Gameplay Dilemmas (Escape Room Gameplay)
999's escape rooms worked with restricted angles, while Virtue's Last Reward had you moving through escape rooms on a set track. Zero Time Dilemma finds a happy compromise by giving you a static position in the center of the room, but allowing you complete 360 degree control over where you look. This comfortable and consistent style does come with a price, however: There are no multi-room escape segments like in 999, and no larger rooms with complex layouts like in Virtue's Last Reward. The game also gives up the idea of having a harder secondary puzzle or separate difficulties like Virtue's Last Reward; there is only one solution, and the characters will aggressively hint at the solution whether you ask them to or not. All in all, I'd describe the gameplay in puzzle rooms as more streamlined and comfortable, but maybe just a bit too simplified as well.
Some puzzles force you to back out if you enter a wrong solution, most likely to prevent you from trying to brute force it, but this occasionally felt like an annoying waste of time.
As far as I know, there were no fatal mistakes in the prior games' escape rooms. For some strange reason, however, there was a single escape room that could trigger a 'game over' if you failed the puzzle. I thought this was very strange and inconsistent with the other games, and all the other escape rooms in the same game. I admit that I could've simply missed other occasions where this had happened, but it just feels out of place in general; Zero Escape is all about reaching bad endings as a consequence of your choices, not because you didn't get a puzzle right on the first go.
One thing I did appreciate is how quickly puzzle rooms wrap up when you get the solution. There is no meandering like in Virtue's Last Reward, where you acquire a code to a safe which you open to acquire a key which you use to finally open the door. When you find the solution, boom, 'you found it.' The game doesn't waste your time at all in that regard; a positive way the escape rooms have been "streamlined."
Moving on from the quality to the quantity, Zero Time Dilemma is a small step back. Both 999 and Virtue's Last Reward feature 16 escape rooms, many of which are much larger than Zero Time Dilemma's. Zero Time Dilemma, on the other hand, only has 13. With the rooms being smaller and shorter, you'd think there would be room for more, but perhaps this is because the game is more focused on the segments outside the escape rooms.
All in all, I don't have any major problems with the escape rooms in Zero Time Dilemma. They're more streamlined and simple, but are still filled with entertaining puzzles and minigames to solve. It is a shame that there are fewer of them, though.
Zero Interaction (Visual Novel "Gameplay")
I referred to this section as "visual novel gameplay" to be consistent with the articles about the other two games, but in reality, there is almost none. Between the escape rooms and major decisions, there are only lengthy cutscenes. Very early in the game, you're allowed to pick between a few conversation topics - although you need to pick all of them eventually - and after that, cutscenes are just that; animations that play out without any input from the player. Some useful functionality was kept, however. You can still pause at any time, and scenes you've already seen can be skipped. Even so, it feels frustrating to have control removed from you at every turn; it feels like you have a very passive role outside of escape rooms. This way of doing things also removes the possibility of showing the player what the player character is thinking at all times and doesn't allow for describing the environments in much detail.
But what really sets the Zero Escape games apart is the branching narrative, and this game certainly has its own spin on it.
A key point of the game's story is that the characters are injected with memory erasing drugs after each segment, so they have no idea which events take place when - for this reason, the player is also kept in the dark about the structure of events until you complete them. Each "event" has its own, smaller flowchart with 2 to 4 branches depending on choices. Once you complete them, you'll learn their position on the global flowchart, but until then, they are represented as a group of unorganized images in a circle, many of which you can access in whatever order you choose - there is a set for each of the three teams.
Allowing the player to experience the story in a nonlinear order is an interesting and daring design choice, but it doesn't do the pacing any favors. Depending on what events you happen to choose, you could be faced with several escape rooms all in a row with very little else in-between. I do appreciate the option of switching between the teams at will, as you may get tired of certain characters after a while.
One of the major facets of the visual novel gameplay that is still intact is the choices, and I'm happy to say they are an improvement over the other two games in various ways. In 999 and Virtue's Last Reward, your choices amounted to little more than choosing a door or choosing to 'ally' or 'betray.' There weren't really wrong decisions, you just picked the branch you wanted to go down. In Zero Time Dilemma, choices take many forms; from entering in a name to answering multiple choice questions, from simply choosing action or inaction to things determined by random chance.
This is one of the major advantages of having many smaller "isolated" flowcharts, all taking place in separate timelines - it allows for many more of these choices, and it allows them to have dire consequences. Picking the wrong door in 999 or Virtue's Last Reward could eventually lead to a specific bad ending, but Zero Time Dilemma isn't scared to let your characters die in a horrific fashion the moment you slip up. In fact, instead of just having a few major turning points with a decision, every single event has a choice of some kind. I can gladly say that out of the three games, the choices in this game had me the most tense.
