Virtue's Last Reward: Too much on the Plate, And Not Enough Time

 As per my last posting, I had finished 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. And what do you know, I have now also finished Virtue's Last Reward. The sequel to an almost perfect game. But that is certainly not how I would describe VLR. The game feels like a downgrade in every direction. The writing is bad in nearly every aspect sans one character, they switched to doing the cutscenes in 3D, and I personally felt that the puzzle design was just not nearly as fluid. There are a myriad of issues to be had with this game, and I really think much of that has to do with the production time. 

Like, I checked the release dates for both games, and the gap was almost two years exactly. With 999 releasing in December of 2009 in Japan, and VLR releasing in February of 2012. That window alone is simply not enough to achieve anything other than a rushed game. Their deadline just didn't have the room for them to develop a sequel to a game like 999. 

While I did not go into many specifics during my write-up on 999, I feel that it is necessary to do so for VLR. There are many elements that seem too non-sensical to ignore. This game made me hate it from top-to-bottom. From the decision making to the protagonist himself, I was just left baffled by what I was witnessing. With that out of the way, I will now be going into specifics. So bow out now, if you care about spoilers. 

So, the game starts with players being confined to these elevator like rooms. The player controls Sigma, a character without a voice actor in a Visual Novel, and he is in a room with the other protagonist, Phi. Like in 999, the goal is to escape rooms while solving puzzles. That's what you do in VLR typically, but with a twist. There are two codes for a single safe. The Blue Code will tell you secrets about the game, while the Green Code gets you the key, and any important items from that room. These can be key cards, a map, key cards, a map, key cards, etc. 

And you might be wondering why I repeated those lines. Well that's because of how the game handles these items. You get the same shit in nearly every playthrough. And the secrets are not much better because you are given information that you will just learn later in that route. It's mindboggling how the secrets are not actually secret. And Sigma never retains the information from the safe. Not to mention, the most important information is never recorded, you have to write them down, and that's what I did. However, I quite like that part. I did the same with 999. It just felt odd, considering the secret information was never really useful. 

The useful parts were things that you had to remember on your own. While I love putting pencil or pen to paper, or even typing this stuff out. I just wish that wasn't always getting a nearly useless Gold File. So, now I am going to return to talking about the writing some more.

After Sigma and Phi exit their elevator, We meet the rest of the cast. This time around there are no code names, which I find odd but that's neither here nor there. But here we meet a child named Quark, an old man named Tenmyouji, Luna, Dio, and a familiar face in Alice. Who you might recognize from 999. And a couple minutes later we meet K, a man in a sick mech suit, and Clover from the previous game. So, we have our cast of characters. A bunch of adults and one child. But wait, there is one more character, Zero III. An AI rabbit that reminds me of Monokuma from Danganronpa. 

I am not going to lie, I was disappointed. The more Jigsaw approach to 999 was what made that game stand out so much to me. And to see goofy rabbit character be all cutesy and then threaten me with death was so annoying. To me, this character never gets better. They just make corny jokes, but the best part is that no knows their name except you, the player. Not even Sigma knows that the rabbit is referred to as Zero III in the text. Everyone opts into Zero Jr. or Zero Usagi if you know or play with the Japanese Voice Acting. 

All in all, this character feels like they exist to pander to a much different fanbase than the one that has already been established. And this brings us to the part where everyone learns what game is being played. And what do you know it's the Nonary Game, but not really. That is really just a title in my eyes. There isn't really any relation with the number nine aside from the fact that there are nine players and that you now have to earn  at least nine points to escape. 

People are not assigned a number you are given pair or solo assignments alongside a color, so choosing doesn't matter. You pick a door based on color and the game decides whether or not you can pick that door. Eventually you learn what door to pick via the returning Flow system. Which is just another way to say routes. That feeling of freedom feels lost in transition between the two games. While I am limited in choice with 999, I still have the ability to choose my destiny. Yet, VLR says that I have to pick Blue or Green for example. Red is impossible because K said that Dio sucks ass. I am fine with just dealing with an unfavorable pairing, but I guess that VLR decided that was too much. 

And it's really funny to me when you consider that VLR has Twenty Endings, and most of them are shit. It made me believe that the writing team hated Sigma. As he either dies or doesn't escape in most of the endings. He only makes it through the Number 9 Door twice. Not to mention that his character is so gross. Especially when you consider that Junpei from 999 was so passionate and concerned for the safety of most people. With only a few lines here and there about him talking shit. Like, Sigma tries to get his rocks off sometimes when talking to or about women, and I just have to see that with my eyes. 

