DON'T DO THIS TO ME WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU BLACK WINKEL

>not liking ------------------【5】--------------------

it was just 25 hours of a black screen
and then some random VN.
i'm pretty sure i was the only one watching

I don't check hitbox but fuck now I regret unsuscribing from those hitbox emails, fuck 4cc

They literally release this Friday on PC

Will the collection get a higher score than ZTD thus somewhat helping the fact that ZTD currently is the highest rated ZE game by idiotic critics?

Blick was the only reason I ever used hitbox, so he was the only thing I got emails from which of course never happened again until two weekends ago.
Sent me 5 different updates that he went live, for some reason.

Also on Vita

What's a vita?

I just checked the Spam folder of my email, and there they are, 5 notifications that Blick was streaming.
Vita means life.

I remember him saying in a thread about a month or so ago that he might do a one-year anniversary stream, but even then, it's not like there's that much interest for it anymore. All the hype has died down, everyone's moved on.

>everyone's moved on.
WELL I HAVEN'T OF COURSE, in fact, searching for ZE threads is the only reason I use Sup Forums nowadays.

>everyone's moved on
I think I won't ever be able to move on after ZTD. That game broke me, I even started posting here after lurking for 7 years

>spoiler
same desu, although i also partake in Risk of Rain threads to fill the void
definitely miss the old days. shitposting with pen and YUNI and all of them was fun af

>although i also partake in Risk of Rain threads to fill the void
Are you me holy shit, I haven't played in like 2 months but I also check RoR threads from time to time.

>you were born in the timeline where ZTD exists
motherFUCK

I just recently finished 999 and just wanted some clarification
Was this nonary game was set up by Santa to create a world where Akane lived?

i honestly didn't really start lurking Sup Forums until Project X Zone 2 released last year, up until then my main board was /f/
ZE threads were too damn good, tho. RoR threads will never reach that level of hype but they're never not fun.

Akane set it up herself, with Santa's help.

No, it was a game set up by Akane so Akane could live.

yer blowing my mind

To put it short: bootstrap paradox. Long(er) explanation: she was in danger in the past and used visions of that to set up the future to get Junpei to send a message to her in the past to get her out of danger in the past
if that makes any sense

Just noticed I never saved the different versions of the dog mastermind picture.

>dog mastermind picture
you mean Gab or something else? it's been a while.

reminder that the events of Ever17 started on May 1, 2017. prepare for tief blau kids

This one, guy making it was posting different versions as we gave ideas.

>tfw everyone's going to start reading it in may and blogposting about it everywhere

oh yes

maybe they will even play remember11 after that

Dont listen to these people , 999 was great the rest is garbage get danganronpa instead

999 is the best in terms of atmosphere and suspense, a classic "I wish I could forget the game so I can play it again"

VLR is the best in terms of story telling, it is very interesting but wont have you on the edge of your seat as much.

ZTD is meh, mostly forgettable as it tries to be good at suspense and story telling and doesn't live up to it. Has great memes and qt girls in it though.

Play 999 at least, I loved it.

animating it was a mistake

Ladies in gentlemen, one of the best lines of 999 was changed to be said by Junpei to not spoil the twist in the port.

ah, I can't remember if I was there for that. I didn't actually beat 999 until around mid-March last year, didn't bother with threads until I beat VLR a few weeks later.
makes me wish i'd gotten into the series a lot sooner all things considered.

are those 2 any good? are they translated?

I'm not seeing a screenshot of the port here.

Yes they're good, and yes they're translated.

never7 is not terrible but you have to go in with a high tolerance for weird drama shit, but its slice of life is at least usually relevant

ever17 is pretty good but takes a long time to skip through for each route

remember11 is serious plot time

Yeah that one in particular is from February when the Crash Keys Twitter account was posting the character portraits.
>mid-March last year
Lucky, I've been here since a few months before the cancellation of ZE3 in 2014, I saw everything unfold just to see some reddit kids say Op Bluebird originated on Facebook.
You'll see in a few days.

The Crash_Keys namefag turned out to be right about the leaks, right?

No, I'll see right now. Post a screenshot, you pussy.

No, he said something about Junpei being infiltrated and something about being the Designated Fregoli (as in Fregoli delusion), it was all a ruse.

Welp that's disappointing with the amount of ambiguous posts that cropped up.

it's probably a lot of nostalgia for me with ever17, it fondly reminds me of wasting my high school summers shitposting on Sup Forums back in 08-09

you have to go in with a higher tolerance for bullshit with it compared to his more modern games, since the pacing is waaaaaaay slower. the wacky stuff is arguably done better than anything in the zero escape series, but it's not going to be nearly as effective if you already know what uchikoshi's stories are like.

Damn, that's a good line.

black winkel stream the nonary games

no

Play 999 on the DS. Then stop.

