Why are you guys saying that Left was dropped? Wasn't the 'Left will appear but not as the man we knew in VLR' comment referring to Sean, since his personality is based off him and everything?

First off, the art style was borderline narmy. The derp faces the characters kept making just made laugh in the middle of extremely serious situations. Junperi's head in the pantry is one of the worst offenders. I think VLR's style of using sprites and 3D cutscenes when necessary was way better.

The fragments thing was kinda cool as a narrative experiment but I don't think it was implemented to well. A lot of characters are left hanging in many histories (like, what happened with Phi in the history with the rec room) and the way they're unlocked makes you play all the puzzles first and then see the story, instead of being interconnected. I also missed the fact of mixing the characters and seeing different interactions depending on the path you choose, which was one of the best parts of 999 and VLR.

Now, for the characters, I don't think they're particularly better or worse than in the other installments, although I've never considered character development to be one of the main strengths of this games.

Akane and Junpei seem to change personalities in every game they appear. I guess it makes sense considering the situation, but sometimes it seems like a cheap way to build tension between them that in the end doesn't go anywhere so...what's the point?

Carlos is the Quark of this ZTD. The game makes him looks like there's going to be some huge twist with him but...nope. He's just a noble firefighter that wants to do the right thing. We don't even know why he's even there. Phi, Akane and Sigma sneaked in. Junpei wanted to find Akane. Mira had to be to add danger or whatever (although the Decision game was already pretty dangerous without her) and Eric tagged along. But Carlos? The only thing that makes him special is that he's a SHIFTer, but that's not so special when half the cast can do it. Why it had to be him as opposed to anyone else?

I could say the same for Phi, but her case is actually worse because she's been set up for two games for...basically nothing. Her presence there doesn't add anything. The only big twist involving her doesn't require her presence, her only relevant purpose is getting injected with Radical-6 in one history and her biggest secret is that her hair is naturally red (I've just realized that that was foreshadowing as I was writing the sentence. Really, I'm not kidding XD). She was so underused that I was expecting her to be Zero. I still think it would have been cool. Maybe not as the girl, we know, but she's a SHIFTer that's been transported through spacetime twice. I'm sure some alternate version of her could have pulled the same shit as Delta. She could have even used the same motivations.

Sigma seems to be two different characters. In the cutscenes he's all serious as someone his age is supposed to be, but in the room puzzles he's happily cracking jokes about Phi's chest size. Which is pretty awkward now after the big reveal.

Diana is basically Luna, which makes a lot of sense and since Luna was one of my favorites characters from VLR, I obviously like her.

And speaking of Luna, Sean's twist was basically the same as hers, just not that well done, so...whatever.

I liked Mira a lot. I think she must be my favorite 'evil player' of the trilogy but she doesn't really has much of an impact on anything. I didn't like that Dio and Ace were behind 85% of the stuff that happened in their respective games either, but there has to be some middle ground.

I also liked Eric, because he reacted to most things as a normal human being would if they were put in that situation.

I liked most of the endings, but sadly the ones that I didn't like were the final ones.

I thought the Q-1 ending was pretty good and gave Mira some character development that I honestly didn't expect her to get. I found her description of the warmth of Eric's heart almost cute. Is that too weird? Because I think that's what they were going for.

The endings leading up to VLR's reality were fairly satisfying and explained most things I wanted to know, although they left a plothole or two around.

The babies' twist was probably the only thing in the game that actually managed to blow my mind, as opposed to VLR where everything blew my mind. My only problem with it it that it doesn't really go anywhere. The fact that Delta is Diana's and Sigma's son is not brought up at all after the Zero reveal. Not even a 'I'm not angry, I'm disappointed'? So much wasted potential.