To get back to explaining some of the plot and how the game functions. This Nonary Game is played based on a vote system where pairs and solos who did a puzzle room together must vote to Ally or Betray. They do this in the format of the Ambidex Game. That's how you gain or lose your points. You get 2 for Allying with each other, and you lose 2 when you are betrayed, but if you betray them, then you get 3 points. However if you both betray, then no points for either side. This choice determines where you go on your route. 

Given the length of the game, I really did not put too much stock into the system as it really didn't matter. You lose a door choice, get an ending, or move on with the game, there's not much esles to it. Though I will say it was funny to see a character be upset about betraying when they did it in the same route. Like, what did you think would happen? And that is what a lot of the game felt like to me. Pick your favorite option, then do the other one later. A simple system in many games that ends up taking away from the Ambidex Game aspect as it feels more formulaic than by chance. 

Another aspect that trips up the narrative in this game is the Story Lock mechanic. It is just as it sounds. A mechanic that locks the story behind a barrier until you brain blast the answer. I wouldn't have much issue with it, if it didn't dead stop the flow of the story. With how much time is spent on Novel scenes, these damn locks would stop you and then you be gone for hours, maybe even the whole game before you got back to that locked route. Even then you could have multiple locks or stopping points embedded inside. So, while it is interesting in concept. I think that the implementation was flawed. 

But I did not hate everything about the writing in this game. My shining light in this darkness was Luna. A character that clearly stands out from the others as imperfect, but perfectly executed. I have no issues with how her storyline played out. And I would argue that she is cut from the same cloth as the characters from 999. There is care and attention put into this character. She is without a doubt, the best thing to come out of VLR. As much as I like Clover and the anticipation behind Alice, they just did not get the love they deserved. It felt like I was meeting a different Clover at times. Like she had the spunk, but none of the flavor. And I think that Alice got the worst part of it next to Sigma and Phi. 

Everyone one of them was severely undercooked and underutilized. Now that I look at it, the women got done so dirty in this game. Definitely a stark contrast between games for me. But at least Luna showed out I guess. 

Other gripes that I have are not as long, but I feel need to addressed. Firstly, the switch from 2D cutscenes to 3D cutscenes made the game so much goofier than it needed to be. The characters looked flat and weird as hell at times. It wasn't like they were uncanny. They just looked like characters in a DS or Vita game. Which was avoided in 999, but like I said before. I think that the time constraints more than likely played into it, rather than the development team not being as equipped to deal with 3D models. 

So, my other gripe has to do with the flow of the puzzle design and the puzzles themselves. First off, there are only Sixteen puzzle rooms in VLR. That number is about the same for 999. A game that is marginally smaller than VLR is by quite a bit. These segments take around an hour or so casually depending on how well you understand the puzzle. After my playthrough, I clocked in around 47 hours. While there is some downtime in there where I just left it on. It definitely felt like I sat through 30 hours of Novel segments, where many were just the same thing being said as other routes. While I understand the need for the Novel segments, so much of it was unnecessary and rehashed. 

Going back to gameplay, it was just worse overall. The movement was slow, and you couldn't speed it up at all. No more switching to different angles. You had hold down a shoulder button as the camera slowly moved around the room. This became infuriating in a few rooms. But the biggest kicker was how the code system just did not mesh with the puzzle design. 

If you got the Green Code and put it in, you could just skip any puzzle that was not directly related. So, you would have to input the Blue Code first or the game would lock you out of finishing the room. I don't know why they would do this. I could have skipped a room because I learned the Green Code pretty quickly. Like, I couldn't believe it. And funnily enough, the game does tell you that you can just put the code in if you know it. So, if I pulled up a guide. I could just skip the room. I don't know if that is how it works exactly, but that is what it sounded like to me. 

All in all, I can't really say that the puzzles were that well thought out. Oftentimes, I would get the right answer, but the game didn't like the way I solved it. This was a minor issue in 999 as well. But other times, the explanations were just confusing and unclear. I was so fed up at points that I had to check if I was doing it wrong or if the game was stupid. Sometimes it was me, sometimes it was the game. At the end of the day, I just did not vibe with them at all really. 

Virtue's Last Reward is sloppy and disappointing. It never meets the highs of its predecessor. And at times, it spits in its face. This game made me miss all of the intriguing elements of 999. And even if you judge them as separately as you can, there is still so much to just not like. If it makes you happy, then I am glad. But at the same time, I wonder what the hell did you play. I am now scared of what comes next. Hopefully Zero Time Dilemma can make up for the bullshit that is Virtue's Last Reward. 

And remember to Free Palestine, Free Congo, Free Sudan, Free Venezuela. They need us now more than ever.