>don't play the best game in the series
captcha: Extra Carlos

Reminder donno was changed to dunno in the ports.

aww, that sucks. "donno" has always made more sense as a contraction.

999 is the best game.

VLR is good, maybe even great, but the 3D models and free use of the flow chart significantly decrease the narrative's atmosphere, which is arguably 999's biggest strength.

On top of that, the design of the game leaves something to be desired. It endeavors to be an "escape room" game, but many rooms heavily feature puzzles that have very little, if anything, to do with the contents of the room itself.

Though, this is significantly worse in ZTD.

The AB Game has potential, but the stakes are immediately thrown out when the player has open to them all the paths in the game. There's no surprise when betraying Character X gets you killed, because you see that the betray path ends very shortly.

The door choices are much less important as well. I remember in 999 each door decision gave me pause, reflecting on the previous events to decide which characters I would proceed with.

VLR is a decent sci-fi thriller with alright puzzles.
But it isn't the horror-adjacent escape room that 999 was.

I dunno why it wasn't like that to begin with.

>doing the same fucking escape rooms over and over
>good

Fuck off.

Tough shit

A room skip would have been nice for subsequent playthroughs, but we play with the hand we're dealt.

999 is still the better game.

No, it's not.
999 story is weaker and doesn't have enough twists. So are the characters. The sprites are low quality, the puzzles are way too easy as well. Pixelhunt shit gameplay is terrible, too.
All endings are shit except the safe and true ending. There's little to no impact from any member of the cast.
OST is weaker as well. Descriptions are way too much unnecessary fluff as well. Junpei is a boring as fuck protagonist.

Sorry, VLR trumps and takes a shit on 999 any day.
You can take "MUH EDGY GORE DESCRIPTIONS OMG THIS GAME IS SOOO GRIMDARK" and shove them up your ass.

>There's no surprise when betraying Character X gets you killed, because you see that the betray path ends very shortly.
Agree with this one. Just show one locked scene after reaching a split instead of having the outline of the whole flowchart unlocked from the beginning.

i actually liked doing the escape rooms over and over because the interface for 999 on DS was so fucking good.

Get the fuck out of the here right fucking now before someone spoil you akane is zero.

>OST is weaker as well
if you want to be right, that's not how you do it.
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VLR had some damn good songs, but nowhere near as much as 999. Desperation and Treatment a best though.

Game "doesn't have enough twists"
Fukin lol

>doesn't have enough twists
That... doesn't make a good story.

The twists in 999 are few, but meaningful.

>The sprites are low quality
You shut your whore mouth.
Even if they were, they still look better than the bargain-bin circa 2001 models VLR uses.

>All endings are shit except the safe and true ending.
And I suppose VLR is the grandmaster of endings.

How many times do the bombs go off, again?

>There's little to no impact from any member of the cast.
That's your opinion. It's also wrong.

>Descriptions are way too much unnecessary fluff
Wow, it's almost like it's a visual novel.

>"MUH EDGY GORE DESCRIPTIONS OMG THIS GAME IS SOOO GRIMDARK"
If you really can't appreciate a strong atmosphere, that's your problem.
Makes sense that you'd prefer VLR so much, since it has no atmosphere to appreciate.
What can you expect from the moon, though.

999 is a grounded thriller scratching the surface of the fantastical.
VLR dives headfirst into the fantasy and repurposes reality to contextualize its madness.

I wasn't a big fan of Danganronpa, is Zero Escape anything like that?

Similar premise, that's about it.

The only things they share are the developer and visual novel genre.

Don't listen to anyone telling you that ZTD was bad. They're just memeing. ZTD provides a really good conclusion to the series.

fuck off Karen

Not that user. I can agree with most of your points, but
>Wow, it's almost like it's a visual novel.
You completely ignore the "visual" part. You don't need to extensively describe everything if you show it at the same time.

>999 is a grounded thriller scratching the surface of the fantastical.
ESPer abilities, bootstrap paradoxes and multiple timelines are not really grounded.

Akane is kind of cold hearted

999 then VLR then ZTD.

Buy the two first on Steam, it comes out in 2 days.
store.steampowered.com/app/477740/

Should I pixk them up on Vita, or spend the extra $10 for PS4?

Its treatment of the more outlandish concepts leads to it feeling like an extension of the real world the game was initially a part of.

Compare to VLR or ZTD where characters literally move their consciousnesses between timelines.

Somehow that evolved from the much less bizarre morphogenetic field theory posited in 999 (which, if not completely accurate, is based on real theoretical science), which is used in its most extreme form as a metanarrative tool accounting for the player's ability to see multiple stories. A power that Junpei doesn't fully comprehend or realize he's acquired until the end of the game.

Yeah, but as a sequel, where do you go from there? The framework is already established. Coming from 999, people now about multiple timelines, the morphogenetic field and how information can go back in time and between timelines. You either go small/"grounded", which would just be retreading the same ground 999 already covered (especially if they wanted to keep the escape room setup). Or, you go big, which I guess goes too much into fantasy, but still is a logical evolution of the same concepts.

