Board 8 > Virtue's Last Reward playthrough topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

Alice was kinda weird for me. Her path was one of the last ones I started. I felt sorry for her much of the game because she was always on low BP due to allying against a betray, and then dying. But then in one path where you can ally with her she betrays you twice. It just felt weird and out of character to write it like that.

Luna > Sigma > Phi > Tenmyouji > K > Dio > Clover > Alice > Quark imo

Sigma > Luna > Phi > Dio > K > Tenmyouji > Alice > Clover > Quark

Something like that

OK, the new timeline is more a brief epilogue to VLR/prologue to the next game (I assume) rather than a full new scenario. We wake as Kyle Klim a few days after the events of the main game conclude, and get to chat to most of the gang. Oops, is this going to be everything I pre-emptively complained about the ending not doing??

Well... sort of. After chatting with Luna we have a nice scene with Tenmyouji, where he affirms the value of life in this doomed timeline and reassures me that things will continue regardless of what Sigma does in the past. He also gets closure on Akane and has nothing to say to her, I smile and nod as he basically says she can fuck off. Good for you, Junpei! You deserve better. This was a much needed moment and I'm thrilled it's here.

Alice and Clover have more middling reactions to events, and their final moment is a tease that they can maybe send their bodies back to the past somehow. So Clover might make appearances in the whole saga lol. Then it's time to see Phi, and Kyle clears up her timeline for me as I'm trying to figure it out in my head. We don't really learn more about her purpose or who she is though.

We don't get to see Zero!Sigma as I guess there was no budget left to make a new character model, but our final scene is, once again, with Akane. Turns out we are not Kyle at all, but another unnamed variable who can freely travel across space and time and will be instrumental in halting the virus's spread. Akane might as well turn to the camera and say 'don't forget to buy the next game if you want actual answers', and before long the game ends/begins again. Huh!

There was no voice acting for this segment, and given that the scenes address many of the concerns I had about the ending I'm guessing this was an epilogue added in after initial release, or added as a response to focus testing when it was too late in production to get the VAs back. I appreciate its existence, and the little bits of closure we get are great even if the writers can't help themselves and throw in several new questions anyway.

Random thought: the lack of VAs here reminded me of Sigma not having a voice in the main game. This is presumably because it'd spoil his age twist, but like... why didn't Sigma notice his own voice was super different? Why didn't he recognise the voice from Zero's hologram as identical to his own? >_>

Anyway, assuming there are no more secret endings, I think that's it! I of course will have to play the next game to see how this all wraps up (fingers crossed it actually wraps up next time), I won't be doing so right away but I doubt I'll leave it as long as I did between these first two games as things are left so open here lol. Thank you all again for reading along, it helps clear my head writing down my thoughts about this kind of game and I greatly appreciate all the assistance! I hope you enjoyed yourselves, I certainly did.

Have a nice trilogy!

So that secret ending is of dubious canonocity according to the writer, he goes back and forth on that point though. And it was added late in the process as you surmise.

Yeah it was added too late for any Japanese voice acting, but it was still dubbed by the English VAs.

andylt posted...

Anyway, assuming there are no more secret endings, I think that's it! I of course will have to play the next game to see how this all wraps up (fingers crossed it actually wraps up next time), I won't be doing so right away but I doubt I'll leave it as long as I did between these first two games as things are left so open here lol. Thank you all again for reading along, it helps clear my head writing down my thoughts about this kind of game and I greatly appreciate all the assistance! I hope you enjoyed yourselves, I certainly did.

I wouldn't play the next game for the story honestly. If you are banking on the story wrapping up being the selling point I would probably skip it. I think the third game has some really cool ideas, interesting puzzle rooms and some great scenes.

But the story itself is pretty bad and has some of the worst characters in the trilogy by far. If you like puzzle rooms it is still good for that, but it's a pretty big step down narratively

Oh and also the third game makes you type by memory stuff that was said in text boxes exactly one screen earlier a few times

One of the dumbest design decisions in any game ever. Why did anyone think this was a good idea.

That doesn't detract from the game too much because it isn't a major time sink or anything but it was so stupid they did that.

I disagree, VLR has some issues but it's still very much worth playing

zero time dilemma is my favorite in the trilogy and I loved the story! but a lot of people dislike it for some reason

also may I introduce you to https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blickwinkel aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewing_angle lol

ZTD is worth playing imo but yeah, its not great. Probably the weakest thing Uchikoshi has ever done.

At least both AI games have been really good so far.

andylt posted...

[...] Still, I had a wonderful time playing and I hope you enjoyed following along and laughing at my many terrible predictions!

I liked the ending and thought the final twist was great, but I understand your reaction. I guess I'm just lucky that my suspension of disbelief was at a high enough level that I didn't think too much about the details of it. And yeah, in retrospect it's not much of an ending, more of a hook. Guess I was just so into the game that I wasn't thinking that way at the time, but I could see myself feeling how you did in a different circumstance.

I enjoyed your playthrough! Like Dels said, I wasn't bothered by the ending but I get your complaints (although actually seeing the epilogue at the end helps a bit).

yeah this was a great topic. can't wait for the finale!

