hiwachirps

I just finished this game around a week ago.. and actually this is my favorite DS game of the year despite I played it around the last month of the year.. (finally, it fed my hunger, I was like some sort of starving beast, willing to play the game when it’s still released in Japanese but couldn’t play since I can’t read Japanese) well.. let’s see.. I’ll try to keep myself from spoiling anything, so I won’t be too specific in giving the story’s summary.

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9 hours 9 persons 9 doors

9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors

Original Title : 極限脱出 9時間9人9の扉 (Kyokugen Dasshutsu 9-Jikan 9-Nin 9 no Tobira)
Genre: Adventure
Developer: Chunsoft
Publisher: Aksys Games
Release Date: 11/16/10

Visual novel game. Escape the room game. Puzzle game.
Maybe those words will appear in our heads when getting a hold of this game based on our experience of gaming.

Trapped characters, puzzle to solve..
When you’re trapped, your instinct tells you out loud,”I need to escape! I need to get out of here!”. This is why this game’s quite attractive. The story is deep and complicated yet pretty simple to follow and easy to understand so people won’t get confused or feeling ambiguous. Well,if you never read or play a visual novel game,you might think that this game contains too much scenes or words to read. You will read a lot, a lot I say.  But it’s a visual novel so enjoy it.

The drama begins..
You’re going to play as Junpei (Jumpy ho! -ok ignore this-), an ordinary college boy. But he’s facing an extraordinary yet very ordinary situation in a play. HE GOT TRAPPED! yeah, trapped. Our hero got kidnapped from his apartment and was put in a ship’s cabin with a numbered door. Guess what, you got the first puzzle to solve. After that,you’ll face a bunch of puzzles to solve, well okay,not many.. but still, those are puzzles. When you’re finally free from the locked cabin,you’ll meet with the other eight characters. And your choices will decide how’s your story going to be. Well, it’s pretty interesting that there are some key scenes which triggered specific endings (not many of them though). There are 6 endings available, 1 true endings, 3 other endings and 2 bad endings.

Mirror, mirror.. who's the most handsome guy in the world?

What most interesting for me is when the story gives you some trivia, such as “Titanic” or “Ice-9”, well there’s quite a lot, and I better keep my mouth shut because it’s really fun to discover and read it yourself.

So, let’s talk about the game’s interface.
It’s quite interesting that its inventory is pretty neat and everything you collected are going to be in use, no wasting. You can examine them in 3D space, you can rotate them and look into every sides of the items to discover new clues. Plus, you can combine the items. But instead of praising it, maybe I would give some critics here.
First, this combining stuff is not going to be much in use, you rarely use the this combine function, you’ll just going to use it for a couple of times. Second, about rotating things in 3D, well..the same as combine function, not really much to do, it’s not like I want every items will show clues when I saw their specific sides, but..yeah most of the items don’t need its every edges to be fully examined.
But don’t worry, the “examine” button will help you, especially if you don’t have any idea what to do with those items and don’t forget to hit this “examine” button quite a time since there’s some easter eggs ready to be served~

About the puzzles, don’t worry, they’re not too difficult to solve. They’re pretty easy, it’s just how you found the tricky part or not. When you got it, that’s it! And some puzzles are really fun to do and some others are pretty irritating to some people if they don’t know how to do it(since your companions knew how to do it, and instead of doing it themselves, they’re just giving out clues. And when they’re giving out some clues, it’s just like…odd. Like, you want to scream,”Why don’t you do it yourself??!!”)
Don’t forget to tap anything you found interesting when you’re on an investigation searching for clues, it’ll triggered some funny scenes. this game really provided so much awesome dialogues between characters and it’s really fun to read, when I mean fun it sure is fun, you won’t get bored of it, the developer really knows how to entertain the players.

This game might be strong in narrative, and the best part is..they let you imagine the situation yourself. They don’t rush you to finish the puzzle quickly, but you feel your adrenaline rush and your heart beating fast, they give you such feeling that you have to do it real fast. When it comes for you to decide which door you’ll enter or choices, this game gives you feelings like what happened if you made the wrong decision?
This game lets you play with you own mind, they don’t give you any gore scenes (though they’re rated M), but you will create the scene in your head.

The graphics are really neat, but remember this is a visual novel, not some action game which need animations here and there. The place sets in a ship and how they pictured the ship’s interior is beautiful and unique, it really feels like you’re in a ship, ready to drown within 9 hours. The characters are provided with still images of them and some slight animations of their movements. And don’t worry, you won’t get eyesores on reading so many texts since the font size suits the dialogue box very well, not too small, not too big, and not stuffy. They highlighted some important key words with another color.
The music fits the tense of its atmosphere. Though the tunes is quite a repetition (since most of them are intended to make the dark atmosphere) but they are arranged pretty neat and suits the game.

This game deserved the attention, while they’re not many Western people accustomed to reading visual novel games compared to Japan. Glad they decided to take the risk and translate the game in the end. It’s worth trying. Not only trying, you have to play the game till the end, its story is the main attraction. When you’ve finished an ending and wanted to play another, they’ll give you skip function, so just hold one button and it’ll skip everything you’ve gone through and stop automatically on scenes you haven’t read, it’ll also stop when you have to face the choices. You won’t miss anything that way.

It’s your decision to get a hold of this game or not, if you want to try something new (for those who’re not used to read visual novels), this one’s a good start to try for one, since it’s not an all-read game. Don’t forget there are puzzles to solve.  And for those who love mystery or suspense or whatever it is (okay I’m bad at genres), you have to get this game. And I would say no more for visual novel readers out there. Just. get. this. game.

Wonder what's this thing for eh?

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thanks for reading, this is my first review ever, I never wrote any review before. I don’t know how to write one so I just speaking my thoughts. I’m sorry if I’m not writing in a decent way and if there are any grammar errors. I’m going to practice my English here. Thank you very much. See you around!

you can stop reading from here, my hands are pretty itchy to type this.

It’s just my subjective view. Don’t read if you don’t want to.

1. Title’s design : well, it’s pretty neat and catchy. When you saw those 9s, you know that you have to get the game (well, maybe this just apply to some horror and suspense whore like me. Or not?). Well, the title itself explains all. 9 people struggled within 9 hours and they will deal with 9 doors. Maybe it’s not a big deal for some people, but it really has a meaning for me. The first “9” using the darkest color and sure it shows the darkest aura, it fits perfectly with the condition that you’ll face a life and death matter within 9 hours, let’s see that from how the “9” looks like shattered in time. The second “9” filled in dark red color, and the word “person” follows the number. Flesh and blood. You can guess what happens next. Yes, some blood scenes. Though there are not much of them. And the last “9”, I don’t know why they choose this type of font and color, but it represents the door quite well. Feels like, you will see a light when you managed to open the “9” door and get out of that hell of stupid ship.

2. oookay.. 9 “persons”? ^^;

Filed under: Game reviews, Visual Novel | Tagged: 9 hours 9 persons 9 doors, aksys games, chunsoft, escape, nintendo DS, puzzle, visual novel | 1 Comment »