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Zero Time Dilemma (Zero Escape 3) review thread

Bogeypop

Member
You could say something similar about 999 given what happened with KID and the Infinity series.

Considering that train of thought, it seems Uchikoshi's main enemy is time and budget constraints. Maybe he'd have more success with Kickstarter with this surge of Western fandom. Though that might be too early to say since ZTD isn't out yet and reviews have been glowing so far, so that might not even be necessary if word-of-mouth boosts sales.

I've actually been playing Never7 to try and distract myself from the internet in order to avoid spoilers while I wait for ZTD, and it already seems to be exploring more concepts than 999 initially did. It just needs
robots and space
to explore a majority of the ideas present in VLR. I haven't even started the
CURE
endings. It was honestly surprising since going in I assumed it would only deal with a few things like 999 and not get expanded on until Ever17.
 

Sandfox

Member
Considering that train of thought, it seems Uchikoshi's main enemy is time and budget constraints. Maybe he'd have more success with Kickstarter with this surge of Western fandom. Though that might be too early to say since ZTD isn't out yet and reviews have been glowing so far, so that might not even be necessary if word-of-mouth boosts sales.

I've actually been playing Never7 to try and distract myself from the internet in order to avoid spoilers while I wait for ZTD, and it already seems to be exploring more concepts than 999 initially did. It just needs
robots and space
to explore a majority of the ideas present in VLR. I haven't even started the
CURE
endings. It was honestly surprising since going in I assumed it would only deal with a few things like 999 and not get expanded on until Ever17.
The Infinity series definitely had issues outside of time and budget, including Uchikoshi's writing. I'm curious to see what he writes after ZTD given how similar his later stories have been to a certain game in the Infinity series.
 

Bogeypop

Member
The Infinity series definitely had issues outside of time and budget, including Uchikoshi's writing. I'm curious to see what he writes after ZTD given how similar his later stories have been to a certain game in the Infinity series.

Apparently he wants to do either a
prequel about Ace's first Nonary game where he was the survivor
or more Punchline related things.
 

Eridani

Member
Apparently he wants to do either a
prequel about Ace's first Nonary game where he was the survivor
or more Punchline related things.

Oh please no, anything but this. Punchline was all sorts of awful - I only got suckered into watching it because of Uchikoshi's involvement, but I just couldn't get any enjoyment out of it.
 
Oh please no, anything but this. Punchline was all sorts of awful - I only got suckered into watching it because of Uchikoshi's involvement, but I just couldn't get any enjoyment out of it.

Second half was ok, though. Much less fanservice and an interesting outcome.
 

Eridani

Member
Second half was ok, though. Much less fanservice and an interesting outcome.

The fanservice wasn't even my main problem. I just found it incredibly boring and badly paced, even by Uchikoshi's standards. Even the boring parts of Ever 17 were more interesting to me, since that at least had a certain sense of mystery going for it. The second half being just ok was also a disappointment, considering how amazing Uchikoshi's other endings are.
 

4Tran

Member
VLR was certainly a much better designed game in terms of how the player interacts with it. In games like these which are essentially all about exploring possibilities, making the branching a direct gameplay element was really neat.
Yeah, the way that you jump between the different branches was pretty neat. It easily beats out how tedious it was to replay entire sections of 999. The big problem with VLR is that it was too heavily infected by the middle child syndrome with too many of the key events happening outside of the game's story.
 

Joey Ravn

Banned
Can somebody clarify something spoilerish regarding mostly the end of VLR and the beginning of ZTD?

Hey, SPOILERS!

Regarding
Sigma:
his body and his mind are out of sync, because his mind traveled to the future to participate in the events of VLR and then back in time to ZTD to prevent the release of Radical-6. The Sigma we're seeing in ZTD is the same one who was in VLR, in his older body, with the machine arms and the eypatch (Zero Sr.'s, aka old Sigma's, body). That I get. But I'm a bit confused about exactly when his mind traveled back and forth. Can anyone explain the jumps his mind makes, from the original Sigma to this version?

Also, regarding
Phi
:
At the end of VLR, Phi's consciousness hasn't gone back in time like Sigma's, right? Or has she? Because she is still there after Sigma went back to his young body in the past, and she talks with "?". But still, she knows about what happened during VLR when she's in ZTD. So, what "version" of Phi is the one in ZTD?

