This game almost doesn't need a review. If you played the first game (9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors) then of course you're going to want to play it's sequel. And if you haven't yet played 999, then go play it first before even thinking of playing this.
Now, I'll try to keep the review itself as spoiler free as possible for both games, but I will talk about some obvious thematic elements. VLR is a sequel to 999 and takes place in the same universe, so the plot of 999 is mentioned in VLR and a lot of game play elements are carried over.
On the plus side:
- Branching decisions are now shown on a giant flowchart in game. If you make a choice you didn't want to, or hit a dead end, you can simply go back to the last decision, room, or big event on the flowchart and go from there. It makes for a lot less of a hassle than 999 where you had to replay that first hour every single time. The puzzles are all solved by opening a safe as well. Once you have the code, you'll never need to do the puzzle again which brings me to...
- No more repeating puzzles! VLR has added so many puzzle rooms that no matter which dialogue options you take, as you play though the whole game you will never have to do the same room twice. So not only do you get more puzzles to work with, you don't have to plod though ones you've already done
- Grand new story. Without spoiling anything, it involves 999's plot and backstory, but takes it to a much larger scale.
- Music. Quite a few of the little sound effects are recycled from 999. In fact, the first sound you hear is a sound effect from 999, but more music and sound effects are added as well. So it's a nice mix of old and new. The voice acting in English is solid as well (I didn't use the Japanese VA, so I can't comment on it) and you can really tell that some VAs had a lot of fun with their characters.
And the negatives
- Crashes. The game sometimes crashes in certain puzzle rooms and will either freeze and require a restart, or freeze and delete your save file when you restart. The best way to get around it is to never save in the puzzle rooms, only save during the novel sections. I had one crash during a puzzle but thankfully I lost nothing.
- Very obvious sequel hook. The game ending pretty much tells you that there's going to be another game and the story isn't over yet. I personally don't mind this, since I knew that Zero Escape was going to be a trilogy before I started playing, but they're a little too blatant about it.
In conclusion, refer to the first sentence if you're debating on whether or not to buy this game! Even with a few drawbacks, it's a huge improvement gameplay-wise over 999 and a great continuation of the story. See you all in the last Nonary game...
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