Zero: I'll flip a coin, guess right and you can all leave, guess wrong and you have to play my death game

*guesses right*

Zero: Okay bye

*credits roll*



-edit- nvm I'm dumb, should've known it wouldn't be that easy

Called the coin toss right, everyone got out alive.

So like knowing that VLR said the point was to prevent the events of that game happening...

I should just put it down now right? Everyone gets out alive and nothing awful happens.

Is it once of those moments like with Undertale where the game is baiting me to play it but it knows playing the game is a bad decision and will call me out on it?


Cause... Not really got my moneys worth there.

Even on that timeline something bad still happens. You will know exactly what that is later on in the game.

So I’ve been reading up on people’s opinions of the game after I finished today. Maybe I’ll change my mind and look at this game differently when I give it time to rest but I think for now I will say that this is my least favorite ZE game, though I had thought it was better than VLR up until the ending

I kind of knew going in that not all our questions would be answered but I was thinking that’d be some minor things or minor-major things, but not HUGE things from VLR like K or ? (? would’ve been an AMAZING tie-in as well since Carlos/Sean/Diana were able to remember stuff from timelines they weren’t a part of)

A lot of parts of this game made me feel like it was victim to rewrites, which is somewhat disappointing. VLR set up this game so well, handed it an amazing story on a platter, and it just kind of feels ok in the end. A big example is Akane being told to wear the FTS robe at a ceremony. Out of all the questions Uchi decided to answer in favor of others, he answers why Akane had that robe at the end of VLR? Really? I feel like he had some bigger answer for it originally (some connection between Brother and Akane) but it was scrapped

I heavily disagree with the people who say that Brother needed to have good/morally ambiguous intentions to be a complex villain. You can have extremely evil villains that are complex and don’t have good intentions (hell, I’d consider Ace one of these). I feel like fleshing out Brother’s backstory with Left would’ve been perfect for this but eh

I did really like a lot of the game and I don’t really agree with the complaints that it was short because it was perfectly paced IMO. I do think the cinematic format hurt this game (even though it contributed to the Q twist at the end, but I’ll get to that later) and that this game would’ve been better in VLR’s more expressive format. This is also the first game in the series where I loved the puzzle rooms

Contrary to others, I also loved the transporter and that was when the game really started to hook me. All I could think about it was how it would tie into the plot and I thought that it did do so very well. I didn’t mind the lack of a proper answer to the Clover/Alice cliffhanger from VLR since I figured this is the answer (don’t see how much it has to do with Schrodinger’s Cat but whatever)

Anyway, here’s an abridged version of what I thought about the characters

I really hated Carlos. I started to like him more once he became a lot more proactive at the end but to date he is the only ZE character whose personality I can’t describe and he’s pretty much the protagonist of the game. I loved the English dub but I hated his and Akane’s voices so that might’ve been a contributing factor. But at least VLR Clover and Alice had personality and flaws. Honestly, as it stands, Carlos might be my least favorite ZE character in the entire series. I’m not sure why but he just really annoyed me and felt like he took up an unnecessary slot in the character roster. The fact that his sister was also an esper also went absolutely nowhere. I really thought there’d be a huge, insidious twist surrounding Carlos but there was nothing...

Akane was alright. Nowhere near as bad as VLR Clover but she should’ve been more cold and I would’ve preferred if she was the one who wanted to kill Q Team instead of Junpei (I understand the game was saying Junpei changed too but still). Ultimately disappointing and I generally liked her voice except in some parts where it got really bad, specifically the BTTF analogy where she started to just sound like a bad Harry Potter audition

Junpei was probably my favorite character in the game overall and maybe the most well-voiced. I don’t think his voice would fit 999 Junpei but it worked for what he was in this game. There were also some parts that I thought were wildly out of character, even keeping in mind that he was supposed to be changed. I liked his puzzle room banter with Akane but I wish the relationship had a much different resolution at the end. I almost feel like he should’ve been swapped with a new character or Santa but I’ll accept it as is because I ended up feeling pretty good about him overall in the game at the end

I thought Q was good. I thought he was Maria for a while which I thought was pretty good misdirection but the twist surrounding his character wasn’t as satisfying as I would’ve liked it to be

I liked Eric a lot. Hell, if he had more plot relevance than I would say he could easily fight it out with the greats of the series. An all around fun character, funny puzzle room partner, with a backstory that rounded him out. He gave a lot of life to the game

