Zero, my old friend. I've missed you.

Well, sort of. You've never been the same person twice, have you?

Yet here you are, with two previous Zeroes under your thumb, and a rogue's gallery of nine people, some familiar-- some not. What vile scheme have you cooked up this time?

Three teams of three, plus Gab. He carries notes and stuff. Incredibly old, and adores his cheese.

There are a couple of changes that were made from the other games, but only a small handful of them bear mentioning:

First, the visual novel sections have been cut out, and replaced with fully voiced and animated cutscenes. There are some upsides to this, as the need for tedious button presses every few seconds goes away, which does wonders for the pacing. You can turn the skip off and on in the configuration tool (which also has the video and audio settings).

Next, the Nonary game has been replaced by the Decision Game. Unlike previous games, the teams are set from the word go, and don't change. At least not until things start going sideways in Act III. People live, people die, and what happens in every ending is important to the final resolution. Good or bad, every one. This is one of the few games where ti counts to see everything the game has to offer.

If you've played the first two games all the way through, you'll know what's coming. If not, you're in for a wild ride. You won't get some of the more obscure plot points until late in the game, but it'll be worth it when you do. My suggestion, if you have the hardware-- buy the previous two games, and play them. 9 Persons, 9 hours, 9 Doors is the very basics, and while it explains the events within the game, it leaves far more questions.

Virtue's Last Reward, on the other hand, ends on a sort of cliffhanger, which is answered in this last game, and you finally get the answers to all the other questions that have been hanging around since the opening of the series...

Including some you may not have thought to ask.

You see, it's all about a snail... A single snail that changes everything. Like the previous two games, there are a pile of escape-the-room puzzles to solve and decisions to make, but ultimately it's a huge mystery spanning three games over the course of nearly half a century.

Definitely worth the price of admission, and the devs are quick to deal with bug reports. I more than got my money out of it, which these days is rare at best. On my list for Game of the Year, for sure.