Reviews VisualNovel / Zero Time Dilemma

A few things:

• I don't think Akane is really all that sadistic, at least not to people who haven't wronged her. She strikes me more of a very pragmatic person, one who is willing to do anything to achieve her goals - she will not, however, necessarily enjoy it. That said, she definitely has a vindictive side, as we see in timelines where Junpei dies.

• I have no idea what you mean by "no immersive narrative".

• The subtle foreshadowing is why I liked the Q/Delta twist. It reminds me of the twist surrounding Sigma's true age in VLR - subtle hints that the player will probably overlook the first time through, and limiting what the player can see for themselves, though I'll agree that the latter bit isn't quite as well handled here. This one might have benefited from the more Visual Novel style of the past games - have Carlos and Diana's segments be shown from a first person perspective like 999 and VLR were, with them not having portraits in dialogue, and only showing up properly in cutscenes. "Q", on the other hand, would always have his portrait appear in dialogue scenes, hinting that you were really playing from Delta's perspective. A pretty big change, sure, but I think it would work better (like you said, the animation can be somewhat stilted, although I think there were times were it did work - I think you'd be all right if you had a few fully animated cutscenes here and there).

• I don't think those songs were overused at all, personally - for instance, the incinerator scene really made good use of it.

• I'll admit that this is definitely a case of an Ambigious Ending, though I'm wondering what bits in particular you wanted to know more about (personally, I just want to know what Sigma, Phi and Diana are doing).

• Zero's weird, yeah. Well Intentioned Extremist and Lack of Empathy aren't exactly a match made in heaven. If they wanted to go with the former, then I'd recommend having the latter be a façade, especially since family are involved, though I suppose he wouldn't necessarily have an emotional attachment to them.

As for the whole thing with Radical 6, I agree that it should have been in focus a bit more (the Outbreak ending was the first one I got - after Payoff, that is - so after that, it felt strangely missing). That said, I think there definitely needed to be considerably more to the plot than "stopping the outbreak", so I don't really mind the idea of the twists that were used - I just think that some of them could have been better executed.

Anyway, I understand where you're coming from, and I'll agree that ZTD won't ever be my favorite game in the series, but I still enjoyed my time with it overall. 999's still probably my favorite, but I think that VLR and ZTD are probably tied for me - VLR as a stronger overall plot, but I feel like ZTD has stronger individual scenes (even if the ending was rather weak), and I felt like the fragments added an interesting twist to the whole "multiple timelines" thing (though the way I ended up doing them meant that there were less "dropped in the middle of it" moments than I was hoping for - I'm beginning to think that maybe they shouldn't have showed you what the fragments looked like if you could just look at the flow chart to find out where they were. Maybe it would have been better if they had started you with an empty flow chart, then had you slowly fill it in as you worked through the fragments).

Still, when all's said and done, it sounds like we were lucky to get this game at all, so if nothing else, I'm thankful for that.

• I'm not really fond of Akane. I never was to begin with after completing 999. Basically because I disagree with the The End Justifies The Means thing. Maybe I overdid it when I said she was sadistic, but she just doesn't care to traumatize people (and kill them in alternate timelines) to get two things done when there were other, more ethical options. That's why I have mixed feelings about her.
• By "immersive narrative" I meant reading the events as they happened and what was going through the player character's mind. We lost that with the cinematic narrative style, and I missed it.
• Yeah, Blue Bird Lamentation worked fine in the incinerator scene. My complaint is that the song gets used in other scenes that really are not worth it. It kills the very purpose of BBL in the first place: to highlight an extremely emotive scene, not just any shallow emotional scene.
• Did Carlos shoot Delta, or not? What happened to D-Team after Pay-off? Who is the religious fanatic, and do they fulfill their goal of wiping out humanity or not? There are lots of unanswered questions — you just have to think about them.

I also think that having this game is better than having none at all, but it greatly disappoints. The potential was there, and they didn't squeeze all the juice off it.

Well, I can certainly understand missing a character's internal monologue. Still, I think they managed to convey what the characters were thinking pretty well without it.

I'll agree with the bit about D-Team. I don't think you needed to show whether Carlos shot Delta or not, however - it's a relatively inconsequential detail, in the grand scheme of things, and I don't feel the need for the game to tell me everything.

As for the religious fanatic, I'd definitely like to know about that, but I think just casually revealing how they did it in one of those epilogue notes would be rather anti-climatic. It can be a And The Adventure Continues, I think. And who knows - maybe one day, they'll decide to make another sequel...