I liked Mira a lot too. I agree the end bit with her character was pretty sloppily done and I don’t even consider the epilogue canon but I thought she was funny, had a good voice, and a fun personality

Don’t have much to say about Diana besides that I liked her a lot and she definitely my favorite protag

Sigma was immensely disappointing considering Zero Sr was the character I was most excited for with this game. I didn’t really see Zero Sr in him at all (I was actually really confused when Diana said he sounded weird. How?) and he just felt like his 22 year old self again

I’m sad to say my thoughts on Phi haven’t improved from VLR but have actually dampened. An all around…ok character. I really wanted to see more of her in this game. I think both Q Team and D Team needed a “SHIFT adventure” treatment the same way C Team got one (D Team’s was similar with the transporter but Phi wasn’t involved)

Everybody's elaborated on Delta before but I thought he was a really disappointing villain and I hated how vague he was being about the one terrorist who ended the world. I don’t think it’s sequel-bait but it does seem evidence to me of rewrites because this part of the script felt incredibly underdeveloped. Would’ve rather had his goals be to end impurity in the world and his Decision Game to just be putting humanity under his lens and possibly finding the strongest candidates who could survive

Now, time for the twists. If there was anything ZE always delivered on, it was really crazy twists. Even 999’s sub-mysteries had extremely satisfying answers. Let’s look at ZTD

-Who killed people in some paths? Mira. Does this add much to the story? Debate it if you wish but I’m gonna say no

-Who is Q? A robot to assist Zero, which is pretty much the Luna twist from VLR

-Who is Phi? Diana and Sigma’s daughter. This would be a great twist if not for the fact that it wasn’t so obvious. Every bit of foreshadowing for it felt like the clue was slapping me across the face. I wouldn’t have minded this so much but I really feel like this was one of maybe 3 big twists in the entire game so it’s really disappointing how telegraphed it was

-Why are we all here? To learn the power of teamwork and get the motivation to save the world together….

-Where are we? The single ward location twist was pretty cool but didn’t add much of anything to the story. I feel like with more time this could’ve developed some really cool mysteries too…

-How did the game end in ZTD to lead to VLR and why are the number of survivors inconsistent? I actually thought Mira injecting Phi was very well-done as well as the explanation to how Junpei and Akane survived, especially since I just thought the answer would be “Diana was mistaken.” It was a minor mystery with a satisfying answer sans Junpei being injected with the amnesia drug but whatever. I’ll give it to you, ZTD

-Who is Zero? A 10th participant who the characters somewhat acknowledged subtly but never overtly. This twist honestly feels like stretching it to me because Uchi feels like he needs another grand twist in a ZE game. Unlike the Sigma twist in VLR where I could show someone all the clues for it and have them realize “Oh wow, it’s really obvious that Sigma is an old man”, this twist is a stretch even with the clues. I’m aware of the shadows/mentions of Q that others have pointed out, but I don’t think anybody could reasonably conclude “Hey, there’s a 4th person on Q team who the participants aren’t acknowledging because he lied and said he’s mute and deaf”

I don’t know if this is just me either but I really didn’t care about the “Who is Zero?” mystery in this game. It became obvious very early on based on character reactions to events that Zero was a 10th participant so I didn’t even bother with the guessing game because he’d either be someone from 999 or someone we don’t know. It ends up being someone we don’t know but that the characters had seen the entire time

And on one last unrelated thing, I thought it was extremely weird that they presented the dilemma of killing their alternate selves when SHIFTing at the end. I thought they’d come up with a third option or something but instead they just SHIFT, kill their other selves, look sad, and then get over it

I feel like I missed out

Fuck the stupid switchboard puzzle

I spent forever looking back and forth between the glasses and poster to figure out how the wires are supposed to be connected and even after finally looking up a walkthrough I STILL don't understand how you're supposed to figure the puzzle out

You first match the lines in the glasses to the poster, then write down what numbers map to what roman numerals. Then translate that to the switchboard. It also helps if you use the in game notes to draw over the image from the glasses so you can overlay that on the poster without needing to switch back to the glasses constantly.

It did take me a bit to realize that's what was necessary. The dialog hint about the electric shock warning icon was a bit confusing too, because it was pretty obvious that the image in the glasses related to the poster and the switchboard. It made me think that there was something else to that hint, but it doesn't seem like it.

Aliens? We're just going to bring aliens into this when it's already the final game in the series?