The Zero reveal was pretty lame. It's not that I can't believe it, but more that it feels like a copout. Isn't it one of Knock's rules? That the culprit can't be someone who hasn't been introduced? And it's not even broken in a incredibly smart way like it happened with all the twists in VLR. And Delta isn't that great as a character, either. He just comes out and says 'My motivations are complex'. Have you ever heard about 'Show, don't tell', sir? Or what about at least bothering to explain why your motives are complex instead of using your kinda asspully ability to shoot yourself?
Because the only motives we really know are a)assuring his own existence like Akane was trying to do in 999 and b) preventing a huge catastrophe like Sigma was trying to do in VLR. And it isn't clear why he needed those specific people to do that. Diana and Sigma are obvious, and I guess that Akane, Junpei and Phi are necessary due to their adventures, but what about the others. Was Mira there just to increase danger or was it a punishment for her crimes? Was Eric relevant or did Delta just allow him to join to make it 9? Why did he choose Carlos? And what purpose did the Decision Game serve exactly?

As for the final ending, my only thought was 'That's it'? But I guess there really was no other option other than ' And they lived happily ever after' if they wanted to actually conclude the saga. The only reason all the twists in VLR worked was that they were justified by Sigma's plan, and the plan itself only made sense if there was a sequel in the horizon. So it was either a simple ending like this one or an ending full of crazy twist that leaves behind more questions than answers, and I don't think that would have satisfied people either. I would have liked to know at least what happened with the characters. The epilogue files at the end were fanfic-cky as hell and they didn't even include Diana, Phi and Sigma.

I actually loathed Mira and how she was handled. In her heart ripper ending I actually almost praised it for a semi-accurate portrayal of psychoticism. Specifically her direct route to her objectives without any understanding of consequences. Then she describes how she feels out of touch with emotions (which is why she tries to touch hearts) Left that ending feeling great....then I found it wildly inconsistent. She kills Junpei in a brutal method that doesn't even match her MO (his chest is completely intact) and in a number of endings she show's emotion as well. She stabs Phi with radical 6 showing an understanding of vengeance and anger even though its almost certainly the path she would have chosen. She cackles maniacally as she kills Eric in the path where they all inject radical 6. All wildly inconsistent with her understanding of emotions and her back story.
The other murderers had a plan and reason behind their kills which made Mira seem like cheap tension.

Eric however I agree with you on. I can see the worst parts of myself in him and that's disconcerting but it does make him kind of relatable in his normality

I actually loathed Mira and how she was handled. In her heart ripper ending I actually almost praised it for a semi-accurate portrayal of psychoticism. Specifically her direct route to her objectives without any understanding of consequences. Then she describes how she feels out of touch with emotions (which is why she tries to touch hearts) Left that ending feeling great....then I found it wildly inconsistent. She kills Junpei in a brutal method that doesn't even match her MO (his chest is completely intact) and in a number of endings she show's emotion as well. She stabs Phi with radical 6 showing an understanding of vengeance and anger even though its almost certainly the path she would have chosen. She cackles maniacally as she kills Eric in the path where they all inject radical 6. All wildly inconsistent with her understanding of emotions and her back story.
The other murderers had a plan and reason behind their kills which made Mira seem like cheap tension.

Eric however I agree with you on. I can see the worst parts of myself in him and that's disconcerting but it does make him kind of relatable in his normality

Actually, people with antisocial personality disorder do have emotions. What they lack is empathy, the ability to understand or share other people's feelings, which is pretty clear in Mira. And since it's pretty hard to learn what emotions are without comparing yours with others, she thinks she doesn't have any. But as you pointed, she does have feelings, she simply doesn't understand them.

In any case, I still like her even if she's not an accurate portrayal of anything. I just liked that she was actually insane and not simply trying to get out. I think my perspective about her may be affected by the fact that I played the part where he kills everybody before getting her ending. That's the thing about the narrative with fragments, your experience can vary depending on the order you play them.

And now that I think of it, we know that she was the one who killed Junpei, but was she the one to dismember him, or did Zero do it just to settle the puzzle in the pantry? It seems like something he'd do.

Here's food for thought! In the written epilogue Mira and Q bust out of prison and plan to use the transporter to "fix" Mira's crimes of the past. Therefore they will invalidate ZTD and maybe the other games by changing history. If Mira was never a murderer then neither she nor Eric would have been made to play the decision game. If Akanes mother was never killed who knows what kind of effect that could have had on Santa and her.

In erasing hwe mistakes Mira may doom the planet's future.

