ZTD WAS A MISTAKE

Zero Time Dilemma Was A Complete Mistake
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Everything about this game is awful on every level. When I first played it, I think I was in some sort of shock and was enjoying it in some sort of bad B-Movie way.

Now that some time has passed it's just anger inducing. I wish this game had never been made, VLR's cliffhanger ending would have been good enough for me. Let's go through just a taste of every level this game fails on. Or, in other words, every part of this game.

THE TONE
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There's a big difference between suspenseful and edgy. ZTD doesn't understand the difference. 999 was suspenseful and dark at times, you hear the banging on the coffin and get freaked out, you see the aftermath of the 9th Man's explosion, snake gets shot and then him and Ace get caught on fire. However, none of these events are there just to be edgy, they all serve a narrative purpose, they make the world feel real and like actions have consequences. VLR reins this back in some, much to its detriment, because everything is a lot tamer. This was an executive decision, Uchikoshi was told not to make VLR as "gruesome" as 999.

In ZTD, the restraints are off, but in a way that makes it worse than if the restraints were back on. ZTD is "edgy" like Saw movies are edgy. In fact, its more Saw than Zero Escape.

People gush blood like fountains, deaths and dismemberment are common and without meaning. When death is treated this flippantly it ceases to lose any gravity.

999 worked because the deaths were rare and unusual. ZTD just tries to shock you in every seen and as a result each of them loses any potential impact.

DISRESPECTING THE AUDIENCE
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ZTD thinks you're the dumbest person on the planet.
Case in point: why does shifting have a weird blue graphical effect?
Answer: because the writer thinks his dumb audience won't understand what's happening unless they're EXPLICITLY shown some sort of dumb special effect

The game is also a movie instead of a novel now. Why? It sure wasn't because they had the budget for it (as the animations show). It's because westerners don't like to read, so he took that "difficult" part out. Uchikoshi explicitly stated this in an interview that I can't be bothered to find. So every scene is super simplified so that you don't have to do any thinking of your own, the story just kind of happens around the characters and they're all cardboard cutouts.

Also, from a theme perspective, things are also dumbed way down. There are almost no themes in ZTD other than "teamwork is good" right at the end. It almost looked like they were going to do something interesting with Sean and his humanity (or lack thereof), but they totally don't. It's just another scene where dumb things happen and no one grows as a result. Plus, the theme of "robotic humanity" was already done much better in VLR anyways with GOLM and Luna.

VLR touched on things like the consciousness (termite speech + the Chinese room), ethics (AB game), game theory (AB game again), with a little bit of fun quantum mechanical thought experiments (Akane vs Kyle in the armor, the timeline parallelogram stuff). Plus you had Tenmyouji's thoughts in the epilogue which were fun.

ZTD has an old man shoot a dog off screen for no reason other than to prove what a baaaad dude he is. And then everyone uses their teamwork powers to shift all at once, hooray!

Also, Delta's whole plan is really really stupid, so that I guess a dumb "movie audience" could understand what was happening.
It's C O M P L E X or whatever sure, but its unnecessarily complex, and only on the very surface. His goals and motives are laughably simple. He could have just talked to Akane in the first place, she would have willingly agreed to help him find the terrorist with her powers, doing that is kind of HER WHOLE THING in 999 and VLR.

In VLR the plan is complex because it has to be. The motivations of Dr. Klim and Akane make sense within the setting, they had to do all this stuff to allow Phi and Sigma to shift, to set up the AB game in the first place, to stop Radical 6.

In ZTD Delta invites a serial killer to go around and murder people so that after all that he can make them some sort of stupid job offer and basically tell them to stay on their toes.

THE SETUP
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This game's setup sounds good on paper, but the execution of it is handled in the worst way possible.

First of all, everything is way too restricted. The characters fall asleep between every scene so that they can pull the dumb timespan twist. This just makes it so that there's no exploration or gradual reveal of the various facilities of the shelter. Instead it just goes:
Wake up SOMEWHERE -> Explore the one room -> Minor Exposition -> Scene ends, back to bed
One major element in the other two games is a lot of downtime between Number Door segments for the characters to interact, other developments to occur, and exploring all avenues of possible escape. This is completely removed, making everything just feel super contrived. Add to that the fact that the teams are separated, making the already diminished interactions even less prominent.

