1. tantei

   10

   Very fun, very well done story, neat trick to the real ending. this is a game that should not be missed be fans of puzzle games, phoenix wright, or great story telling. Warning it is rated Mature for a reason… Collapse

   • Helpful? 8 of 8 users said Yes.
2. Locras

   8

   Do you like reading a good story? If so, there is a good chance you will love this game. 999 is a puzzle adventure game, but I think it can be better classified as a Japanese visual novel with some puzzles. The puzzles mostly take a backseat to the story, but are sometimes nicely weaved into the story itself. But like I said, this game is not about the puzzles. It is about the incredibly well-written story that will slowly reveal it's secrets. There are multiple endings, which means you will have to play the game several times. Luckily you can skip the text you have already read in a previous play-through. What puts this game high on my Top Games of All Time list, is the scene surrounding the final puzzle of the game. The puzzle itself is nothing really special, but the moments leading up to that screen left my hands shaking and I just stared at the screen for a few moments before continuing. Even as I write this review, I'm taken back to that moment and relive some of that glory. That all being said, I have to say that this will probably be very different for most people. I wrote this review to show my respects to this game. Also, the actual end scene still left a few plot holes. Let me close by saying that if you like a good book and don't shy away for a few competent puzzles, you will probably love this game as much as I do, though maybe not in the same way.… Expand

   • Helpful? 2 of 2 users said Yes.
3. duckypwns

   7

   This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The choices in this game are very limited and poorly structured. The game seems to assume that the player wants to be a "good guy". I think there should have been more options. For example, there is a part where the team finds a gun. They will say things like "it's obviously a trap" and "it's to get them to turn on one another". So the game forces you to leave the gun there. Well obviously now that people know it's there they can go back and pick it up (ultimately this does happen by the way and the gun is used against the player and the other good team mates), so it doesn't really make sense that the game absolutely FORCES the player to leave it behind against their will. If I were in that situation, I would have picked it up in fear that someone else may go back and get it. Of course, this is just one example but there are situations like this throughout almost the entire game. Another thing that I don't like is that there is no real line of logic that the player can apply to their choices in order to yield a good ending. In other words, if you get the good ending, you probably just got lucky. You have to choose between doors 4 and 5, then 3, 7, and 8, and finally 1, 2, or 6. After that point, your ending has already been determined through your course of action. In my first playthrough, I tried to play logically. I left people behind if necessary, and I did whatever I thought it would take to get the good ending. Obviously, that didn't work. So I figured, well maybe the game is trying to make me act selflessly, so I tried this. Still no luck. My next playthrough, I just picked some random ass combination of doors with no real logic as to which one I would choose. Still no luck. By this time, I had been playing the game for at least 15 hours. At least the game lets you skip what you've already done, but rather than just selecting "skip scene", you have to hold right on the d-pad to quickly scroll through text. Not a huge inconvenience, but it can still take a while, and it's a pain in a game like this that the player needs to go through multiple times in order to get everything. Anyway, back to my original point - So are you telling me that if I pick doors 4, 8, and 2 (this would yield a bad ending), that clearly I suck at the game and I should have to do the whole thing over? Yet if I pick doors 4, 7, and 1, clearly I'm awesome and I deserve a good ending? Each door is as much of a mystery as the others, and there is no real logic behind which one you should pick. In other words, the game doesn't reward players for thinking critically and carefully planning their course of action. You'll might as well just pick random combinations of doors until you happen to get lucky and get the good ending. Now I want to cover my hugest problem with the game's structure. In order to get the good ending, there is a very specific bad ending that you need to get, often referred to as the "safe ending". To get this ending, you need to go through doors 5, 8, and 6. But you also need to check a safe in room 5 before you leave the room, but AFTER unlocking the door. This is very cryptic. On one playthrough, I actually did this, because I was curious about the safe. However, I didn't know that after that I would have to go through door 8 and then 6. How was I supposed to know? Even if you DO check the safe after unlocking the door, you have to take two 1/3 chances consecutively after that by picking the correct doors. So once again, I would have to do the whole game over again. There is also a "coffin ending" (which I got). In the coffin ending, you have to make all of the choices that would normally yield the good ending, which is basically the same exact thing as the good ending but you don't know the password to the coffin in the coffin ending. So obviously, nobody wants or needs to see the coffin ending. However, if the player happened to get the safe ending, and then you got the good ending, it gives you credit for completing the coffin ending. This may confuse players and cause them to erase all of their save data in order to see what this ending was that they now couldn't get, not knowing that it was just a shortened version of the good ending. After all of this complaining, you might be wondering why I gave the game a 7 out of 10. It's simple - In spite of all of these problems, and the relatively easy puzzles throughout the game (By the way, the final puzzle in the game is an easy sodoku puzzle. That should put things in to perspective as far as the game's difficulty), the story still kept me entertained and wanting to see what would happen next. If the thought of a story involving curses, ESP, unsolved ancient mysteries, and a game of life and death appeals to you, then you should try this game out. But remember, don't bother taking the game seriously at all and trying to plan a detailed course of action, as the game's poor structure makes it too luck based. Perhaps it's better to view it as a story, not a game.… Expand

   • Helpful? 0 of 0 users said Yes.
4. lowkey42o

   2

   I'll start this off by saying Layton and phoenix wright are a tiring formula for me. All the text does not make for a fun game. I'm a graduate student working as a phd and the fact that I found it tricky turned me off. New ways of playing are nice but really like pulling teeth for me. I don't like games with 50% gameplay 50% cut scenes. This felt like one long cut scene. Over rated at best and not my genre. Repetitive text based scenes got flashbacks to zork.… Expand

   • Helpful? 1 of 9 users said Yes.

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