#dontkillthesnail

It might screw over that future but won't affect the "good" one they're in now

Are you saying he won't like Sean (because Sean doesn't change that much) or are you being cheeky and saying he won't like Q/Delta?

(the other "decisions" made when Delta was dead were probability based, so they didn't need to be influenced)

Not exactly. The decision in the incinerator room had an element of probability to it, but there was still the decision to pull the trigger and hope for the best, or abstain from pulling the trigger, dooming Phi to a fiery death, but ensuring that Sigma wouldn't die.

So no, assuming the decisions made by the player are always supposed to be made by Zero, in-game, that would mean the decision in the incinerator room should have been on autopilot, thus invalidating the idea that the final decision wasn't shown because Zero wasn't the one making it that time.

It was like it dropped me right in the middle of the game. Everyone starts accusing the kid with a funny helmet of being the kidnapper, he pprotests "It wasn't me!", a coin is flipped and then we're all outside. Then everyone is like "Err, who is... this kid?" ?

*A good game, sure, and I enjoyed playing it, but it left me pretty unaffected now that I've finished it. It's not something that'll be on my mind for days from here, as was the case with VLR and 999 (thinking about that damn sudoku still gives me chills). Especially with how grand VLR was and how it built up to something as grand or grander, the, well... pay-off, was pretty unimpressive.
*What I associate the Zero Escape series with is a pile of plot-twists, but as others has said before me, the twists in this game weren't that mindblowing, not the ones I didn't figure out either. I guess it comes down to poor execution because the twist I was the most surprised about was that the wards were connected and everyone had been awake at different times. And then Zero came totally out of Left field (hehe). I can appreciate it more after having read this thread where the hints were mentioned, but while playing it just felt cheap to me. Compared to VLR's Zero that I had figured out beforehand but the reveal still paid off, and 999's Zero reveal was masterfully done in my opinion. Although I do like that we're always seeing through Zero's eyes. I was wondering if they were gonna pull that one off again this time, and how.
*I feel like Akane had pretty much reverted back to "Kanny" again. I had been hoping to see moreof what she was actually like since her June-self seemed to have been an act, but alas, this did not happen. "Only God gets to decide who lives or dies"... said the person who had three people put into her own Nonary game just to have them killed as revenge. Her coldly calculating ways from the previous games shone through one time or two, but her whole character just seemed weird and inconsistent, both throughout this game itself and when compared to the other two. They could have done so much more with her.
*This game is so damn ugly. Couldn't stand the looks. Cringe-worthy and unkanny (hoho). Very much narm. Junpei's severed head made me laugh as well. Also Akane's ponytail is stuck in her dress. Her hair going in and out of her scarf in 999 was one thing, this is just too much.
*I liked the cast well enough (Sean and Diana being my favourites), but, perhaps by the way it was played out with the team-switching and stuff, I didn't really connect with anyone. Like in VLR I pretty much felt as if I WAS Sigma.
*One thing that is kinda neat, or stupid, is that the big bads are all connected. Like Ace with Free the soul, and Free the soul... ultimately just trying to stop that unnamed unknown religious fanatic that Delta for unknown reasons knew was gonna start a nuclear war.
*Not even gonna consider the "epilogues". I'm just gonna headcanon them as fanfic written by Delta.
*Damn, Junpei and Akane, you bring up Aoi and then change the subject before Akane has answered how he's doing. Aoi is one of my absolute favourites so I wanted something more than just hearing his name.
*The sad thing is that Kyle won't exist and Tenmyouji won't adopt Quark. :( And what about Dio?
*I never got the free the soul ceremony thing.
Zero: You have to go.
Akane: No way I'll go.
Zero: But you WILL go.
Why will she?

*In conclusion, I liked it but not nearly as much as the other two. I just felt like... I dunno, like something was missing.

*I never got the free the soul ceremony thing.
Zero: You have to go.
Akane: No way I'll go.
Zero: But you WILL go.
Why will she?

Now that the ADV mode thing is a lot more visible now, I'm pretty sure that's how the game is getting around the dual screen thing in the original DS game (that is, it'll change between that and novel mode or something like that).

Because yeah, I was always wondering how exactly these remasters were going to hand the dual screen plot point.