copy/pasted from another thread. just my final thoughts on the game.
The cards were pretty stacked against this game. I just beat Miles Edgeworth within an inch of his life about a week or two ago after 10 months of going back to it, completing some drudgery, and then going back to it a day, a week, or sometimes months later. To say it's a boring game is an understatement. I really dislike it. It lacks the tension of previous Ace Attorney games, and I think the dialog for the series has gone from precious to annoying.
So I was in a bad mood for adventure games, and I wasn't going to get 999 until I saw it was sold out on Amazon and basically everywhere else. And normally, I really dislike stories in video games. They're usually poorly told and poorly written. Either it comes from some designer's fantasy of being a famous movie director or it's the designer's fantasy of being a famous movie director and the translation is bad on top of it.
...But there are some genres I'm okay when it's there. Or at least, I expect to see it. RPGs being one of them, adventure games being the other. It's a once-in-a-while guilty pleasure.
999, in particular, was billed as a visual novel. So I was expecting something like Hotel Dusk, which I thought was all right (mostly thanks to its atmosphere and not its writing). But man, there's more text than I was prepared for. People talking, descriptions of things happening, descriptions of things you're looking at, conversations about things you have. Good lord.
What was surprising was that it was kinda not bad. I think there were too many descriptions of mundane things, but I understand why it was there. The game can't just be crazy exciting thing after crazy exciting thing. Plus, it was nice to see the characters actually investigate their surroundings and exhaust all other options before deciding on heading into the numbered doors.
I think the biggest strength to the writing is that the translation team did a really damn good job. And I'm sure the original writers did a good job too, but there's a lot of stuff that seems to get lost with a Japanese-to-English transition. Words, sayings, cliches... not a lot were present in the dialog itself, which was a big surprise. And whatever awkwardness that might've been there was replaced with believable dialog and developed personalities. Yeah the characters are still cliches, but they're subdued. Swear words are used in appropriated situations for example, and not whenever the writers felt like it. And sometimes, it was subtle- from the true ending: a grown up Junpei asking "what the hell is this?" versus a child-version of Akane asking "what is this?"- showing either/both a difference in age and/or demeanor. The use of italics and elongation also did a good job of conveying emotion and importance to words.
As for the puzzles, I was pretty glad that I actually solved all of them myself, considering they were basically the only game part of the game (except for one, which I had just forgotten that you could actually combine items). I thought they were just about the right challenge too.
Then there were branching paths. In every other game with a branching path, I always tried to make the "right" decision. I'd heard that the game needed two playthroughs to get the true ending, but I thought I could beat the system by making all the right moves the first time through. So I went in door 5, then door 7, and finally door 6. At some point, I had expected Junpei to retrieve the 9th Man's bracelet. The lack of control at these parts was annoying, and getting killed my first time through was a big surprise, especially the lengthy description of a man dying (a side note: the descriptions of gore were really well done, and I'm glad it was only text and not a picture). The second time through, I figured to go through all the options I had not done before. So I went through door 4 and door 3 (more on this later). Considering I had gone through mostly with June, I figured everything would be fine, but I got stabbed by someone (had to've been Ace or Clover in retrospect). The third run, I went through 4, 8, and then 1. For a while there, I thought I was going to get a "Clover ending" and I guess I did, but I was again disappointed in the lack of options to incapacitate her, and that Junpei would just give in to madness. Also, I was pissed off that every option I had tried on my own, thinking that I was doing the right thing had gotten me killed.
And honestly, that's kinda cool too. It's something Heavy Rain dabbled with but never got right. Heavy Rain had very clear good guy and bad guy choices. You had to know certain things to get a bad ending. Removing a sense of morality from decisions (aside from selfishness perhaps) makes the choices you make your own. 999 gets it right.
So I died many times, and that gif of Homer was exactly how I felt: I wanted to go back as Junpei knowing what I knew and kill Clover. So I set it up so I would have had the gun. That never panned out. Again, he got stabbed. So I went back to a previous save. He got stabbed in front of the sub. I went back again: Axe.
The lack of control over replays kinda sucked. I wanted to do things like stop the 9th Man, or at least retrieve his bracelet, save Snake, etc. Eventually, I found the safe ending, and the true ending.
And here's where it gets a little muddled for me: I was honestly enjoying the conspiracy/Saw angle for a bit, but going from "I heard about this telepathy thing once" to it becoming the central point of the game felt like too big a stretch, kinda like 90% of Indigo Prophecy. On the other hand, the plot twist that reveals itself in the last part of the game, that the new game + was actually part of the plot, that my bad choices were part of the plot, was kinda brilliant. Bioshock did something to this effect, where the plot twist was that the player didn't have any control, but that seemed to be an effort excuse that game's linearity/level design (although I think the revelation itself is still pretty cool). 999 doesn't come outright and say it, but the fact that you're supposed to be past-Akane seeing all the possible outcomes is pretty cool.
I have to say, the other thing that was really awesome was just a personal one, but I have never played Sudoku. Well, maybe once, but I never solved one and never cared to learn how. I thought I knew what I was doing at first, and had to go back and re-read the instructions. As I kept going, it suddenly hit me, and I knew exactly what to do and exactly how the puzzle was solved. An epiphany. It's something I doubt happened to a whole lot of other people, but for me, it was a great connection. On a side note, I really enjoyed the consistency of having past-Akane on the bottom-screen and Junpei on the top. One, it makes me wonder if the descriptions were all past-Akane's, two, it solved the problem of being able to use the touch screen while Junpei was on the top one and Akane was on the bottom, and three, it actually used the DS's two screens in a unique way. I don't think I've ever seen them done in that way to help tell a story. That whole segment was the absolute highlight of the game for me.
To wrap it up, I wound up enjoying this a lot more than I expected, even after my first, second, and third playthroughs. I think part of it is that I really appreciate the design of it. There's a consistency there that was really nice in retrospect. Consider Door 3: Junpei grabs June and Seven and makes Santa, Lotus, and Clover fight for the last spot. Santa barely pushes past them and slams his hand down on the RED. Why? Because his watch is 0 (or 9) and June's is 9 (or 0). If it had been Lotus or Clover, it would have fucked up the entire plan, as the wrong numbers on the watches would have been revealed. I came away liking the story and characters, but the design was very strong.
One thing about the story I kicked myself over was Zero's true identity. I had guessed it very early on, simply based on it being the person you least expect and the way she dressed, but the sub ending made it clear to me it wasn't her.
The only thing I didn't like was the Ace at the end of the game. I was cool with him just losing it and threatening to kill people. I was good with him being a fucking bastard. I wish it could have been left at that, but then there's a throwaway line about him just wanting to see other people's faces and it felt like too little too late to make him a sympathetic character.
Overall, a great experience. I don't think I want a sequel, just clarification on some things.