This leads into something else that feels contrived and awful. Unlike 999 and VLR, the "rules" in ZTDs "game" change on a whim and make no sense. Zero just does a bunch of random crap and the characters just deal with it. This makes nothing feel like it has any weight, there's no point in using your brain because nothing matters, Zero will just do what he wants.

999 and VLR worked so well because Zero set things up and then the game is passively carried out by the devices and systems left in place and only very rarely showed his presence. There's a reason why Zero the 3rd literally leaves the game after the first AB game. In ZTD, Zero never shuts up and stops interfering and everything feels arbitrary because of it. It ruins his character, any tension caused by not knowing what's going on, and the whole premise of the game. He changes the rules or breaks them and there's no reasoning about things! The whole atmosphere is ruined by it!

Random Rule Changes / Things That Happen:
* Mira's allowed to go free pretty much all the time because reasons. In 999 neither June nor Santa have special privileges, neither does Akane as K in VLR. This is awful.
* Zero randomly doing things mid-game like infecting some people arbitrarily with a poison. This also seems arbitrary and dumb.
* Apparently it's against the rules to try using an X-Pass from another timeline? This comes out of nowhere, why is this a "rule violation"? (HINT: The answer is because they wanted some sort of dramatic tension for Carlos to run into, not because it made any sense)

I'm sure I could think of a lot more but it hurts my brain too much thinking about it.

THE PUZZLES
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The puzzles are a lot worse overall. Way simpler and hand-holdy. A big regression from VLR. There is one interesting idea, which is rooms like the infirmary that have goals other than just escaping. This is a cool idea but too bad the plot is too dumb to ever use them well.

The Transporter Room is the only actually good puzzle room in the game.

THE SETTING
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The facility is super cramped, it basically seems like they gave no thought to making it seem like an actual place someone might use or live in. It's just Delta's Arbitrary Funhouse, why bother thinking too hard about it? I sure am glad he had all those cans of beans and alcohol. This seems super easy to fix, too! Just make it believable as a Free The Soul base or something, have some actual symbols and rooms that support that idea. Remember Free The Soul??? Why are they such a minor part of this game I'm gonna have an aneurysm.

It's also EXACTLY what everyone thinks it is from the beginning, making it way less creepy and the game less suspenseful. Just some random bomb shelter with arbitrary rooms and magical cloaking technology for NO REASON other than a random plot twist that serves no purpose. Literally none.

Also, not knowing what exact time it is and the scenes being staggered or whatever is a dumb twist that serves no point. As soon as they kept getting put to sleep arbitrarily you immediately suspect something like this is happening and SURPRISE, it totally is!

The decision games are an interesting concept but in practice they're used terribly, surprise surprise. It'd be cool if it forked the timeline in a meaningful way like the AB games did in VLR, that'd be a cool connection and a way to take what started in the AB game and expand on it. Almost like a sequel should do. But instead, almost always one choice just leads to a dead end. WHAT MEANINGFUL DECISIONS GAME. At least with the AB game most of the time the choices branched and led to whole different paths with only a handful of dead ends here and there. Also the choices were more nuanced than PUSH BUTTON, PEOPLE A DEAD. VLR is crafted with intent such that Sigma literally never plays against someone with less than 3 BP, to keep the choices actually interesting.

THE WRITING
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No one who translated this game has ever heard a human talk before. It's made EVEN WORSE because it turns out that the game is voice acted. Everyone sounds like robots, and not just robots, but really really stupid robots. They They come up with absurd things out of nowhere, like when the room is on fire and Carlos talks about how the room is already at like "0.4% CO2" or some really specific percent.

Also the dialogue is just bad and not even "good bad" most of the time just awkward bad. A few of the lines do make it in to "good bad" territory, like "THIS IS...MY POWER *shoots self*"

There's so many things to complain about specifically but I don't feel like it. I'll leave it at this: YOU HAD 2 PRIOR GAMES IN THE SERIES WITH GOOD DIALOGUE. 6 OF THE CHARACTERS IN THIS GAME ARE RETURNING CHARACTERS. WHY IS THIS SO HARD?