999 is a good game, though replays can be annoying if you play the DS version since you have to go through the whole goddamn beginning each time.

VLR is great and my personal favorite, though the atmosphere is less tense than 999 in my opinion. Story was great, but a lot of the promises in the cliffhanger ending are either dismissed or fall flat in the sequel, so that may retroactively ruin your appreciation of it.

ZTD is the best GAME in my opinion, in that the puzzles are some of my favorites and do a good job of blending the story with the puzzles, but the story is kinda messy, presentation is pretty crappy, and characters kinda fill the generic "smart woman and dumb dude" sitcom tier roles that defer to the protag to make every choice, which can make returning characters aggravatingly stupid and new characters seem really flat. It ends the series, though it doesn't really capture the grandiose ending that VLR's ending and Uchi's tweets promised over the years.

It's a series that I used to recommend to friends with high regard, but know going in that you shouldn't get too hyped about the third game. I don't know if it's Mass Effect 3 tier, but it's not much higher.

I have no problems with going way out there.

I think VLR handled it poorly, though. With a new playable character, I think it's reasonable to assume that the ground floor would be dialed back a bit, but instead you meet a moon-jumping mystery girl, an AI rabbit, and an armored amnesiac within the first hour of the game.
On top of Alice, who for 999 vets was kind of a big deal only for all of it to be handwaved as literally nothing fucking WHY

Really, I feel like just comparing the casts between 999 and VLR shows the leap in tone they made.

I'd really love to replay the Nonary Games pack but I replayed both of them right before playing ZTD and it's all so fresh in my head still, plus I got pretty burned out after all of it

What I wouldn't give to revisit this series with a fresh memory

So I'm on my 1st playthough and I actually bothered to learn the nonary game. I know who the big bad is. It's really obvious if you run the numbers. Only one person could have killed him.

Leaving him alone is a bad idea. I'm going through door number 3.

There was a popular theory that she was SPOILERSONMOBILECANTUSEREALSPOILERS to be sent back in time and preserved with Ice 9, which would make sense, but a lot of shit like Dio, Kyle, and Left were all just handwaved or dismissed with a few dumb lines. Maybe if I shoot myself, I'll SHIFT to a timeline where ZTD came out right after VLR and Uchi didn't botch the script out of boredom and get script-cucked by Spike Chunsoft handing two of the routes to other writers.

They tried to copy DR way too hard in my opinion with that initial setup, the wacky cast of characters and a cartoon mascot as initial villain.
If you can see past that the game is still very much enjoyable and was able to surprise me, even after having finished 999 the day before and expecting some hard mindfuckery. I especially loved Sigma as protagonist, Junpei was always kinda bland

>going through door 3

Enjoy the most confusing ending

>It's really obvious if you run the numbers.
That's the best fucking part about 999. The numbers are so fucking important.

It could have just been some aesthetic dressing, but they went 110% with it and the entire game runs on nonary.

... Not reading your spoiler, but I guess I wasn't supposed to do it? This crazy albino motherfucker went ballistic too. REALLY strange.

I'm right, am I not? Ace is killing everyone. I went through door 3 because otherwise he'd be free to act.

Also I figured out that someone must have taken the dead people's bracelets. That assumption allows some real interesting possibilities to surface; nothing really makes sense without that bit of data. That's how I figured it out Ace is the killer. He knows the fucking game!

All I'll say is that the ending you're about to get will surprise you.

I mean, you're completely within your right to do it.

It's just that taking door 3 cements your path to the end in place, and that ending is rather ambiguous until you figure out what actually happened.

Going against the group does not end happily for anyone.

You're pretty clever. You don't need to worry about what you should or should not do. Getting all endings is pretty important to understanding the story, so do whatever you like.

Well the women are being crybabies about it. It's not like I had the option to accuse the murderer and explain why there's only one conclusion... Junpei just tricked them

The whole thing was weird all around. Given how in your face this game seems to be, I smell a bad ending

Isn't this from the same guys who made Dangan Rompa?

If so awesome. I see there's a PC version of both 999 and virtue last reward coming out in a few days. I'll get it.

Man I love this murder mystery shit... Are there more games like these around

Dang It Ron Paul
Phoenix Wright: LA Law

Holy shit I started playing this game a long time ago but never actually finished it.

All I remember is I hate the slut on the left.

>phoenix wright

Already played those... Love them but there's a certain magic about being locked up in some environment and people killing each other.

Oh my god. HAHAHAHA. I didn't realise this line was on the bottom screen it just makes it so much funnier knowing that this was Akane's line

>inb4 bilguun

That girl is Tsugumi. Yeah she was a bitch, if you get her ending the game will try to make you sympathise with her as it info dumps "muh tragic past" on you to get you to forget all the shit she's done and make you feel sorry for her.