To be honest the odds were stacked against 999 from the start.
1. I don’t like visual novels. I don’t think I’ve made a secret of this dislike or of the reason: they’re really boring to read. The dialogue parts aren’t so bad, but there’s always a lot of description of things that don’t need describing (because we can see them, because this is a visual novel) and a lot of time-wasting before anything happens. It’s especially annoying in 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors
2. I don’t like puzzle games. I’ve played and liked a few such games here and there, but it’s not a genre I really enjoy or one that I actively seek out.
3. Because of point #2 I didn’t bother playing 999 the conventional way. Instead of trying to figure out the puzzles and endings for myself, the first thing I did before even turning the game on was find a spoiler-free walkthrough on GameFAQs and use that to work my way through. No doubt by doing so I deprived myself of the pleasure the average gamer would normally get from solving those silly little puzzles on their own. Oh woe is me.
4. I’m not the most patient gamer in the world. And deliberate slowdown is the name of the game in 999, not to mention you’re forced to get a certain bad ending before playing to get the true ending, which consists of a lot of stuff you’ve figured out already but you still have to watch the dumb characters figure out it out for themselves. Rrrgh, frustrating!
5. I’m not a fan of games where people die in messy ways. Unless I’m the one doing the killing, of course. And I get queasy easily so I could have done without the lengthy, loving descriptions of blood and gore whenever anyone bought it. For these reasons I usually stay away from the “Several people locked in somewhere by someone who hates them” kind of game. And yes, there’s more than one. There are many, many other such games out there. Even on the DS alone there’s at least one other, an atrocious otome game (or is that an oxymoron?) called Kurayami no Hate de Kimi wo Matsu which also came out in 2009. Obviously I haven’t played it.
6. Stories about people doing uncharacteristically stupid things piss me off. E.g. when Cradle Pharmaceuticals discovered a detective hot on their trail why didn’t they just kill him? And since they built the whole set of the experiment they must have known where the vent in his cell would lead, so why not keep him somewhere else where he couldn’t rescue the kids? And how dumb did Junpei have to be to not notice the corpse had a left arm right after Clover told him it shouldn’t? But we’ll be here all day if I start picking the story apart. I hear there’s a long page on the Aksys website devoted to filling in the plotholes and I am not surprised.
7. Pet peeve: Bad language turns me off. This is an issue that rarely crops up with the kind of games I usually play, which only makes it all the more jarring when it does. I should have paid more attention to that ‘M’ on the cover.
So, as I said, the chances were high that I wouldn’t like 999. I played it twice, once to get the Safe/Letter ending and again to get the True Ending, but I’m not really sure why I bothered. I should have dumped it early like I did with Hotel Dusk because I certainly didn’t enjoy it. Instead I forced to keep playing, maybe because I hoped there was something really awesome waiting at the end of the True ending. Hahaha… I’m such an idiot. If I could travel back in time to last week, I would tell myself to find something else to play.
tl;dr – It’s not a matter of the game being good or bad, it’s just a matter of it being something I am predisposed to dislike. That being the case I don’t feel qualified to make any objective comments about the game. Subjectively all I can say is “I hated it and it sucked” and there, I just said it. I think we’re done here. On to the next game!
FUN FACT:
The author of this game pretty much spends his entire VN career writing the exact same concept over and over, remixing his ONLY plot twist in each game because it was so good apparently.
No seriously, I don’t think he writes anything else than “People are trapped in an area together” stories.
Sad but true. Although Ever17 was pretty memorable back when I played it years ago in part due to the “Panzer Dragoon” plot twist, having played more than one of the game he wrote, I can attest to the fact he pretty much just reuse the same concept over and over.
I think part of the problem with visual novel is with how most of them are made, most of the time the artists and scenario writers work quite independently from each others and it shows. There’re very few visual novels that I can honestly say do the medium justice, combined with how cliche most of them are now a day, I pretty much stop playing VN altogether myself as well.
They’re such a popular genre that I keep trying them from time to time despite my better judgment. I want to say “never again!” but I know I’ll be suckered in again the next time another pretty face with good reviews comes along.
Growing up with the genre, I guess I’m more inclined to forgive its flaws.
But I don’t think any VN writer knows how to write a decently paced plot and edit their work.
Also, this is way too late now, but I just kind of want to point out that the iOS version removed all the puzzles from the game apparently.
That…actually makes it worse. At least the puzzles helped reduce the monotony somewhat. And some of the puzzle dialog was actually funny.
Well, I’m not sure exactly how they did it, but I kind of hope they didn’t just erased them entirely from the game and went on their way.
Maybe they just sort of edited it into a “linear” thing where the characters automatically figure it out with their tiny brains while talking about it without having the player step in
Preliminary research suggests the game just tells you there was this puzzle and the characters solved it. Any important conversations still take place but you don’t get to do anything otherwise. *shrug* Not like I was going to get it anyway.
Good for him. Far be it from me to begrudge a one-trick pony his one trick. Which is not to say I’m going to bother playing any of his other games, of course.
I confess I didn’t like 999 despite being a fan of the character artist and VNs. I still have the box and it’s just stuck collecting dust on my shelf. I didn’t mind Professor Layton but for some reason this game w/it’s escape room puzzles just didn’t hold my interest.
Sell it and recoup your losses. The story isn’t that good.
I played 999 a couple of years ago and as a puzzle game aficionado, the puzzles were definitely the main draw for me. Since every route has a couple of exclusive puzzles and I cleared all of them, which also allowed me to witness some interesting plot developments. The story is richer and makes more sense when all routes are explored, by the way.^^
I didn’t mind the puzzles so much, but I’ve had all I can stomach of 999’s story, thank you very much. I went ahead and read spoilers for the sequel (Virtue’s Last Reward) and it sounds even worse, so I think I’m done here.