All of these separated events and small choices are going to feel overwhelming and unpredictable compared to the neatly structured 999 and Virtue's Last Reward and they certainly make a confusing first impression, but looking back at it, I really enjoyed seeing the flowchart slowly come together. Playing a major story event, seeing some common threads between another and checking the flowchart to see how they relate becomes a game in and of itself, and the more you play, the more you see everything is connected - the game just takes its sweet time showing you the connections. The awkward pacing is still a concern, but I can really see what they wanted to achieve with this structure and it is a success in some ways.
The game has preserved a few other good habits from its predecessors - you can jump to any point in the flowchart at will if you wanted to make another decision and it's always clear how many branches there are.
All in all, a lot was lost in the transition from visual novel to cutscene, allowing for less insight into the characters' thoughts. The nonlinear structure is a daring design choice that pays off in some ways, but hurts the pacing a little. At least there are more choices with higher stakes and immediate consequences, many of which force you to think on your feet, which is a nice step forward.
Zero Steps Forward (Presentation)
I think it's fair to say that this is the game's greatest misstep. I discussed it at length in my preliminary thoughts, but it really can't be understated what a huge leap backwards this game is compared to 999
and even Virtue's Last Reward. I disagreed with Virtue's Last Reward's decision to use 3D models for its characters, but in retrospect, the models had a cute and simplistic charm that - while still not as good as the beautiful drawings from 999 - at least had its own charm. Zero Time Dilemma uses more "realistic", detailed 3D models, and that's where the problems begin.
Back when I studied Game Art, my animation teacher shared this important guideline about animation: the detail of the animation ought to match the detail of the art. South Park can get away with incredibly simplistic animation because the art, too, is incredibly simplistic. That kind of animation could never work with Disney's much more complex animated classics. I was reminded of this lesson when I saw Zero Time Dilemma in motion. Every movement is slow, simple and very robotic, which is all the more grating because of the detail in the 3D models. Worse still, because the developers opted for hours of cutscenes instead of visual novel segments, you'll be watching these 3D models stiffly shuffling around for the better part of the game's runtime. And the problems don't even end there; just like in Virtue's Last Reward, the lip sync is not good and voices will regularly play over closed mouths. Parts of characters will sometimes clip through their own bodies or through setpieces.
The camera also barely moves in cutscenes, cutting from place to place and seemingly mostly to try and hide awkward movements or prevent the animators from having to do more work. All in all, it just seems like amateur work and I don't understand why they opted for this style if they lacked the resources to make it work. Spike Chunsoft made a similar mistake with Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, a spin-off of the Danganronpa series. Fortunately, that game still had moments of important dialogue depicted with the handdrawn 2D portraits, but during gameplay and more active cutscenes, the characters were portrayed by somewhat simplistic 3D-models. Strangely enough, they were still a lot better animated than the characters in Zero Time Dilemma, even though the latter (2016) came out a year after the former (2015).
In the game's defense, there are parts of the presentation that look good - the interfaces. Little motion graphics animations play whenever you have to make a decision or when you start an escape room, and these are all very slick and fun looking. It makes you wonder why they didn't capitalize on their strength in 2D design more. Was it really less effort to make these 3D models?
The music in the game is fine, but it borrows many of its tracks from Virtue's Last Reward. I'll post one track that I like - it often plays after you've made a good choice that'll move the story forward:
The audio mixing wasn't always great, however, with the music occasionally drowning out the voice actors. It didn't happen a lot, but still often enough to notice.
I personally felt that the voice acting in this game was somewhat weaker than its predecessors. It's fine in normal conversations, but whenever shocking or horrifying things need to happen, not all the voice actors can convincingly communicate it. I think this was especially noticeable because Zero Time Dilemma has many more shocking events than its predecessors; almost all scenarios have a choice that can potentially lead to injury and death, and in some scenarios, both options do.
All in all, the presentation is bad. Slightly more detailed models and neat interface elements can't make up for awful animation, bad camera work and dull environments. The music is still fine, though it does re-use many tracks from Virtue's Last Reward. The voice acting is also decent enough, but has more rough edges than before.
Wrapping up a Trilogy (Story)
While I won't go into specific spoilers, Virtue's Last Reward left a lot of things open to be resolved by its sequel - it was a lot more ambiguous than 999 in that regard. Zero Time Dilemma, being the third and final part of the trilogy, therefore has to deal with the expectations of resolving everything that was left unresolved in the last two games. Does it? I'll share my conclusion at the end of this segment.
