Does it get any better?

[PorcupineThumbs]

Yeah, 25 minutes of dialog in between "escape rooms" got old very quickly. And the forced, cheesy "Hey, Americans like to curse awkwardly all the time", that's great too. I think the main character said "What the hell" something like 15 times in as many minutes. Got this in the package with the "3rd" one. I think I'm going to stop playing this one before I get to the 2 hour mark and check the other one out. Then probably get a refund for both.

[Chucklehead]

999 never really clicked for me. The dialogue is just incredibly, painfully verbose the whole way through, and the characters never get real development the way they do in better VNs.

That said, I'm a couple hours into Virtue's Last Reward and it seems a bit better, even though the primitive 3D graphics don't do it any favors.

[DEAD]

999 and VLR are great. ZTD is an absolute abomination that killed the franchise. If you don't enjoy 999, then these games are not for you. There is no point in playing the third one, just refund them all.

[Mysti_Fogg]

If you don't like 999, I don't think ZTD is going to be an improvement for you. You're either into escape rooms and death games tied together by esoteric philosophy, or you're not. Nothing wrong with not being into it, but I'd encourage you to get a refund rather than waste your time.

[Blu_Phire]

It's not getting better. The dialogue is terrible, and there is way too much hand-holding in working out what's going on. I know what's happening before the characters painfully explain it all to me, and just found a significant mistake (or at least something particularly not well thought out by the characters) mid-game.

[El Kawaw0]

I shoud at least say this here. There is a lot of problems with the port. A lot of atmosphere and pacing is lost because in the DS dual screen had a narrator that would tell you the expresion and the way they said things in more detail.

[Blu_Phire]

I noticed the narration text in the novel version of the text, but 1) good voice acting should have used these details of expression to act that out with voice & 2) the dialogue writing itself is just bad, which I don't think could be a translation issue unless the translators took a great deal of artistic licence & ruined the game. The overall story seems cool, and I'm curious to find out what happens but the dialogue is just painful to sit through.

[Chucklehead]

That doesn't really change. Sitting through the dialogue on successive playthroughs (required to reach the different endings and see the full story) is absolutely painful. I'm playing VLR right now and I'm sometimes spending minutes just clicking through dialogue as quickly as possible without waiting for the voice acting.

[PorcupineThumbs]

Thanks for your input everyone! I went ahead and refunded them. I'm glad that there are those that enjoyed them, they just weren't my cup of tea.

[Blu_Phire]

Originally posted by mrandoc:

That doesn't really change. Sitting through the dialogue on successive playthroughs (required to reach the different endings and see the full story) is absolutely painful. I'm playing VLR right now and I'm sometimes spending minutes just clicking through dialogue as quickly as possible without waiting for the voice acting.

You can skip ahead using the flowchat if you click "menu" and then "flow" & click on the scene you want to skip ahead to for the new route to take! So much time saved! Or if you want to remember what happened with it moving quickly you can press ctrl a couple of times to the "skip" mode which speeds through all the text automatically.

[Blu_Phire]

I've come back to comment further now that I've finished the game. I did enjoy the overall story, and unlike most games I think the dialogue actually got better during the endings, but it was such a long slog of bad dialogue to get there. And the infantile treatment of the younger female characters, and pointless sexualisation of the older female character, was particularly disappointing. There was never an explanation for the ridiculous outfit Lotus was wearing. Also disappointing that I happened to choose the exact right combination for the true ending in my first run, but then had to look up how to get the true ending after getting the safe ending. Why would I do the exact same thing again & expect a different result?
999 could have been a great game... so sad that it wasn't.

[BaronVonBunghole]

The dialogue is way better once you have the ability to skip through anything you've already read.

[Battler Ushiromiya]

First, it's a visual novel, what do you expect if not dialogue. Second, the "American character swearing awkwardly" thing doesn't make any sense because Junpei isn't American, he's Japanese. The main character saying "what the hell" a bunch to a confusing situation isn't bad writing. It's showing that he's confused. I'd sure as hell react like that in this scenario, so it's not even awkward.