極限脱出 9時間9人9の扉 (Zero Escape: 999) 🗝 Week 5 (Visual Novel Book Club)

[natarin]

Week 5: Starting April 28th

極限脱出 9時間9人9の扉 Home Thread!

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

Previous Part: Week 4
Next Part: Week 6 (starting May 5th)

Reading

This week we’re reading four scenes starting from the second square on the middle route of the second branch of the flowchart (wow these descriptions are getting long ); see week 4’s main post for screenshots of the starting points.

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)

Current flowchart:

Stop here:

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

「こんなところにきて意味があるのかって聞いてんだ」
わからない
required: yes | no

≪紫がなにを恐れているのかというと……≫
密室で2人きりになってしまうこと
required: yes | no

≪ゼロが船内にいるという話を……≫
疑問に思う
required: yes | no

≪何か、何か言わないと……≫
『確かに……そうかもしれないな』
required: yes | no

「俺の希望は……」
【6】の扉だ。
required: yes | no

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!)

実験室
Japanese guide
English guide

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

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

[natarin]

Back to it once again! This week is a fun (?) one I think; if you’re looking for an indication of length it took me about 2h 30min, so a bit longer than week 4 but not so bad. As always let me know how it goes!

[Daisoujou]

It feels really good that I can mostly handle reading this. For the most part I only got seriously slowed down by all the descriptions of the corpse. That’s a pretty significant difficulty spike. Happy to see new readers seem to be enjoying themselves in the past threads.

Couple reread thoughts

The reveal of Nils’ death is huge, but I always thought there was a bit of a pacing dip around the middle when they run through discovering parts of the ship, and I think I still stand by that? Definitely feels like a transitioning section. The lab puzzles are kind of odd as well: a lot of looking at the same thing repeatedly to advance, that square puzzle that just gives you the answer, stuff like just finding a power cord+adapter and plugging it in. Dividing it into two rooms is cool (and the 人形 makes you wonder what they’re doing in there) but the way it plays out is kinda meh.

Still mostly nitpicks cause I love this game overall. And this week featured the absurd and memorable elevator conversation!

Mostly all I can think is how awkward puzzle solving is going to be in the other room between Yotsuba, Seven, and Yashiro.

[liveunderwater]

And done. Tried to move as quickly as comfortable through these sections and finished this afternoon. Approximately seven hours. Time spent tricking OCR to work and then fixing the eventual mistakes adds up. Had to spend some time in the grammar dictionaries as usual as well.

Thoughts

Getting a taste for these Japanese visual descriptors now. The gore scenes are great but likening a woman’s skin to dried persimmons is the stuff that brings me back.

Thought we were going to start this section off with a science experiment. We got a search for a 2 prong adapter.
Oh, the comedy that ensues if you keep clicking on the flaming head made me laugh out loud.

[natarin]

Hello again! I’ve still got some more to look through for next week’s reading, busy busy times, but for now it’s time to see how everyone’s doing with the current reading!

How’s the section going?

• I have a lot left
• I’m not quite done, but I’ll probably be finished by the next assignment
• I finished using most of the time allotted to me
• I finished and would feel comfortable going a little faster
• I finished and would feel comfortable going significantly faster

As always let me know any thoughts, and once I have a better idea of the length of the upcoming assignment I will let you guys know

[rikaiwisdom]

Sorry that I’m not around posting much lately nor submitting my vote to these polls! If I don’t it’s because I haven’t finished the week yet . I haven’t had the time to finish week 5 yet because I was catching up with this and more things and games and whatnot, but I read week 4 yesterday from start to finish and just like the other weeks so far I find it for me personally that I can handle a little faster no issue, so you can take that as my vote for week 6 if you like, it will most likely be the case for this week’s content too c:

Still loving the VN so far btw, it’s been awesome and it keeps me very engaged. I’m hoping to finish week 5 this weekend and be all caught up with week 6 by the time week 7 comes in so hopefully I can resume discussion soon.

[omk3]

I hadn’t found a chance to play all week, but I played and finished this portion today, and I’m continuing straight to next week.

I agree with @Daisoujou that the two-room puzzle setup where you had to work with someone else was cool, and the lab looked intriguing, but as puzzles go it fell a bit flat.

I have to say I rolled my eyes hard at our exchange with Murasaki in front of the elevator about being wet. Oh well. I suppose the happy ending will have us be safe and happily together, but I’d rather she blew herself up soon. Or she could die of that mysterious fever of hers. Which is suspiciously random.

Is Zero one of us? Did two people work together to kill ニルス? Sounds far-fetched. Is ニルス even dead, or is he actually Zero? I would normally be more intrigued, but the nature of the visual novel where you just mindlessly click to read on makes me take a more passive stance. Not to mention that I’m not really attached to anyone. The ship can go sink while they’re arguing for all I care.

On to the next part!