極限脱出 9時間9人9の扉 (Zero Escape: 999) 🗝 Week 16 (Visual Novel Book Club)

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1

Week 16: Starting July 14th

極限脱出 9時間9人9の扉 :old_key: Home Thread!

image
image562×562 74.8 KB

This is being read as part of the Visual Novel Book Club.

Previous Part: Week 15
Next Part: this game’s over!

Reading

This week we’re finishing the game! :tada:

Note: it’s not always obvious when a section ends, so try to keep an eye on the flowchart when you think you’re getting close to the end. Below is a screenshot of how your flowchart should look and where the section ends. Screenshots are under a double spoiler so you can unblur one at a time (minimizing spoilers).

Screenshots (potential spoilers)

I haven’t played this section yet so I don’t have screenshots, but we’re going through the end of the game so it’ll be pretty clear when it’s done!

General Advice

In the remastered version, novel sections have two reading modes: novel and adventure. The mode you are currently in is displayed in the top right; click on it to swap between the two. Novel mode includes both dialogue and narrative text, while adventure mode includes only dialogue. Which you read is up to you; novel mode generally gives you more information by nature of writing out descriptions of events, while adventure mode is less reading by nature of being only dialogue.

Note: the game will occasionally force you into the other mode. When this happens, you can simply click the button in the top right to swap back; however, if it forces you into novel mode, there may be a reason it does so, so proceed with caution!

Choices

The choices are under a double spoiler so you can unblur one choice at the time (minimizing spoilers). For those of you who would like to go through the game blind as to which choices matter, I am including baseline responses for all choices. However, for those of you who would like to make your own choices where it doesn’t affect story progression, whether a choice is critical or not is marked under a second spoiler below each choice.

Note: the appearance of some choices is triggered by previous choices, so if you pick different responses on ones that aren’t required for story progression don’t be concerned if you don’t see some of the choices listed below.

Choices

No choices this week!

Guides if you want to check choices yourself (beware of spoilers!)

From what I can tell it seems like major spoilers and puzzle answers are hidden, but proceed with caution!

Japanese guide
English guide

Puzzles

In case anyone has trouble with the puzzles or that just isn’t their thing, I’m including the relevant puzzle instructions. Of course you’re welcome to ask for help in the thread as well! If you are trying to figure it out I’d recommend asking for hints here first, as the guides are somewhat hit or miss with how much they reveal and how quickly.

Puzzle guides (beware of spoilers!)

焼却炉
Japanese guide
English guide
Note: puzzle may be different in the DS version

Discussion Rules

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter/part and any content in future chapters/parts.
  • When asking for help, do your best to provide context. Pasted text, screenshots, descriptions, etc. Unlike book clubs we can’t flip to relevant pages, so we may need a little help identifying exactly what is being discussed.
  • Feel totally at ease to ask questions or give your thoughts, any time! Clubs live and die by participation, and asking whatever question you have, no matter how silly it may seem, helps others who are reading it and even the answerer themselves.
  • Have fun, and do your best to interpret anything said with as much good faith as possible :slightly_smiling_face:

Participants

Mark your participation status by voting in this poll.
(Please feel free to update your status whenever you like!)

  • I’m reading along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m still reading but I haven’t reached this part yet
  • I am not reading this VN
0 voters
3 Likes
2

It’s all over!

Let's talk

That new ending puzzle is… weird. Not so sure about that one. In the original a lot of the ending was hugely different because they made use of the DS’s two screens – one was Junpei perspective, the other was Akane. They try to replicate that throughout the game with the ADV and Novel modes but it’s not the most elegant. The final puzzle was just outright sudoku, which is a little funny, but to match Junpei solving it through Akane’s perspective (it’s been so many years and it’s hard to explain anyway heh) it was also done upside down, which was a cute little touch for a handheld console. Additions like voice acting and the flow chart are huge, but this version will always suffer a little from not being able to replicate the ending I think.

What a plot, huh? I’m content with handwaving the time paradox stuff, but I’m curious how it’ll land for everyone. Those end scenes between young Junpei and Akane are cute and land really well for me.

It’s been fun to revisit this, and I think it was more revelatory for me originally so many years ago when elements of it were things I hadn’t seen as much, like the wild time stuff, the death game type setup, etc. But I think it holds up pretty well; most characters leave a good mark with their personalities and despite some arguable unneveness (I still think the middle sags a bit), it deals out the deepening mysteries and small reveals at pretty good pace. Even now I’m fairly invested during the reread, and there’s a very clear voice in the writing – definitely not natural realistic conversation, lol those giant infodump tangents throughout puzzle rooms, but it of course doesn’t need to be natural. The style works for the game.

The puzzles are not the greatest and I’m not really a fan of that very end little cliffhanger to end on, but it’s a cool VN. Glad we got to a big one like this and I hope when everyone else gets here they’ll have had a good time too.

