Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma Reviews

The mystery aspects and plot twists were okay. Would I recommend this game to anyone? hmmm... not really. If you care about Sigma or Junpei as a characters then try this game and you might like it. Otherwise if you care about the plot itself then this might not exceed to your expectations. In my opinion I love Sigma in every timeline. Whatever timeline he may be so I gave it 5/10.

Neat expansion of the Nonary games, a bit more confusing at first, but a good way to wrap things up

The game is a mess for sure! The controller doesn’t work, yet it has a controller UI??? If the game was MADE FOR A CONTROLLER, why can’t I use mine on PC??? The voice acting is… something. The puzzles feel cheap at times. BUT somewhere in this mess of a game, there’s a spark of what could have been! Overall: (Not worth $19.99) Wait for a sale—I think I got it for $5. If you can wait for a sale, then 100% worth it! The puzzles aren’t as good as the last game, but some still make you feel like you have 1000 IQ when you finally solve them.

Characters were just pathetic, nothing like first 2 games. Only completed it for a closure to the series... [i]What a sorry exhibition that was...[/i]

I recommend this game only to those who have played the games preceding it, and even then I'm *barely* on the side of recommending this game at all. I haven't played a video game which made me place my hand over my mouth and audibly gasp in shock/horror/disgust as much as this game, though most of my shock was likely from how much more is shown compared to the preceding games (where gore was mostly static images with no sound other than BGM) and I just wasn't mentally prepared for that going into this game. Compared to the games preceding it, ZTD is a bit more experimental in ways that didn't pay off for me as much (especially as much as VLR). Compared specifically to 999, this game feels a lot more like it has to shoehorn in the philosophical concepts characters bring up in conversation so some narrative moments felt awkward and stilted for me. It's also not very intuitive of what to do as the player when you're stuck with all the remaining fragments being locked (not knowing what to do to progress). I'm also bitter about one "decision time" in the game where I had a 50/50 chance of survival (supposedly calculated by a random number generator) and I got a bad ending 12 TIMES IN A ROW BEFORE I FINALLY SURVIVED. But, this game was redeemed by how riveting the story became in the last 2 or 3 hours when everything was coming together and things got even wilder than I anticipated.

19 hours ~ Some of the most perfectly balanced escape rooms and puzzles I've ever seen, and the overarching story is a multifaceted mystery VN that comes together into an unexpectedly masterful finale. Features a completely unique gimmick for the branching storyline that keeps your understanding of the plot constantly changing, Posits a lot of fun, metaphysical questions to the player and is packed with fourth-wall manipulating twists creating the kind of story that will only ever be possible in a video game.

Not the strongest game in the trilogy, arguably the worst. A couple plot lines just left out entirely, but the vast majority of the major plot points have been covered and is overall an enjoyable and satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Except for Eric. All my homies hate Eric.

I've seen people talk poorly about this game comparatively but I think this game was still really fantastic, even if it wasn't as good as 999 and VLR, it added context and offered more details to stuff from VLR that recontextualizes characters in really fun and mindblowing ways. Fantastic ending for the trilogy and I'm going to miss it and the characters

ZTD isn't necessarily the best in the series, but it's definitely the most. With each game in the series, I ask myself how a sequel could possibly top it, not just in quality but also in vibes, and every time it gets blown out of the water. This game continues where Virtue's Last Reward leaves off by being intensely grim, utterly bizarre, and also a genuinely inventive use of the medium. I don't think this game is perfect, we'll get to that, but I also don't think there's much else it could have been. The bottom line is that if you're interested in getting this game, you probably should, although you might not love it so much as just have it stuck in your brain like Zero Escape is known for. I recommend it. Now, that said, while it is genuinely a cool and fascinating piece of interactive fiction, it's got problems that you might not be willing to look past. The cutscenes are more cinematic than the usual visual novel fare, but that means it ends up looking worse. These developers have never had to make this many animations, for this many camera angles, on such a tight budget. The obligatory puzzle sections also suck, and in my opinion shouldn't have been there. I'm not saying escape-room puzzle-solving shouldn't be in a Zero Escape game, but I am saying it shouldn't be in THIS Zero Escape game, because the game just isn't about that. It's about time travel and choices. Clearly. There's not much I can say about the story without spoiling vast chunks of it, so I'll just talk about the ending in non-spoilery terms at all. A lot of people dislike this ending, because it wasn't the kind of intricate puzzle box solution you normally expect from a mystery game like this. I do get that, but I also think that the previous game's ending sucks despite being exactly that kind of solution. There's a difference between the plot being solved and the story's questions being answered. If you just want the first one, you will hate how this game ends. If you're more interested in the second, well... You won't HATE it? Maybe? I don't, at least.