In Zero Time Dilemma, the cast of characters is once again trapped in a closed space and forced to play a life or death game. In this case, the game is a lot more mean-spirited and revolves strongly around sacrificing others or presenting problems that are unfair and based on chance. You won't be an hour in before you're asked to decide which 3 of the 9 characters have to die, and the choices only get meaner from there. To really drive the point home, Zero himself repeatedly shares anecdotes about how good people were hurt or killed by unfortunate coincidences and ends these stories with "life is simply unfair, isn't it?" This is a major theme in the game.
Zero Time Dilemma is unique in that it has three protagonists, each of which is the leader of their 3-person team and in charge of making the important decisions. Unfortunately, I have a lot of problems with the cast. When it comes to the 9 main characters, 5 are new and 4 are returning characters from the previous games. I want to talk about the returning characters, so there will be minor spoilers in this section:
[Returning Characters Spoilers]
Junpei and Akane are back from 999. Sigma and Phi are back from Virtue's Last Reward. Both "couples" are together as part of two separate three-person teams. I'm mostly content with the latter pair; they act much the same as they did in Virtue's Last Reward and are easily two of the more likeable characters in the cast. I have a really big problem with the return of Junpei and Akane, though. In 999, Junpei was optimistic and kind - in this game, he's what I can only describe as "edgy." He pushes the player to make decisions sacrificing other people, he's regularly snide or spiteful and generally unpleasant to be around. This is given an in-story justification, but because the justification happens off-screen somewhere between 999 and this game, it's not very convincing. I thought the dynamic between Junpei and Akane was very endearing in 999; a little cliché, perhaps, but I have a soft spot for the idea of childhood friends reuniting and reigniting those old flames. But in this game, Junpei is just constantly a jerk and most of Akane's personality - when she's not spouting exposition - consists of pointing out how much he's changed or how amoral he's being. In the interest of fairness, I will say that it gets better as the game progresses. Junpei thaws out a little bit and there's even room for a few heartwarming cheesy moments, so I won't consider their team a total loss.
[Returning Characters Spoilers End Here]
Leading C-Team is Carlos, the first character you'll play as. I played through the entire game and still couldn't get a very clear view of what kind of person he is, a problem worsened by the fact that the cutscenes don't allow you to see the characters' thoughts. He's a fireman and he has a sick sister, and that's basically the extent of his character. He does have a background and motivation, but it's pretty bare bones.
Leading D-Team is Diana, one of the more likeable characters. Unlike Carlos, she plays a vital role in the story, which does mean I can't say a lot about her background without spoiling it. She's mild-mannered and unsure and seems genuinely aghast with herself if you make amoral choices while playing as her.
The final team, team Q, consists entirely of new characters. The leader and playable character is a kid with a weird round helmet on his head, who is simply called Q.
Q is pretty shy and scared, as you might expect from a kid in this situation, but he's also surprisingly intelligent. He's this game's amnesiac, because every Spike Chunsoft game has to have one of those. He becomes more interesting as the story progresses, and he's the only remotely likeable character in his team. He's accompanied by Eric and Mira, the worst characters. Mira mostly hangs back but does try to guide Q into making amoral choices, while Eric constantly verbally assaults Q and even gets physical with him at times. The only remotely interesting thing about them is the romantic relationship between Eric and Mira - whenever the topic comes up, Eric becomes marginally more likeable. It's communicated quite clearly that he deeply cares for Mira, but that's hard to think about when he's screaming in poor Q's face or grabbing him by the collar half the time. But again, in the interest of fairness, there are a few really decent humanizing moments between even the hard-to-love members of Q-Team.
One thing you'll notice about how the teams are structured is that the playable characters are all fairly plain and passive - even Diana, as decent as she is. They seem to exist mostly as a faceless player character, a way for the player to view and interact with the more interesting couple of characters that accompany them without getting in the way. Personally, I would've preferred just having control of the more interesting characters instead of having to observe them as a third party. It's particularly egregrious that Carlos, Eric and Mira have so precious little to do with the overarching story. In 999, every character is involved in the Nonary Game for a very particular reason, but in Zero Time Dilemma, it's just a mish mash.
Setting aside the characters' relation to the overarching story, I've mentioned that the characters I don't like do have good or humanizing moments. The reason why these characters stay unlikeable for an extended period of time all comes down to the structure again. You can play the events in any order, which means the game has to account for that. So, in the game, Zero injects the participants of the game with a convenient memory erasing drug after most events. This means that with most events, they all think it's the first time they've woken up, and their entire arc restarts from the beginning. Eric may freak out at Q, grab him by the collar, but then learn something about working together to survive and apologize... and then the memory drug kicks in, and the same thing happens again in the next event. The nonlinear structure and memory drug cause a lot of general repetition; expect to hear about Carlos' sister for the "first time" several times, and many other stories as well. If you commit to completing all the events, you'll get past this eventually, but it'll test your patience. And of course, the repetitive parts can't be skipped because they're "technically" new scenes.
