[h1]Warning: Spoilers![/h1]
This review contains spoilers for 999, if you have not completed this game to reach the "true ending" and wish not to get spoiled, please keep your cursor carefully located away, as I have them marked accordingly. Of course, you'll still need to play to fully understand these spoilers, these are extremely limited for your benefit.
So, I purchased this solely with the intent to have a PC version of 999. While I could realistically just have continued to use my dumped copy in an emulator, there is one reason why I didn't, the flow system. If you want to reach 100%, which includes getting that true ending, you're going to want to prefer this version for PC, as the original release does not have a way to jump around. I have not touched the original release of VLR in any manner, so I do not know if that applies here either. I quit VLR rather early on and I will get into why later, so this review is primarily focused on 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors.
[h3]Story - 999[/h3]
The story is... strange. The premise you are given at the start is rather interesting, you're trapped on a boat, modified to follow the game set forth by an entity known as Zero, but you never really learn why until... {Spoiler territory!]
[spoiler] You are on the path for the "Safe ending", this is mandatory to do before getting the "true ending" btw. It turns out this is a repeat of an experiment 9 years ago. This experiment was focused on "morphogenetic fields" with the Nonary Games acting as a manner to control it. Speak with Clover, she knows more than what she leads on with...[/spoiler]
I ofc do have a few problems with how this story is told of course... {True ending route spoilers included!]
[spoiler] So, while on your path to achieving the final ending, you're going to experience some hell dealing with some unnecessary exposition, meant to drill home *sighs* "Morphogenetic Fields". Sure, 1 or 2 things talking about it is fine, but you're going to be tortured with AT LEAST 6 long story sections just dedicated to experiments and weird (but fake) phoenomena related to the aforementioned concept. The dog one is real though, which is cool. This then is only really actualized with the true ending, and it just felt like a waste. No real mechanical use for it, you solve a puzzle and then the solution is sent to a participant in the previous version.[/spoiler]
{True Ending Spoilers!] [spoiler] Speaking of which, June... She's supposed to have died in the previous Nonary game, but then how was she still alive when completing THIS one? How did she suddenly vanish, then when you magically save her, not just... return?! This just feels like a severe lack of effort for this ending.[/spoiler]
At the very least, Zero is an interesting villain and there's an understandable reason the game happened again, {safe/true ending spoilers] [spoiler] and Ace was actually a pretty neat twist villain, and the breadcrumbs they left for him are rather satisfying.[/spoiler]
Didn't really enjoy the fact that you need to get all 3 "bad" endings before you can get to the ending you want.
[h3]Puzzles - 999[/h3]
The puzzles are okay, at best. There's a calculator, but you never really need to use it through the whole game, which is rather disappointing. I mostly just felt bored when solving each one, no real challenge, like if it was designed for a kid to solve. As an example, the crux of Door 5 AKA [spoiler]the First Class Cabin[/spoiler] is to find objects and then just do trial and error to find the solution. I particularly find these kinds of puzzles to be wasteful of my time since the best puzzles are about thinking through a solution, instead of blindly finding the solution. Sadly, its either guesswork or you immediately find the answer for these puzzles
[h3] Overall - 999 [/h3]
5/10 (meh) - Its got great foundations, but it just never really had much more of a spark. The game might have also benefited from hand-drawn environments instead of pre-rendered ones that clash with the art style of the characters. It survived the transition from DS to PC with minimal losses.
[h2] Virtue's Last Reward [/h2]
This game comes bundled in with 999, so technically it is supposed to be considered a "good deal", but I'm gonna be honest, the game kinda drags itself down so much that I wouldn't really consider paying for VLR if it were sold individually. To get things started, let's look at our villain, Zero 3. Its a rabbit, and he is annoying. Sure, you need a bad guy for these stories, but this bad guy was not threatening from the shadows, but instead just... annoying. I genuinely would have played this game more had the villain been designed to not sound so insufferable. Even disabling auditory dialog and reading everything just made it too unbearable.
I only got so far as completing the Crew Quarters, and after returning from it and seeing 03's ugly mug on my screen again, I just closed the game. Speaking of, the puzzles in the quarters felt a bit more in-depth, although, again, it didn't feel like a challenge, just peg-in-hole type stuff. I would like to know why the boxcutting knife + the aluminum foil gave us answers corresponding to the desks, there's nothing telling Sigma that these shapes are what matters, or how he scored the sheets in a manner where they aren't reflecting, because I noticed a glaring oversight from the art team here, the underside of the sheets don't have holes textured on.
This game doesn't feel like it really translated its presence on 3DS to PC with any sort of tact; in the small amount of time I spent playing, I felt like I was out of place with my inputs. Crafting was very clearly designed for a small touchscreen interface too much, and accessing your inventory in general is a chore. It took me more clicks to solve the initial puzzle than it did to complete most puzzle areas in 999, and it was mostly because of how I have to manually scroll to each item than to just click each item I need to. One look at the Memo screen and I decided that I wasn't ever gonna use it in a legitimate manner. It was clearly a holdover, and any notes you take focused on the background elements won't mean anything. I didn't even bother checking the flow screen, since I knew if I had to deal with 03 another time, I was just gonna drop this game and move on.
[h1] Overall - The full collection [/h1]
If you're getting this thinking its a good deal as a bundle, don't. I honestly wouldn't recommend playing VLR at all. If you want to get this, think of it as just buying 999 and having VLR tacked on. 999 is great as a VN, but not so much as a game, so just pull up a guide and stick to paying attention to the story.
