AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative

Absolutely loved everything this game threw at me; I thought every new character was a great addition to the story and did a fantastic job delivering on the themes and mysteries presented here. The puzzles were fun and well thought out even more so than the previous game, and every somnium felt well-paced and fleshed out. Also that twist is fucking nutty, I kneel to Uchikoshi.

Uchikoshi really pulled out all the stops with the duality motif by making a game that I don't think I could feel more split on. AINI inherits many of the strengths and flaws of the first game. It's still incessantly horny and the QTE segments are even more long-winded and awkward, but it also still has the goofy banter, decent (but worse on average) characters, and grounded atmosphere compared to Zero Escape at least.

For the former half of the game, Uchikoshi is completely in his element. Pursuing the mystery of the time-traveling corpse and Cicada 3301 on acid is the kind of nutty bullshit I play his games for. But major problems emerge when Ryuki gets brushed aside in the latter half so Mizuki can take the reins.

Having an already well-established character take protagonist duties isn't inherently a bad thing, except that AINI isn't written as a sequel, but as a game that just happens to take place after the first. It's so dedicated to not being related to the first game that you can turn off AI1 spoilers to omit a few text boxes. While that might be a good marketing angle knowing how these games tend to criminally undersell, it cripples the emotional infrastructure AI1 established. Much of what made Mizuki interesting in AI1 is either convoluted to justify her protag status or outright discarded. Did you like her dynamic with Date? They seem to barely know each other in this one.

Even though the narrative break from AI1 is what damaged the game the most for me personally, the make-or-break moment is going to be in if it sticks the landing, and in my opinion, it was a really, really rough landing. For what it's worth, the key twists still gave me that mind-collapsing effect that only Uchikoshi is capable of, but the game isn't profoundly enriched or satisfyingly recontextualized by them like AI1 was. Even more unfortunate is that most of the less important lategame twists (Amame and the nil number) are the passable twists, and it's just the two narrative-defining ones that can't shoulder the weight of the wild premise. Twist A Mitwoki is my least favorite of the two by far. It needlessly muddles up the central mystery even more and makes Mizuki's already solid backstory borderline unintelligible. Shoutouts to Renju for adopting a kid right after abandoning one so he could abandon his kid again.. Twist B the true timeline, on the other hand, showcases ZTD-levels of shamelessly lying to the player.

At least the Psyncs are actually puzzles now, and even more outlandish (and funny) than AI1's. Iris's AINI somnium is where video games peak for good. Still, I don't think they hold up as well as AI1's Psyncs simply because AI1's Psyncs exist in service of a much more well conceived mystery.

AINI has a lot going for it (mostly in the former half), but as a follow-up to AI1 and as a standalone mystery, I found it disappointing when it counted most. Still, I'm glad the game is getting well-received and I hope it gets Uchikoshi's games more traction because I can never get enough of the man's hijinks, even at his worst (which AINI just barely isn't).