The structure isn't the only reason for the repetition, of course. I think having the three teams completely separate from each other is to the game's detriment as well. Both 999 and Virtue's Last Reward had the fantastic idea of allowing you to take different paths which allowed you to accompany different characters and different combinations of characters. I didn't get bored for a second doing the alternate branches in 999 because it gave me completely new insights on how certain characters interact with each other. In Zero Time Dilemma, each event just has you waking up in a room with the same three characters. Sometimes one of the characters is missing, which is a worthwhile attempt at making it more varied, but it doesn't really compare to seeing all new combinations.
Moving on from the characters, I want to talk about the story itself.
As I said, the characters are once again involved in a death game, but the rules are much harsher this time. The game won't end until at least six participants are dead, after which the survivors will be allowed to escape. This does raise the stakes quite nicely and gives a far greater incentive for the participants to betray each other than in the last games, where cooperation was ultimately always the best strategy.
For starters, I do want to give credit where credit is due. Like I mentioned under gameplay, the structure is interesting. It has its problems, but there's something to be said for seeing a story get built up one fragment at a time and seeing how all the good and bad endings connect to each other. The flowchart even changes shape as you figure out vital plot details. Just like the other Zero Escape games, you actually need to explore multiple branches and choices to see everything, and this game just takes that to a whole new level. If we leave out the repetition and the characters I don't particularly care for, it's actually really cool how the story builds up. I'd say it gets really good after you've done the first set of events for each of the teams and you enter a long string of interesting story developments where you jump from timeline to timeline. Unfortunately, things start to fall apart again near the end, and it all boils down to the conclusion.
The reason why this death game was organized, and who the mastermind behind it is, are both twists in the story that just don't land. The game does a lot of lying by omission to make it work and continues to introduce new concept after new concept. For example, the game casually springs a room on you with alien technology that allows you to send a copy of yourself to a different timeline, or a new character suddenly comes out of nowhere. Some would argue that there is clear foreshadowing to these events, but when I think of foreshadowing, I think of twists that surprise me and yet make me go "Wow, I should have seen that coming," not twists that force me to completely reinterpret everything that's been said and done to make it work. In a moment that has become a bit of a meme in the fanbase, the mastermind behind it all actually proclaims "My motives are complex." This is the antithesis of 'show, don't tell.' We're just informed that, yes, the mastermind's motives are complex.
When you're done, and I mean really done with all the endings, the game just ends unceremoniously without resolving much of anything. You can read up on what happened to some of the characters afterwards, but in terms of what you see in-game, it's all very ambiguous and fails to give any closure or pay-offs for everything it set up, not to mention all the things the prior two games left unresolved. Maybe Virtue's Last Reward just set the expectations too high, and they simply didn't have the resources to cover all that ground? But regardless, the ending left me very disappointed and unfulfilled. I spent a truly ridiculous amount of time getting all the endings and exploring every single story branch, just to leave everything so open? The game was content to drop minutes and minutes of exposition on me at every turn, but when the time came to neatly tie up all the plot threads, we just get another vague speech before quickly cutting to the credits.
All in all, the story in Zero Time Dilemma is deeply flawed. Half the cast is unlikeable and any character development that could've amended this is regularly reset due to the convenient memory erasing drug. The overall lack of a clear structure means you need to play through most of the game before you have any idea what's even happening and when. The ultimate reveals and ending are also disappointing and don't answer the questions that the game and its two predecessors raised. In the game's defense, the good characters are quite good and the bad characters aren't always terrible. Once you do get past the strange structure, the way the story is built up is really impressive. But that can't make up for all the problems.
Conclusion
I've already spent over 4000 words (Good Lord) trying to articulate all my problems with this game, so I'll keep this short and sweet.
Zero Time Dilemma streamlines its escape rooms, but simplifies them a bit as well. Your mileage may vary. Its presentation is where it really falls apart, however, with terrible animation and boring environments. This is made worse by the fact that you're stuck in unskippable cutscenes for minutes on end. The only high points in its presentation are its music and some of the performances. The story is very messy, with many unlikeable characters and the confusing structure working against it. There are likeable characters, good moments and the timeline jumping is always interesting, but those can't make up for the downright silly twists and disappointing ending.
Only recommended if you really, really liked the Zero Escape games - if you did, get it on sale and see if there's something in it for you.
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Wow! This might be my biggest article yet. It took me ages to finish because, just like the game itself, it was hard to find the motivation. I write my best stuff when I feel inspired or happy, but this article is mostly a product of frustration and disappointment. I'll let you be the judge on whether or not it measures up to my other work. That's all - as always, comments are appreciated!
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