Personally, I consider VLR anything but great. If I were to choose, only 999 has that distinction. Everything about VLR was simultaneously a bloated and watered down version of what the game immediately before it offered, on top of not even being able to exist as a standalone experience thanks to the story being deliberately left inconclusive (and subsequently not even followed up in ways properly accounting for how that game ended). Far weaker and largely unsympathetic cast (with the worst designs in the entire trilogy), puzzles that leaned more obtuse than challenging (along with the need to do them all twice to collect every file), and a much weaker twist, with the story going full-blown Metal Gear Solid in how convoluted it was.Eh. I feel like the only great Zero Escape game was VLR. 999 was good but suffered from sloppy writing. Or maybe the translation is to blame? The main thing it has going for it is that moment towards the end. The cases in the first Danganronpa leaned towards the predictable side a lot of the time but at least the cases attempted to keep the player engaged. The same can't be said for 999's puzzle rooms.
If anything, it was like Uchikoshi was trying to go for a compromise between a neutered take on 999's sensibilities and the generally more leisurely pacing of Ever17, all while attempting to appeal to the Danganronpa crowd at Spike Chunsoft's behest, resulting in something lesser than any of those things.