Also,
Junpei
is kind of a dick in this one. The unnatural animation doesn't help much either...
 
am i right to assume that this game runs on everything? i want to play it on my old macbook (late 2013) to play on the go and hook up on the tv when home.

otherwise i probably go Vita.
 

MegaMelon

Member
Can somebody clarify something spoilerish regarding mostly the end of VLR and the beginning of ZTD?

Hey, SPOILERS!

Regarding
Sigma:
his body and his mind are out of sync, because his mind traveled to the future to participate in the events of VLR and then back in time to ZTD to prevent the release of Radical-6. The Sigma we're seeing in ZTD is the same one who was in VLR, in his older body, with the machine arms and the eypatch (Zero Sr.'s, aka old Sigma's, body). That I get. But I'm a bit confused about exactly when his mind traveled back and forth. Can anyone explain the jumps his mind makes, from the original Sigma to this version?

Also, regarding
Phi
:
At the end of VLR, Phi's consciousness hasn't gone back in time like Sigma's, right? Or has she? Because she is still there after Sigma went back to his young body in the past, and she talks with "?". But still, she knows about what happened during VLR when she's in ZTD. So, what "version" of Phi is the one in ZTD?

Also,
Junpei
is kind of a dick in this one. The unnatural animation doesn't help much either...

Young Sigma jumps from before ZTD to thr beginning of VLR and plays it, then jumps back to after ZTD. This jump is when Akane attacks phi in the true end. Young Sigma is back in his young body, but one week later from when he initially jumped. He's survived ZTD at this point and lost the arms and eye.

He spends 45 years developing and setting up VLR. Now remember how I said young sigma jumps to the start of VLR? It's at this point that the sigma who spent 45 years on the moon (old sigma) swaps with his young self from before ZTD. As his young self is playing VLR, a week passes and the events of ZTD occur. Old sigma is kicked out and returns to his correct body post VLR. At this stage his young self from just finishing VLR returns to his young body

So it goes:

Prior to ZTD
Beginning of VLR
(Plays through VLR)
Just after ZTD
(No jumping spends 45 years on VLR)
Prior to ZTD
(Plays ZTD)
Post ZTD
Post VLR

Phi from the end of VLR also jumps back to prior to ZTD. After playing it she jumps to post VLR in the epilogue with ?.
 

MegaMelon

Member
I think I fucked up by ordering from Play-Asia.
Still hope it comes wednesday or earlier.

If it's any consolidation us who are getting ZTD on steam get it one day later so on Thursday. On the plus side, it's only like 1.1 gigabytes so we can get to playing very quickly.
 

Joey Ravn

Banned
Lotsa spoilers!

Thanks for the clarification. I think I've got a tighter grasp on this now. I remember understading it pretty well a few years ago when I played the game, but now that time has passed... It's all a tangled mess :p

I guess we'll get to know why
Phi jumped back to VLR after finishing ZTD
, right? That's something I don't fully understand yet.
 

MegaMelon

Member
Thanks for the clarification. I think I've got a tighter grasp on this now. I remember understading it pretty well a few years ago when I played the game, but now that time has passed... It's all a tangled mess :p

I guess we'll get to know why
Phi jumped back to VLR after finishing ZTD
, right? That's something I don't fully understand yet.

Yeah it's not explained fully. We have no idea if the phi who volunteers to be frozen for 45 years is the original phi from VLRs beginning or if it's her from post ZTD. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this is linked to who she is which we still have no idea on.

I really hope ZTD clears this all up. VLR just teased us saying you'll find out next time so Uchikoshi better deliver haha.

It's also worth noting that
phi at VLRs beginning has already jumped across timelines since she already knows Sigmas name yet doesn't remember properly since her ESPer abilities aren't strong enough yet to allow her to remember fully her complete memories.

What we do know is that she says
"I'm not Superman, that's for sure. And I'm not Batman, or Spiderman, or Aquaman, or a merman, or a wolfman. I'm not a brahman, or common, or ramen. I'm not a caiman either, so you don't really need to worry about anything. My name is Phi. I guess you could say... I am no man."

What a tease!
 

Joey Ravn

Banned
What we do know is that she says
"I'm not Superman, that's for sure. And I'm not Batman, or Spiderman, or Aquaman, or a merman, or a wolfman. I'm not a brahman, or common, or ramen. I'm not a caiman either, so you don't really need to worry about anything. My name is Phi. I guess you could say... I am no man."

