Steam Community :: Nik

21.5 hrs on record

Just in The Nick of Time

Zero Time Dilemma is the finale up to Spike Chunsofts "Zero Escape" series which started with 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors and was followed up by Virtues Last Reward (both to be soon avaleable on steam). These games are some of the few that I would with no exageration in my say are genious. Evreything about them is purposeful and they somehow answer all of the questions that they raise in such a uniqe, clever and shocking way it is hard not to be at awe at times. I remember that personaly in 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors there was a scene that I was so shocked I litteraly froze for a minute and dropped my DS, this has never happened in a game before and it has only occured again with "Vitrues Last Reward" and thankfuly "Zero Time Dilemma" continues evreything that made the original two games so great and they did something that I never in my wildiest dreams thought that Spike Chunsoft could do, they met my ridiculously high exectations and did not let me down at all.

Story
The story of essentialy all of the zero escape games start with the base concept of this: 9 people are trapped in a enclosed space by a mysterious person calling themselves "Zero", their objective is to escape the area without dying. It seems simple enough but there is always a catch to it that changes with each game. I would explain the catch for Zero Time Dilemma but the problem is that its hard to explain without spoiling anything so the best I can say is that you are split up into 3 different groups consisting of 3 different people in each. Your overal objective is to open up the X door and escape, to do this you need at least of what are called X passes, the problem here is that a X pass is only revealed if somebody dies meaning at least 6 people have to die to make your escape. The game is also broken up into different sections in a "Beyond Two Souls" kind of way where the time line is intentionaly out of order, the big thing here though is that for the most part characters do not know what happens in other secions due to a amnesia enducing drug that they are given to make them forget each secion. Make sence? No of course it dosent its not supposed to make any sence thats the whole idea around it but just trust me when I say that all of the questions that can be raised by this are all resolved in the ending.

Gameplay
This is a game that is hard to describe on a gameplay standpoint because alot of it is just kind of watching cutscenes, however that is not all that you do. There is alot of escape room puzzles that you must complete a series of puzzles to get the key that will lead you to an escape. These puzzles are usualy followed up with a difficult choice at the end of it that the player has to chose between one of two outcomes. Some times it goes into knowing a certain event, sometimes its just on assumptions of what happens or sometimes it is just plain luck that the player has to take a guess and hope for the best. Again this may not seem like it makes sence but it really does make a huge impact to alot of events near the end of the game

Music
If you have played any of the zero escape games before this dont be expecting anything really new. While the old tracks are incredibly effective and always set a uneasy and atmospheric vibe to the area. But this still unfourtunatley means that there was only a handful of new tracks that were put into the mix, while again effective they lack in variety.

Graphics
While the character designes are surley a step up from the characters in Virtues Last Reward the animations are just unforgivabley bad. They look like if the animatior was told what people looked like while they moved but they had never actually experienced it for themselves before. And for some reason the way that the characters move their mouth are very off, the best way I could describe it is saying that they look like they are trying to get out peanut butter that was stuck to the roof and sides of their mouth, it just kinda moves to much and to jarringly. But other than that the enviroments look nice and the cell shading really does suit the game well

Optimization
Just thought I would throw in this quick note here I was very supprised by the optimization due to alot of options being realized and put into the game, even a option for widescreen displays which almost nothing has

Verdict
Overall Zero Time Dilemma was my biggest shock of the year so far, not because I expected it to be bad but because I thought it could never live up to what I was hoping it would be. What I was hoping for a satisfying ending to my faverioute obscure franchise. If you are reading this and are still unsure please do yourself a favour and buy 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors , to start, it will be out on steam soon, the developers really do deserve more money and more credit for making what is at least for me, the best game of the year so far.

Final Score
9/10

Posted July 13, 2016.

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Recommended

22.2 hrs on record (19.2 hrs at review time)

Deadly fun

After finishing "Danganrompa: Trigger Happy Havoc" I found myself realizing that this is probably one of the better games I have played in the past few years. The game is able to be a interesting visual novel sort of deal, but still have its own uniqe gameplay ideas that I havent quite seen before in a game. If I had to describe it in a whole package (being story and gameplay) it would be tough but I would say think something like a mix of: Pheonix Wright, 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors/ Virtues Last Reward and Persona 3/4. So if you find yourself enjoying any of these games even in the slightest I would say that Danganronpa is a absolute must buy.

Story

The story of Danganronpa is one that is kind of hard to explain so bear with me here. It stars a group of 15 highschool students who were all selected to go to a prestiguious school called "Hopes Peak Academy". To get into this school there is only one requirement. Be the best at whatever you may do, weather that be the best writer or the best baseball player it dosent matter even if you just got into the school but a lucky random vote. This is where our main character Makoto comes in, he was selected at random and deemed as "The ultimate lucky student".

Makato quickly learns however that he was not as lucky as he thought. He passes out just seconds from entering in the school, he wakes up in a abandoned class and soon realises that himself and 14 other students have been trapped in the school by a psycotic bear with only one way to escape. Kill one of your fellow classmates and dont be caught. This story creates alot of tension and mystery as you will be wondering who will be killed next as well as alot of suspence when you are trying to figure out who killed who.