3 Likes
3

Finally reached the end! Felt like running a marathon. Feeling great at the start but realizing halfway that you’re out too fast. Way too fast. You try to level out your speed but it doesn’t matter when you hit the untrained final 10km where a brisk walk and a periodic burst of jogging is the best you can muster. Dragging yourself to the finish while the sag wagon pokes you in the back. I do enjoy marathons though. Best tours around.

Spoiler Wrap

First, the ます on the flow chart that I have left untouched. Was I supposed to end having passed through every block?

image
image1280×720 59.9 KB

I was pretty sure we were going to find critical information there. Is there a way to escape on the submarine from the beginning? With Alice?

As for the format, as much as I wanted to continue playing on the DS, that is a challenge for another day. It’s my first novel in Japanese, that deserves a future reread I think and completing it on the DS would be rewarding for me nonetheless. At the very least, I’d like to see how they utilized the dual screens for those final scenes. Bouncing back and forth on the PC got pretty sloppy. I don’t know how many times I accidentally advanced text thinking I had slipped into dialogue(ADV) mode. Even exposed a memory leak in my OCR. Maybe from constantly redrawing the capture region. Dunno, but when OS things started to ping and the resources were jammed, gazou was the culprit and had to be killed. I’d love a texthooking experience at this point I think. Even if I have learned to dot my が, and correct (こ to に, one handed and blindfolded, it would save a lot of time.
The Visual Novel format itself was showcased nicely, I thought, telling stories simultaneously through time, plot elements under lock and key, things traditional novels can’t touch. The voice acting was immensely helpful for me at my learning level as well. I’m looking forward to my next VN, even if I may need a bit of a break from reading at that pace, for RL stuff.

Turned out to be my favorite part of the puzzle rooms. The puzzles were all ok but most of my fun was in finding these dialogue elements. As a gamer, I found I needed to remind myself I was there to read. The puzzles weren’t so important.

Of all of the things that I wanted to see wrapped in the end, ALL ICE has to be the biggest for it to ultimately hang like that. Seriously, is there another ending? Were we supposed to find Alice? For her to guide us to the submarine floating in a secret underground river in the Nevada desert? A river that leads to… well, well at least our characters trailed off into postulation in the end.

2 Likes
4

Congrats on finishing!

I honestly don’t know what exactly that scene is, I assume just some short transition stuff when you pick that door from other circumstances, but you’re not missing anything we were supposed to have done; mine is ? too. I’m pretty sure it’s just that there are multiple paths that can get you on the sub ending and with the club planned by endings, one of the two had to get skipped over.

Glad you enjoyed it! Very understandable, and pretty common with people in these clubs I think. With so much text to work through, we inevitably push people a bit hard, heh.

I was talking to @rikaiwisdom before about how much I think people would enjoy an Ace Attorney or Danganronpa, where the puzzles ARE the dialog and you’re working to find contradictions and the like. Maybe a pick for another round sometime :grin:

2 Likes
5

I can’t read the rest of the thread yet (though I’m very close to the end already) but I’m definitely interested in reading these if they happen at any moment. They’re usually available for very low price when on sale so that makes it very highly that I’ll join if they ever get picked in the club or as offshoots or whatever. Though to be honest, I will join almost anything in the club as long as it’s not super expensive ^^ . Then hopefully the expensive ones as well when I’m in a better place financially.

I’ll leave my thoughts on 999 when I’m done with it one of these days :slight_smile: .

3 Likes
6

Good to know! Yeah by now they’re sold in these nice collections usually and go on deep sales. Honestly Danganronpa is easy but I’m torn on what I’d nominate if I went for Ace Attorney – the obvious starting point is the original trilogy, and those games are good, don’t get me wrong, but they have their lower points at times especially in the first as they were figuring some things out. And I just played 1 in Japanese last year even and have played it so many times it’s personally kinda hard to revisit.

So honestly I think I really want to go with two 2 The Great Ace Attorney games? They work perfectly as standalones, really the downsides are just that they are gonna make returning to the original game especially feel a little simple and quaint I think for anyone who does, haha, and that it’s kinda like 9-Nine- where it’s the only time in the AA series where playing 1 game doesn’t give you any sort of conclusive ending. You gotta play them both. Still, god they’re so good. I think I’m talking myself into it right now hahaha. The original trilogy are classics and definitely worth it for anyone, I just think I’ve seen them too much by now.

And the Great Ace Attorney being so specifically Japanese (it’s in part about the period when they were in contact with the British a lot more, and the cultural exchanges there) is cool for learners. It’s kinda where I found out about Natsume Soseki, heh.

2 Likes
7

I finished! Right… on time?
Starting with a big burst of enthusiasm and then not actually bothering to stick to the book club schedule at all isn’t that fair to the club, but it’s not the only wanikani book club I ended up doing that to in the past year. :weary:
I confess my enthusiasm also didn’t fully survive the break before I came back to the game either.
Thoughts about it.