Also yes you should play ZTD

I'm invested enough in this world that I'm definitely gonna play Zero Time Dilemma at some point. I'm aware it is, uh, divisive though so I'll temper my expectations somewhat. I didn't talk much about the puzzle rooms in this topic but I enjoyed them, they were for the most part an improvement on 999's and I liked the optional harder stuff. Oh that's a thought, I should go and read all the golden secret files now I don't have to worry about being spoiled!

Arti posted...

but it was still dubbed by the English VAs.

The EU release had no English VA for some reason!

RoseChevalier posted...

also may I introduce you to https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blickwinkel aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewing_angle lol

This sounds like something a 999 character would attempt to explain to Junpei in the 5 minutes they had left before certain death.

Dels posted...

I liked the ending and thought the final twist was great, but I understand your reaction. I guess I'm just lucky that my suspension of disbelief was at a high enough level that I didn't think too much about the details of it. And yeah, in retrospect it's not much of an ending, more of a hook. Guess I was just so into the game that I wasn't thinking that way at the time, but I could see myself feeling how you did in a different circumstance.

Yeah I get that, I was probably less willing to suspend my disbelief at the very end because I felt the narrative had lost its emotional core a little in the last hour and I didn't like that the main 9 were mostly reduced to background. But I didn't dislike it as much as my post will have made out, that stuff just comes to me when I'm trying to explain what just happened haha.

I am very curious about ZTD now. Assuming it primarily takes place in the test site at the end of 2028 with the goal being to prevent the pandemic outbreak, there's a lot of things that the player will already know and it's gonna be hard to keep us completely in the dark. Sigma should be there (though as Zero at this point), Phi, Kyle, the mysterious epilogue character, maybe Clover and Alice based on their last scene, and you know Akane is gonna be in the shadows inflicting trauma on everyone somehow. I don't see how a Nonary Game would work, or how they can pull some of the ridiculous twists they've managed to dazzle us with in the other two games. Of course, maybe it doesn't follow the direct setup from the ending of VLR and it's something completely different.

If memory serves me right, part of the problem with ZTD is people had already figured out where ZTD was going before it was written so it was changed to intentionally make it more surprising and harder to predict

This.....was not very successful

andylt posted...

The EU release had no English VA for some reason!

IIRC before that version came out they said they couldn't afford the license for both the Japanese and English and held a poll on which one to include. Japanese won.

Ah, how odd. Licensing sounds like a bizarre world. Well I'm usually a subs over dubs guy anyway (though not often with vg) and the VA was fine so it was no big deal. How is the dub?

masterplum posted...

If memory serves me right, part of the problem with ZTD is people had already figured out where ZTD was going before it was written so it was changed to intentionally make it more surprising and harder to predict

This.....was not very successful

Oh dear, picking shock value unpredictability over cohesive and narratively consistent storytelling does not sound good! And honestly I doubt I would've figured out where things were going anyway >_> But of course I'll wait and come to my own judgments when I play.

Weirdly ZTD was delisted from the 3DS eshop a while ago and there was no physical release in Europe, so I'll be playing it on Xbox when I do pick it up.

I think the dub in Zero Time Dilemma is mostly quite good with a couple of mediocre performances

which is to say, it's like VLR

andylt posted...

Oh dear, picking shock value unpredictability over cohesive and narratively consistent storytelling does not sound good! And honestly I doubt I would've figured out where things were going anyway >_> But of course I'll wait and come to my own judgments when I play.

I wouldn't worry about it. I really don't think there was any need at all for plum to have primed you like this

well, if you're going to play it anyway, there's really no use speculating about it or wondering about how it'll meet your expectations.

True. Though I can't help but speculate about where the plot might go based on VLR's ending!

i meant speculating on its quality level / potential issues but i see how my sentence was unclear

tcaz2 posted...

ZTD is worth playing imo but yeah, its not great. Probably the weakest thing Uchikoshi has ever done.

nah

Punch Line still exists

Paratroopa1 posted...

I wouldn't worry about it. I really don't think there was any need at all for plum to have primed you like this

I just think speculating about it is a waste of time because of that

Also you might as well play it on PC. Probably easier to get

Yes, just grab ZTD however is cheapest or most convenient for you to play. There's no real differences in the versions.

Arti posted...

Punch Line still exists

I honestly forget that exists and haven't played it so yeah

masterplum posted...

Also you might as well play it on PC. Probably easier to get

not sure if this is still the case but when I bought it on steam it was designed to not work on laptops? like, I had a gaming laptop that easily ran much more graphically intense games, but ZTD detected that it was a laptop and straight up would not run. was a known issue back then. Hopefully that's been fixed.

I played ZTD on a laptop on release with no issues, and have never heard of that.

I don't have a PC (or Vita), my only options are Xbox or mobile and I'm 100% picking Xbox of those!

Reg posted...

I played ZTD on a laptop on release with no issues, and have never heard of that.

maybe it was a certain brand if video card, i can't remember. It was like 6 years ago

but that's the only time I've returned a steam game lol

I also used a laptop