999: Humans who sound like humans but occasionally foray into being that guy from Ancient Aliens
VLR: Humans who sound like humans pretty much all the time
ZTD: Humans who sound like robots who were programmed wrong as a joke

Also, characters behave differently in different scenes, like entirely different personalities different. I thought this was going to be a plot point but the writers are just bad and no one crosschecked each other's work.

THE CHARACTERS
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You can spend all day on this so I'll break it down by character and explain the worst parts of each.

== MIRA ==

What a pointless character. An irredeemable serial killer who does everything for no reason. Why did Delta meet and recruit her? Because of the snail thing? Who knows, it's definitely not the writers.
She has almost no personality, she randomly swings between crazy murderface and generic personlady. She also teases Eric a few times for no good reason because the dialogue is awful.
She's basically just used as a plot device: "we need a murderer who runs around a'murderin, so she'll be the one"
Dio was pretty transparently a bad person in VLR, but he looks like the deepest character ever written compared to Mira.

== ERIC ==

I like the idea of Eric a lot, a normal person who is ACTUALLY normal but gets caught up in one of these crazy life-or-death situations. However, his personality, like Mira's randomly flip-flops from scene to scene. I get that he had the trauma as a child or whatever but the way it's handled is really, really poor. I'd much rather he have no relevant backstory, to be honest. Or just keep the part where his mom was murdered in a plot-relevant way but ditch everything else.
If you're going to have him be a Joe Everyman reacting to the outlandish events, double down on it.

Plus, this goes back to the bad, bad writing, but it was really annoying that he kept getting the gun in like every branch. Give other people a turn with the power and show how it changes things. They kept using Eric in only 1 way and it really bothered me.

== SIGMA ==

His character was completely ruined. He acts like neither the player character Sigma from VLR nor the old, wise Sigma he's supposed to be. He acts impulsively, rashly, and everything he does is stupid. See also: how he acts in the shower scene and the "push the button" scene.

Also, this is the case with Phi as well, but we went through all of VLR learning how to retain memories while shifting..........and they don't use it at all during the course of the game until like the end! EVEN THOUGH IT'D BE *VERY HELPFUL* TO COUNTERACT THE FACT THAT ZERO TRIES TO PUT THEM TO SLEEP.

Why not shift right before you get knocked out so you can keep those memories and get a better understanding of the situation?

== PHI ==

She's mostly true to her VLR character, no real big problems here.
She just suffers from the same problems that everyone does: bad dialogue and really, really stupid decision making skills.

== DIANA ==

Her character also seemed mostly fine. And if you fixed everyone else to not also be stupid and foolish, her being the naive girl would be a stark contrast to the super-utilitarian Phi and old wise man Sigma.
But with the story as it is, she comes off as extra super annoying, I think this isn't really her character's fault though.

== JUNPEI ==

Just like Sigma, his character was completely ruined. He's basically a brand new character. A really, really awful brand new character. Edgy, annoying, stupid. Also, fixed on immediately marrying Akane despite being ditched?

Seriously, Tenmyouji was much more recognizable as Junpei than the 1-year-older Junpei in ZTD.

A jaded Junpei is a fine idea, I mean, that's basically who Tenmyouji was. But this is just character assassination, his whole life revolving Akane and going deep into the underworld to look for her and stuff...it's pretty absurd. Also, despite all that might have happened during that year, Junpei continually suggesting that they kill the other teams is like WAAAAAY out of any sort of character.

== AKANE ==

Ruined. The "June" persona Akane showed in 999 was obviously a farce, a simplified version of who she wished she still was. The real Akane orchestrated the murder of the Cradle executives, set up a game where everyone died in several different ways, kidnapped Sigma a year later, helped plan the AB Game, etc.

She's not a bad person, as VLR shows, but she's not innocent, naive, or weak. She's manipulative, controlling, forward-thinking, and entirely focused on her goals. You can see this time and time again, especially in the scenes where she talks to Luna in VLR.

In ZTD she's a weak, delicate girl with none of that depth. Until in like 3 scenes she isn't for a little while...and then she's all weak and delicate again for no reason. Also she acts sooo stupid in this game. See also: Chainsaw Scene.

