ai

All I knew going into AI was that it was an Uchikoshi game, a woman gets murdered, you have to go into people's minds to uncover clues, and that you have some scrappy sidekick (I can't think of who was being referred to there, it might be a mix of Mizuki, Iris and Ota). I also knew there was a Japanese idol character but I might have thought that they were the original murder victim, I wasn't really keeping up with the extensive ARG promotion that was going on for most of this year. This didn't really put the game on my radar to immediately look into the game, but it started the get some good reception and so I looked into it.

Pretty happy I did that. I don't want to just compare this to Zero Escape endlessly, but I did expect a lot of the appeal in this to be in similarities to that. It feels however that it was deliberately written to avoid being too similar in some areas. The obligatory mid-crisis info dumps are spared for the most part except for one scene. Apart from sinister deeds behind the scenes, things are a lot more peaceful in this ficticious slice of Japan. What you get out of this is one area where the game shines strongly: the modernity of the setting. I think the scene that really showed that the game was for me was when you get to see Ota Tweetdecking arguments with himself to defend his favourite internet idol. It's this grasp of modernity, where rather than just shoe-horn modern technology, but actually forge it into characterisation that made me love the game over and over again.

With that in mind, the character interaction shines really strongly as well. Date & Aiba always act as great foils to each other, and Mizuki's brattish know-it-all zoomer schtick always lands. I played with the English dub and she had perhaps the best performance on the cast. In general I really liked the diverse cast of the game. As outlandish as their personas are, Ota & Iris feel very real in how they're portrayed. Mama & Moma are always silly & fun. I even grew to admire just how cunning So is as a corrupt, calculating politician.

The dream sequences weren't really the highlight for me. They actually kind of feel more like real escape rooms than the sequences as such in Zero Escape, what with the urgency of the time limit, and the bounds of logic being at times so obtuse that it's hard to imagine solving it without guesswork. When TIMIEs are added, you start to stop considering the actions for their interpretation, but instead in a meta-game stand point. It becomes a constant battle of 'well if this action is giving me a good TIMIE in reward, does it mean that it's necessary to progress, or am I expected to pick it up for the purpose of saving it up for a more expensive option on this same object. Of course there are times where I couldn't help but pick silly options just to see what happens, and it certainly is a lot of fun seeing the realm of reality twisted via the rules of a dream. They were arguably at their best when they started to really utilise the puzzling elements. As frustrating as it was, it was a cool idea to have a late-game Psync pretty much force you to use the map as a compass to efficiently move around to your desired object, and of course there's the other one where it boils down to slowly learning the correct actions, and having that not be enough because it's all about efficiently using your TIMIEs in terms of both storage and application. It requires genuine planning to get it completed under the target time, and if you've played through the game you probably know which one I'm talking about.

That's just me nitpicking the gameplay though, conceptually the Psyncs are wonderful. It feels like you see characters truly personified in their imaginations, and upon completing the game, some of them can make for some particularly interesting re-examinations. The Psyncs are the way that the game splits off into story branches, and it's an interesting choice given that such vastly different outcomes are expected to come out of just your observations & subsequent reactions to these dreams. The very first branching point makes for a fairly dramatic butterfly effect application.

Because the branching paths are so different, it means you have an entirely different perspective to someone who took the opposite path to you. You'll treat your first path as normal, while subsequent paths will be interpreted as subversions from this norm. To clarify, I took the cardinal right path on my first playthrough, and to an extent, I think it was a decision I was happy with as it felt in some ways like a silly romp before tension escalated (ironically the kick off points for both of these branches are kind of the opposite), and in some ways it made it more effective for me when I eventually had to go back to finish off this path line. The final sequence I don't think would have paid off as well if I spent my last 10 hours, rather than my first 10 hours hearing Iris's song multiple times.

On the other hand I think my decision at the start may have made the mystery harder to solve, because without saying much, it takes a bit of a backseat on my first path and instead distracts you with other goings on. There's a subtle clue regarding the nature of the eye removal of the first victim at the end of my first route, but it's one that I hadn't even noticed because it wasn't something I was thinking about during my first playthrough. It's much more prevalent on the other branching path, which makes me wonder if I would have been able to piece together some of the situation hours before it was revealed, rather than at times, maybe 1 or 2 text lines before. Overall I feel the mystery is handled fairly well, with the classic artful mystery novel skill of letting the reader think they've outsmarted the author, only to be duped again. It's like when a magician does something flashy, knowing that people will think they're using it as a distraction for some sneaky sleight of hand, but actually they already did the sleight of hand 20 seconds ago when you weren't even zoning in. As much as I try to pin down mystery novels, I do love it when I am managed to be duped (and go back and see how much blatant foreshadowing I glossed over). It makes me feel like the author's done a good job of it.

The best way I can recommend this game is with the noted expectation of extreme tonal dissonance. As emotional and clever the game can be at times, it also 100% does not take itself too seriously. Keeping this in mind may be the best way to deal with the fact that for instance, the QTE events pretty much devolve into the same childish gag every time. Rather than get annoyed at it, it became a source of amusement for the sheer gall of it, like how can they come up with so many unique ways for Date's favourite reading material to save the day? Of course, a lot of when the game is at its most silly is when you're in control, due to the sheer volume of interactive elements in every scene, which unless you're in a sombre scene, regularly devolves into some devastatingly blunt puns, references, and bizarre running gags. I saw a poll on Twitter recently that had Kagami voted as the 6th best character in the whole game, which really is a great summary of how much joy can come from absurd silliness.