In my opinion, this game is kind of the best stupidest game ever. There's so much not to like about this game - the animations are clunky as hell, the puzzles are mostly just good (not challenging enough generally), the story is ridiculous and absurd, the characters are over the top, silly, annoying. The cutscenes are cheesy. Some of the music is even crappy (the one "dramatic theme" really sounds bad - something to do with the MIDI-style instrumentation).
But holy hell if this game isn't fun as shit.
There's no point in playing this game if you haven't played
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors [9時間9人9の扉] and
Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward [極限脱出ADV 善人シボウデス] - this game will make even less sense than it makes anyways. But if you liked those two game, then I doubt you will be disappointed by this game. Some people seem disappointed by the way the overarching plot wrapped up, but I think it's pretty good personally.
In terms of criticisms I do have, like I said, the puzzles felt mostly weak to me. Maybe I'm just better at solving them now, but I really never had to think very hard - most of the time I got stuck in a room, it was because of some daft reason, like I didn't realise you could remove the screws there, or I didn't realise you could look at that draw, or something like that. The actual puzzles to me felt kind of rote.
The presentation of the game overall is pretty much fine. The graphics look fine, if a little dated. The characters almost look a bit Telltale
The Walking Dead: Season One-esque, but the major problem is the animations, which are bloody awful. There's really unfortunately no two ways about it. People moving in this game looks shitty. I think eventually though, your mind just decides to ignore it and you can enjoy the game (or at least, I could).
I feel like sometimes, the exact machanations of how the game works could have been made more clear (minor spoiler, could be considered puzzle solution)
the fact that the execution vote actually occurs cumulatively depending on who you vote for as each team, same with the decontamination showers. Those were the times I was most looking things up - that, and finding out where I had to unscrew the dang screws.
To me, this game is where I feel one of the biggest gaps exists between how much I love it and how great I kind of "objectively" think it is. I can imagine and understand people
really not liking this game. But I think if you do like it, it has the possibility of being something you love.
i stg every time the intercom switches on and one of the characters pouts and goes "Zero..." with a good 5 second interval between I had to laugh. And the first game of this series is my favourite game of all time