Look, I'm happy that more people get to play a great series, but 999 is in a very unique position where depending on who you ask, the lack of 2 screens does indeed ruin the experience.
It's a defining moment for the game and a redefining moment for gaming as a storytelling medium. It isn't an "oh neat" moment like Psycho Mantis reading your memory card. Hell, even Undertale's meta twist doesn't define the game in the way 999's does.
So while I won't begrudge the people saying stuff like "oh cool, I can finally play this", i'm still going to SMH due to knowing things they don't and feeling they're robbing themselves of a crazy experience.
Cool, I'm down for this. I've only played the iOS version of 999, which I know is not the ideal experience and it shows. Hope it comes to X1 eventually too.
I believe that's the first time anyone mentioned a PS4 port, at any rate. A Vita port was hinted at previously, and PC ports were confirmed earlier this year.
Bear in mind that Aksys PR also claimed ZTD would be PSTV compatible months in advance. And when it launched, it was not. Not until a patch thrown together a few weeks after its release. After poor saps like me had bought the Vita version at launch specifically to play it on a PSTV.
Bear in mind that Aksys PR also claimed ZTD would be PSTV compatible months in advance. And when it launched, it was not. Not until a patch thrown together a few weeks after its release. After poor saps like me had bought the Vita version at launch specifically to play it on a PSTV.
I know that feeling. Import copy arrived on launch day despite me being Europe, and it didn't work on PSTV. I wasn't prepared to experience what I was convinced would be the greatest gaming experience of my life on a small screen so I waited weeks for the patch, avoiding the net to avoid spoilers, letting my hype grow...
Look, I'm happy that more people get to play a great series, but 999 is in a very unique position where depending on who you ask, the lack of 2 screens does indeed ruin the experience.
It's a defining moment for the game and a redefining moment for gaming as a storytelling medium. It isn't an "oh neat" moment like Psycho Mantis reading your memory card. Hell, even Undertale's meta twist doesn't define the game in the way 999's does.
So while I won't begrudge the people saying stuff like "oh cool, I can finally play this", i'm still going to SMH due to knowing things they don't and feeling they're robbing themselves of a crazy experience.
You're really overstating it that moment I feel. lot of people do, it's so weird to me, haha.
Honestly, I remember the Psycho Mantis thing a lot more clearly than what happened in 999. The "twist" isn't what defined or made the game enjoyable for me at all. Else I would never have played it enough to even reach that point.
I was ready to complain about that as I'd probably have to purchase the game again in order to get the English voice acting. But then I remembered that I got the first game with PS+. And I bought the game again for the 3DS while it was on sale. And I'm also likely to get the game again on the PS4, as well as 999 on the Vita.
I know that feeling. Import copy arrived on launch day despite me being Europe, and it didn't work on PSTV. I wasn't prepared to experience what I was convinced would be the greatest gaming experience of my life on a small screen so I waited weeks for the patch, avoiding the net to avoid spoilers, letting my hype grow...
I still don't know what happened there. From what I could find around launch, the Japanese PS site didn't have ZTD listed as a PSTV compatible game, nor did the Japanese box claim it was compatible. Did Aksys purposely mislead people knowing that Chunsoft would be adding it in a patch after launch? Or did they actually not know either way and said it would be compatible out of assumption?
Between this and the watch mess, I find it difficult to trust anything Aksys says.
how does single screen ruin 999. 999 was GOAT before the double screen "twist." it was just GOAT-er afterwards, and it's pretty clear there are other ways to do it. Having a flow chart's going to be nice as well for getting the endings, even though I kind of thought that it implicitly spoiled some stuff in VLR.
As for ZTD I dunno if it's really fair to call him a hack for that. Didn't he only do one of the three scenarios? Like I was letdown by how stupid ZTD was regularly as well, but I got the impression the team was pretty limited in terms of budget. Maybe I just want to believe there could be a better ZTD out there in another timeline.
I was ready to complain about that as I'd probably have to purchase the game again in order to get the English voice acting. But then I remembered that I got the first game with PS+. And I bought the game again for the 3DS while it was on sale. And I'm also likely to get the game again on the PS4, as well as 999 on the Vita.
in 999 isn't a dealbreaker and I think a lot of people tend to overstate how important it is to the overall game, but it is a cool thing that's a shame to miss out on for a first playthrough.
ZTD had three credited writers AFAIK. I never looked into what Uchikoshi's role as a whole was though. My assumption was he came up with the overall scenario but had to divide up the actual scripting.
Not wanting to bash anyone's opinion in asking this, but I'm genuinely interested - how many of you who weren't disappointed with ZTD replayed the previous two games shortly before release?
I went back to the last two endings of VLR directly before going in to ZTD, and I think that was my downfall.
I just touched on it in the other thread but here are some of my major issues, even putting things like dropped plot points and its status as an overall conclusion to the series aside.
- The non-linear storytelling means nothing feels like it has any consequence. In 999 getting the knife ending after everything I've done on my first playthrough was crushing. In ZTD you start off and make a decision that either kills you or gives you the credits. The whole game is like that.
- The returning characters feel unlike themselves.
- The music is phoned in. Too many recycled tracks and few memorable new pieces.
- The overall atmosphere and tone of the game are just dull and depressing for no reason. Muted music, mannequin-esque character models, writing and dialogue that are overly-expository, robotic, and self-serious, too many cheap deaths, and few of the touches that helped lighten the mood in 999 and VLR.
- The twist involving the villain is dumb, dumb, duuuuumb. Cheap rehash of VLR's twist without the substance or storyline/character relevance that made that twist effective. Instead it's just,
"OOH, SURPRISE! WE WERE HIDING SOMETHING FROM YOU ALL ALONG!"
- Nothing in the game aside from a couple endings has any relevance on the overall plot.
- Mira's character is handled bizarrely. She's
a literal serial killer and the catalyst for the entire series's story arc
and none of this is touched on for more than two seconds.
It didn't answer a lot that VLR and various interviews claimed it would. It failed to give closure to a lot of major questions - not in an artistic way either. It just straight up acts like most characters have no feelings towards events of the previous games barring some one-off comments, and the characterization of the two from 999 felt inconsistent and frequently unbelievable. Most characters from 999 and VLR received no conclusion or mention. Some of the cast of 999 just gets a sentence a piece in one cutscene, and the fates of a lot of VLR characters aren't mentioned at all. (VLR spoilers)
no idea why lagomorph came up but kyle never did?
A lot of the game was just silly; while 999 especially focused heavily on real-life pseudoscientific theories and the like, ZTD just pulled stuff like
alien technology
out of its ass to cover its tracks. Its big twist fell flat for a lot of people due to how awkwardly set up and presented it was. Likewise, for me at least, the nonlinear narrative structure made the game a bit of a chore to go through at first. Just seeing a ton of disconnected vignettes that don't go anywhere wasn't enjoyable.
I still really enjoyed my time with ZTD, but the issues really held it back for me. A lot of it seemed to be because of the budget issues, and the fact that it wasn't going to happen in the first place. I played through the series in a few weeks over this summer, so it wasn't really an issue of me waiting a long time for the conclusion or anything either. life is simply unfair
