After playing a bit of Kisuke's story in Muramasa: Rebirth and deciding I just really don't like Chaos mode because block and attack being bound to the same button but needing a significantly longer hold for the former isn't particularly.....good, I decided it was time to finally play something that's been on my Vita for a good amount of time now. I've had Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward ever since the night it was made available to US Playstation Plus members and have not so much as opened up to the LiveArea of it, much to my own chagrin. Too many other games to play. Too many other things to do. There was just too much going on before I could delve into the world of Virtue's Last Reward, which I knew would swallow up a good few days or closer to a week of my time. But with Hotline Miami beaten, my desire to go back to Disgaea 3 with the knowledge that 4 is getting a long-awaited Vita port (and no doubt a localization sometime next year) shaken and my patience with Muramasa at a low-point, today was the perfect day to get into it.
Well, maybe not perfect. After all, Dynasty Warriors 8 and Shin Megami Tensei IV, both of which I have on pre-order, will drop a mere two days from now and I'll be picking them up then. I won't be able to play DW8 right away, but I will be sorely tempted to delve into SMT IV for curiosity's sake. Regardless, sometime soon-ish, Rune Factory 4 will be a game in my possession and thereafter, I will not have what everyone calls "Free time" because my Free time will transmogrify into "Rune Factory time", so I sort of needed to get on this sooner rather than later. In any case, I'm absolutely ecstatic that I did get on it, because if you couldn't tell, I think it is quite excellent from the short clip of it that I played.
I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be laughing with the game, considering the dire context of it - The Nonary Game, a game tied implicitly with death - but I simply cannot help myself. I have no idea if Aksys meant to have done such a humorous localization with Zero III, the above bunny rabbit thing you see, nor do I know if Cindy Robinson was instructed to put as much....character into Zero III, but I'm erring on the side of believing they did. Simply because it's so well done that I cannot help but think it was intentional. Zero III simply revels in delight at the plight of our band of nine and the task of running the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition that Virtue's Last Reward revolves around. While I'm not far enough into it to give you an approximation of its worth in terms of impressions, I'm not overstating anything when I say it was worth the download for Zero III's dialogue alone.
It does seem to play a lot like 999, in terms of having puzzle sections and then story sections and switching between them, which is quite welcome. The puzzles so far are clever - nothing that's made me go "Fuck it, I'm reading a wiki", even though I've gotten close, which I believe is pretty much the best it can be. The story so far hasn't really gone places aside from wonderful things with Zero III as mentioned (And Dio, who is voiced by Liam O'Brien which is always welcome), or at least not in a way I can speculate off of, but as stated, I'm in it early. I do miss 999 a little bit in that nobody really has a....well, a pronounced personality thus far, whereas in 999, you could tell what was going on in the very intro scene of the game when everyone was collected together. Also 999's character designs are miles better than VLR's, but that's a little thing in the long run, I suppose.
Still, I'm thoroughly enjoying the game and I'm glad I finally found a bit of time for it since it's been sitting on my Memory Stick for a while now, just waiting for me. If you haven't grabbed it yet, it's not going to be there for too much longer (if it's not gone already), so I definitely -do- urge you to grab it. However, if you have access to a DS, even of the 3DS variety, do yourself a favor and track down a copy of 999 to enjoy, because it's quite a good game. This all does remind me that I never did finish my "Explaining 999's Best Ending" series of posts (which I would advise you to not pursue unless you've played it already) which is something that I -will- rectify eventually. Promise.
Zero III really is just so good
Just because you can block in Muramasa doesn't mean you should. I don't think I ever blocked, what with parrying being an option.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, you don't need to play it on Chaos mode. Go Legend, get to the last boss, save your game, load the save and select Chaos difficulty to unlock Fury mode, if that's what you're after.