There are still issues with this story however. While the game is long in its own right with so many characters that they were trying to individualy build up, it feels a bit crammed since in most cases we barley know anything or have any kind of a connection with a character before they are killed off. For example for the first 3 or so deaths they were my faverioute characters in the story at that point. Now you would probably think that I would be sad because my faverioute characters dies right? Well I found myself as more mad then anything because the characters hadent been fully fleshed out yet and It felt like somewhat of a cheap shot for them to do. It feels as if they wanted to make a cast with 8 characters in it but realized they needed some to die so they created 15 with the extra 7 characters just being for slaughter.

Another more minor problem with the story is that it takes a while to actually get good. (Depending on your reading speed) it will take around 2 hours for the first interesting thing to happen, being the first murder, but if you can stick around the murders are a hell of alot of fun to solve. Another problem is the game feels like it has kinda all over the place pacing. This is because the game is broken up into a few different sections being: Free time, Investigation and class trial. These sections all have a very different pace with the Free time (in which you interact with other characters for bonuses) feels to few and far between because these are the only scenes where the characters actually have much kind of development and they only happen maybe a dozen or so times in the game. Investigation is a regularily long process of gather information about the murders and seeing how they happened but these are kind of puzzle peices that wont be put together for a long time. Finally we have the trial bits where evreybody works together to put together the puzzle to find out who did the murder. The problem is with this is that the trial bits were the only parts that stood out as really interested and I feel that the free time and the investigation sections at times felt like they dragged on a bit with there sometimes being no clear direction of what you had to do. However the trial bits are a ton of fun, I never left my computer once durring a trial section because it was just crazy entertaining to watch go down so it makes up for it and then some due to alot of the gameplay ideas.

Gameplay

The game is broken up into a few different sections being: Free time, Investigation and class trial. These sections all have a very different pace with the Free time (in which you interact with other characters for bonuses) feels to few and far between because these are the only scenes where the characters actually have much kind of development and they only happen maybe a dozen or so times in the game. Investigation is a regularily long process of gather information about the murders and seeing how they happened but these are kind of puzzle peices that wont be put together for a long time. Finally we have the trial bits where evreybody works together to put together the puzzle to find out who did the murder. The problem is with this is that the trial bits were the only parts that stood out as really interested and I feel that the free time and the investigation sections at times felt like they dragged on a bit with there sometimes being no clear direction of what you had to do. However the trial bits are a ton of fun, I never left my computer once durring a trial section because it was just crazy entertaining to watch go down so it makes up for it and then some.

Music and Voice Acting

The music is kinda standard for this game and it works well. Its atmospheric and can help build tension or exitement in situations where it is appropriate, it is overall a good fit for the game and it is generally catchy and entertaining.

Overall Verdict

Overall I belive that Danganronpa is a game that while certainly is not for evreybody, it has its own appeal in a niche audience. If anything that I said in this review even slightly interests you then I cannot recomend it enough because even though I have written alot of words for this I still feel like this game is something that is rather hard to sell. Regardless I think that evreybody should check it out, trust me you wont regret it.

Overall score: 8/10

Posted May 11, 2016. Last edited May 11, 2016.

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Recommended

3.6 hrs on record (2.0 hrs at review time)

Flawed but fun

RWBY is a well knows and well respected franchise (aside from its hit or miss art style) and has grown quite a following over these past few years and the game seemed prime for a video game adaptation, what I was not expecting was a dynasty warriors and left for dead love child with 4 player co-op and a call new story

If you like the series you are more than likley going to like the game, there is plenty of fan fare that is in this so there is alot to see and enjoy, characters and art style is kept generally in tact and transfered stright over from the show pretty well.

The gameplay seemes that it takes most of its inspiration from the Dynasty Warriors games which generally has simple combos while destoying dozens of enemys very easily, enemies are tougher than in dynasty warriors but are still easy to take down with the right team, so bring friends and have fun.

But you must keep in mind this is still a early accsses game the only thing that i have really noticed up to this point is some audio issues, weirdly placed invisible walls and animation mess ups with the of course lack in content at this moment as well as some balencing issues with some specials seeming utterly pointless (like weiss' ranged attacks) while some things (like yangs shotgun gauntlents) feel overpowered.

If I could give any recomendations to the developers its to:

Add more playable characters (perhaps team JNPR)
Add more and generally better songs
More balencing between characters
Fixes buggs and such
More enviroments
Team chat

Overall RWBY: Grimm Eclipse is a good start and a great time with 3 friends to what I hope will become a great game that will be more fleshed out and overall a great addition to a already great series :)

Early Acsess score: 7/10

Posted December 1, 2015.

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Recommended

2.6 hrs on record

this game is so good that there is litteraly nothing to do in it because the devs dont wanna give you a seizure from the amazing ness
best devs better than ubisoft

Posted September 8, 2015.

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