The interactions between her and Junpei trying to reconcile his view of "June" with who Akane actually is should have been some of the best scenes in the game, instead, it was some awful forced romance subplot that made no sense from either persons perspective. I would have had no problems if they decided to get together by the end, but the way it was handled is pathetic.

== SEAN / "Q" ==

I think Sean is the only new character the game got right. His problems and thinking felt believable. The scene where he finds out he's part of the quantum computer are quite good as well, some of the only such scenes in the game. He gets a pass.

Plus his dialogue being weird and him making some weird decisions are fine, he's some dumb kid.

== DELTA ==

His motives are...complex. And by complex I mean completely ridiculous and stupid. Radical-6 is just an arbitrary plot device to set up ZTD and not an end unto itself??? Free The Soul wasn't bad all along??? I hate his character so much.

MINDHACC has no place in this series. The jumps, shifts, and information passing through space and time is consistent with the way the morphic field was set up and explained. His ability makes no sense within it. Mind *reading* would be fine, but mind controlling is not logically consistent with ANYTHING in the series.

His backstory is also dumb, so much so that I'm pretty sure whatever idea Uchikoshi had for Brother in VLR was thrown away and he came up with a new one just for this dumbed down game instead.

THE STORY
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This pastebin is already too long so I'm going to attempt to keep this brief and just list a bunch of the ridiculous things / inconsistencies / things that annoyed me.

* Where's Kyle? Sigma wouldn't just leave Kyle behind, according to Akane from VLR
* AYYYLIENS LMAO
* Delta's entire character is dumb and makes no sense. His motives aren't complex, they're stupid. Mindhacking doesn't make any sense. The powers have to be obtained through epiphany and danger, there's no evidence Delta had to go through either to get his powers. He was just born with them?
* Why are there more shifters in the world? It was a big deal in VLR to be able to SHIFT and keep your memories. Who did Delta mindhacc to figure out about shifting? This completely destroys the game's own premise.
* Seriously though why can Carlos learn how to shift in 5 minutes? THIS COMPLETELY DESTROYS THE PREMISE OF VLR ENTIRELY.
* Phi does basically nothing the whole game except die. Why was VLR important again???
* SIGMA AND PHI DO ALMOST NOTHING WITH THE FOREKNOWLEDGE GAINED FROM VLR. WHY DID IT MATTER?
* How does Delta make already have Sean by 2028 but Sigma spends 50 years doing groundbreaking research to make Luna and Lagomorph?
* Delta acts nothing like how Brother is described. Free the Soul is a joke and hardly referenced.
* The logistics of his stupid underground bunker are never explained, how does he have Octocamo?
* Delta shoots a dog so you know he's a bad guy. This is just cheap.
* Controlling someone's body through the morphogenetic field makes no sense. It's just information. Delta's powers, while stupid, make sense kind of...except for this. He should be able to plant INFORMATION in people's head maybe but controlling someone is not something that has any basis in the game's own logic.
* Everyone acts like lunatics, though I've already said this
* Radical-6 is an afterthought, thrown in there because it had to be. WHY WAS VLR RELEVANT AGAIN?
* What's up with Dark Sean from that one scene? How stupid. Does the bunker have an army of Seans?
* The transporter is a macguffin that makes no sense. I guess its implied that Akane might have it in VLR to send back Clover and Alice but if so, why bother with the AB game?!?!?
* Phi was sent forward in time after being sent back in time for NO REASON. Ok, she raised herself or whatever. It's like Delta's revea it means nothing.
* The "big reveal" of Delta is manipulative and pointless and serves no purpose. Showing him the whole time would change NOTHING. Literally nothing.
 * Seriously, I hate this being a dramatic reveal it's the dumbest thing
* WHERE'S KYLE??????
* SERIOUSLY, WHERE'S KYLE? WHAT DID YOU DO WITH HIM DELTA????
* This was all so that they'd be aware that there's a terrorist who is gonna do something bad? Sigma, Phi, and Akane could ALREADY shift. Why not just *TELL THEM*. Akane's already a lunatic who will do crazy things for the greater good, just leverage her.
* You have MINDHACC powers and THIS was the best you could do? Shoot a dog and act like a moron? Bad form, Delta.