Post by bramblett05 on Jun 23, 2016 12:03:56 GMT
999 and Virtua's Last Reward or VLR really hit with audiences on DS and the Vita with the gripping story and twist and turns. The novel approach mixed with a fair amount of gameplay was great with the novel genre and each game got better and better as the sequels came which brings me to ZTD or Zero Time Dilemma. The graphics, way of story telling and overall style dramatically changed most parts for the better but not a perfect changed but more on that later. The story is 3 teams who are D, Q and C are at a place called Dcom and everyone has a reason to be there though awaken in their cell. The characters are either likeable to someone you want to hate and that is always the case with the novel style which is great.
There is also a dog and he does not care really doesn't about anything. If you ever watched Married With Childeren that would be the dog in a nutshell but I want to own that dog. I will say my favorite character has to be Q has he just is great and really caring though for spitting lines Phi has to be the winner there. Now to address the elephant in the room...puzzles. Some are easy to mind numbbing hard then back to easy which is a good pace as these games were not meant for the light hearted but if you think Professor Layton had hard puzzles just buckle up and be ready to be wrong. I like some can be so easy to do but you forgot to check on top of here or under there etc but it does handle pacing great. The overall style changed as well.
Back in VLR you didn't have the flow chart like in ZTD and just had a chart reason is because no teams in VLR and makes going back to things so much easier to pick up on something or to see something from a different angle. After you play ZTD it would be hard to go back to the others unless you really love the story but they do great with the new style. There is issues though: Slowdown with cutscenes happen alot and everybody seems mechanical in movement which I found odd. Also found a few bugs in cutscenes like when a character's mouth opened you could see what was behind their mouth in the room though after redoing it went back to normal. There is no lag during gameplay and loading is quick and I guess with the new graphics bugs or weird issues like hair moving around will happen just odd. Music is great in this game and really sets the mood perfectly even sounds at times Silent Hill like.
Overall this is a great conclusion to the epic series and with all the new gameplay elements it hasn't hurt the original style just improved over it and polished it up while leaving a few issues around. I have 21 hours into the game and not even done yet but this seems to be a very long game and well worth picking up. The first two are great to play if going into this but also as well not 100% needed but will help knowing things.
Score 9.0 Out Of 10
+ Graphics look great
Voice acting is done well
Team system is a great addition
- Few gameplay quirks
Bodies seem mechanical
Some puzzles would make you go insane