She's...
a woman
! :O

#ConsPHIracy #FollowTheMoney #AkaneWasRight
 
I think its pretty clear Phi is
the dog. Seriously, we know that dog has some connection/importance to Sigma and it would explain the "I am no man."
 
I didn't follow this thread so I have a few questions!

Is the 3DS version really ugly or is it serviceable? Did the developers make smart use of the two screens (like 999 and VLR), or not? Should I just buy the Steam version?
 
I think its pretty clear Phi is
the dog. Seriously, we know that dog has some connection/importance to Sigma and it would explain the "I am no man."
Seriously?
The "I am no man" was clearly a Lord of the Rings reference, meaning she is a woman. Plus... both Phi and the dog exist simultaneously. I don't understand your reasoning.
 
Seriously?
The "I am no man" was clearly a Lord of the Rings reference, meaning she is a woman. Plus... both Phi and the dog exist simultaneously. I don't understand your reasoning.
Trust in Uchikoshi.
When Phi starts to bark you'll know.

Seriously though, the Phi is a dog theory is mostly just a running joke. :p
 

takoyaki

Member
I didn't follow this thread so I have a few questions!

Is the 3DS version really ugly or is it serviceable? Did the developers make smart use of the two screens (like 999 and VLR), or not? Should I just buy the Steam version?

(according to reviews) ugliest of the three but still serviceable except for 1 or 2 puzzles where the low resolution can become a problem, some minor technical problems, some problems with audio mixing.

Touch screen is used in the same way on both 3DS and Vita, haven't seen anything mentioned about creative uses like in 999 but reviews are mostly spoiler-free.

Steam version comes out a day later and it's the best version graphically (supports up to 4k resolution, better AA), but you get the same animations on all 3 versions. And playing ZTD on a portable might be more comfortable (depending on you Steam device).
 

mStudios

Member
I must say something, I'm a little bit disappointed in how the story is told at the begenning to half of the game.

ZTD Spoiler (No story or character spoiler, just how the story is told, so it's a safe spoiler):
It's random, you get to pick the story the way you want it, it's not chronological, like 999/VLR

However, it doesn't make the game bad. Another thing is... this game feels more personal.
 
I must say something, I'm a little bit disappointed in how the story is told at the begenning to half of the game.

ZTD Spoiler (No story or character spoiler, just how the story is told, so it's a safe spoiler):
It's random, you get to pick the story the way you want it, it's not chronological, like 999/VLR

However, it doesn't make the game bad. Another thing is... this game feels more personal.

This was clarified a long time ago, when game's structure was announced.
There's a LOT of potential in telling a story like that.

Also, pure speculation, but ZTD SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST HOUR OR SO:
I'm really wondering how the very first scene fits into the great picture. The coin toss one. If the game begun with the following scene, the one in the lounge, nobody would have noticed anything.
The first scene just stands there. There's a coin toss and nobody remembers anything. But Carlos says something like "I know who you are..." before passing out. Also, Zero is physically there.

So, here's my first hour theory, read it at your own risk.

There's no reason to think that the first scene actually occurs before the second one. I really wouldn't know how everything fits together and why it should be like that, but I do want to find out a lot more about that scene and CQD End.
 

mStudios

Member
This was clarified a long time ago, when game's structure was announced.
There's a LOT of potential in telling a story like that.

Also, pure speculation, but ZTD SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST HOUR OR SO:
I'm really wondering how the very first scene fits into the great picture. The coin toss one. If the game begun with the following scene, the one in the lounge, nobody would have noticed anything.
The first scene just stands there. There's a coin toss and nobody remembers anything. But Carlos says something like "I know who you are..." before passing out. Also, Zero is physically there.

So, here's my first hour theory, read it at your own risk.

There's no reason to think that the first scene actually occurs before the second one. I really wouldn't know how everything fits together and why it should be like that, but I do want to find out a lot more about that scene and CQD End.

Again, I'm not saying it's bad. But for example:

If you finish Team C first, and then you decide to do Team Q. Your memory not might as fresh as you would want to. Since there are too many deaths and then you gotta connect it yourself, and some other death don't make sense and then you need to play Team D and you'll forget what happened to Team C, etc. But once you're reaching 10 hours or so, it gets pretty good and it' doesn't matter anymore haha

Another thing is:
At first I thought the puzzle rooms made NO SENSE at all. You just woke up there and no idea how you got there. But I know how it makes sense, you just gotta advance the story a bit more.