There's a lot of conflict within me when it comes to this game. On one hand, it has an incredible story behind how the game came to be and it has some of the best moments in the series. On the other hand, it has most of the worst attributes in the series. I want to mention I played this on my Steam Deck initially since I played the other two on it and they worked great. But for this one, I switched over to my computer because of the horrendous controls. I had a much easier time playing this with just a mouse and nothing else. No matter how many controller layouts I tried, they all felt unnatural and terrible. The story for this game and its ideas are actually entertaining and even good. But it's missing many details and crucial points that frustrate me and make me dislike the game more. Weird alien baloney aside, it has other writing issues including character consistency. The characters are a very mixed bag. Some of them are actually pretty good. Most of them are jarring or just terrible though. The returning characters from 999 are weird. Sometimes they go too far with some of their newly introduced traits. But some of them also fit the character following their game. Both statements apply to Junpei. The returning characters from VLR are the best in the game. They are the most consistent with what happened after their game's events and follow up their arcs from that game decently well. Even if some of the twists are ludicrous. The newly introduced characters are... not so good. Carlos is the only one out of the bunch I like mainly because of his personality and reactions to story events. He's just a silly little dude behind the seemingly generic American archetype. Q is behind him but I don't like him much. Mira is whatever. More bad than good I'd say. Eric is just terrible. He has a single character trait and no development. And that single character trait of his is annoying as fuck. Some of the main endings are great but just the endings themselves. The events leading up to them are usually pretty dumb. But it's partly forgivable because those endings are great. The ones that aren't though are just straight up bad. The true ending is one of those endings I dislike. It was very unsatisfying and the shot it left off on was lame. This wouldn't be as bad if it wasn't the very end of the series. Most of the characters get closure in pretty cheaply delivered files within the game. But no one in D team gets any which sucks. A lot. This is the goriest and darkest game in the series. There are sooo many bad endings here and most of the deaths are brutal. Some Evil Dead stuff here. And I adore Evil Dead so I'd usually love this kinda stuff, right? But the impact of the scenes disappears for me due to the poor presentation of the game. They're funny to me like a lot of Evil Dead is but in a very different way. To expand on this new presentation style for the series. The game leaves behind its Visual Novel roots and goes for cinematic storytelling. This is cool for the series and works with what this game is trying to do but it's executed poorly. The cutscene direction and framing are really bad. Why are the shots framed so weirdly? And not in a cool or interesting way. Moreso in an 8 year old just got his first camera sort of way. Why so many dutch angles??? I don't mind the look of the character models too much. In fact, I think they look a considerable amount better than the ones in VLR. But the cutscene direction paired with the very lacking animation quality makes the game look incredibly cheap. Often times I found the characters' mouths don't even move when they speak. It made me laugh my ass off sometimes with how bad the animation quality is. The game in general is, whether intentionally or not, hilarious at times. One of the endings of the game is possible within 10 minutes of starting. And when the credits began. I lost it. I couldn't stop laughing. Many of the endings got me feeling like this. They sometimes go too far into absurdity and don't do much for me outside of a quick laugh. As for the presentation of the menus and flowcharts. They kinda suck. I found the flowchart in this game very confusing to navigate. It got easier by the time I finished but the other games in the series felt much more intuitive when it came to their flowcharts. I get the non-linear structure they were going for but it falls flat here. It breaks pacing a lot, unfortunately. I say unfortunately because I think it's a very cool concept. The puzzle rooms are the best part of this game as well. I like them as much as VLRs. Maybe a little more. There are like 3 stinkers here but most of them are good or great. Some problems though. They can be too easy. Some puzzles are repeated too often like the shape placement or hexagon matching ones. And the rooms were placed poorly within the pacing of the game. These things drag them down for me. Finally, for the sound. The voice acting is overall the worst in the series. It isn't bad but sometimes the delivery comes off as unintentionally funny despite the tone of the scene being serious. The crappy character animations and cutscene direction definitely make them worse than they are. Sometimes the subtitles don't match what the characters are saying as well for some reason. The soundtrack though is the best in the series. This is saying something because 999 and VLR have great soundtracks. I really wish this game was good. It has slithers of brilliance within it that are unfortunately muddied by all the crappy things in the game. I'd honestly love to see a remake of this game one day because underneath all the crap is a good game. 5/10