Also, this game is the more personal of all previous one. Which is not a bad thing, but I'd like to know more about the main story too lol, but I know that will be later, so I don't mind.



I'm 15 hours in and "two" endings.
 

Soriku

Junior Member
999 was pretty fucking great, but if ZTD lives up to the hype then it will surpass it imo. As much as I love VLR, it was a set up for this game.

Even as a setup, it's great on its own merit. Also being a setup doesn't mean it doesn't do a good job answering questions and handling its plot points. I was pretty satisfied with what we got in VLR, even though ZTD is necessary for the complete story.

Also as good as 999 is, VLR still had a notably better story, twists, handling of different scenarios, and cast than 999. The new music really worked well with the old reused music too. Zero Escape is one series I actually look forward to reused music lol. Tracks like Trepidation, Chill and Rigor, Digital Root, Sublimity, and Clarification, among others, set up the mood too well.
 
It's random, you get to pick the story the way you want it, it's not chronological, like 999/VLR
Again, I'm not saying it's bad. But for example:

If you finish Team C first, and then you decide to do Team Q. Your memory not might as fresh as you would want to. Since there are too many deaths and then you gotta connect it yourself, and some other death don't make sense and then you need to play Team D and you'll forget what happened to Team C, etc. But once you're reaching 10 hours or so, it gets pretty good and it' doesn't matter anymore haha

Another thing is:
At first I thought the puzzle rooms made NO SENSE at all. You just woke up there and no idea how you got there. But I know how it makes sense, you just gotta advance the story a bit more.

This seems to be very intentional
because of the memory wipes. It's very similar to the way the characters experience the story. For ZTD to be played chronologically is kind of like saying the movie Memento should have been shown in order. Getting that choice eliminates the randomness, so it becomes like an interactive version of that film concept. You could play it in order if you knew what the order was. But we don't just like the characters don't.
 

Vic_Viper

Member
So will this be good for someone that hasn't played the others? I will pick them up wen they are released on steam eventually but I really want to check out ZTD. It's like Danganronpa but without the silly quirks right?

Do we know if the price will be affected by the current steam sale at all or will it stay at 40$ for release? If anything it could be around 15% off.
 

takoyaki

Member
ZTD confirmed to be available on PSN this Tuesday as part of the normal store update

The Drop: New PlayStation Games for 6/28/2016

Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma
PS Vita — Digital, Retail

Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma features diabolic new puzzles and fully animated story sections that push the boundaries of interactive storytelling! Newcomers and familiar faces round out a robust cast of characters while English and Japanese voice over options flesh out the narrative. Multiple endings and non linear story mechanics will keep you coming back for more!
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2016/06/26/the-drop-new-playstation-games-for-6282016/

Platinum get on Vita. Now replaying on Steam with JP voices.

how long did it take you? I've seen a picture of someone getting the Platinum and they said it took them around
23
hours.
 
So will this be good for someone that hasn't played the others? I will pick them up wen they are released on steam eventually but I really want to check out ZTD. It's like Danganronpa but without the silly quirks right?

Do we know if the price will be affected by the current steam sale at all or will it stay at 40$ for release? If anything it could be around 15% off.
Stay way the hell away if you haven't played the first two. Your experience will be significantly diminished if you jump right in.

I doubt the price will be affected by the sale. At most there might be a release discount.
 

Pedersen

Member
So will this be good for someone that hasn't played the others? I will pick them up wen they are released on steam eventually but I really want to check out ZTD. It's like Danganronpa but without the silly quirks right?

No. No. No. You will likely get some enjoyment out of it but you will get 5% enjoyment instead of 1200000% enjoyment. Wait for them coming to Steam and just play something else in the meantime
 

Vic_Viper

Member
No. No. No. You will likely get some enjoyment out of it but you will get 5% enjoyment instead of 1200000% enjoyment. Wait for them coming to Steam and just play something else in the meantime

Is the 999 on iOS the actual game? It says it's a novel in the discription
 

Pedersen

Member
Is the 999 on iOS the actual game? It says it's a novel in the discription

It's the game without the gameplay parts (Point & click escape the room) So you'll lose some interesting dialogue but an ok way to play it if you can't wait for it releasing on steam.
 
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