Once again nine people are trapped in a dangerous game where not everyone will be able to exit alive. Are you ready to play the Decision Game and control who dies and who survives? Read our Zero Time Dilemma Review to find out why this is a must-play game!

 

Building on the success of its predecessors, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, and Virtue’s Last Reward, series mastermind Kotaro Uchikoshi has pulled out all the stops to deliver the most compelling and mind shredding gaming experience ever seen on a handheld platform. Choice is your only method of salvation and your only means of escape. How much of your humanity will you sacrifice to earn your freedom? As a new age of ruin looms large on the horizon, you must make impossible decisions and weather unimaginable consequences as you straddle the line between absolution and damnation. Plan your escape.

Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma Trailer 2

Zero Escape is back with what they say might be the last entry in the series (hopefully that’s not the case!), with Zero Time Dilemma. So first of all if you are strictly a Vita owner you should probably play Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward. If you own a DS, try and find a copy of 999, the first game of the series. While not required playing for this game, it adds a considerable amount of context and girth to the story as Zero Time Dilemma takes place between the two and links to both of them. You do not NEED to play them, but you probably should. Plus they are both excellent games!

With that out of the way…- this game is awesome! Just please pick this up and play it. I’m actually going to keep the review shorter than normal, as to not spoil any major or minor plot points because this is a game that should be experienced spoiler-free.

I’ll touch base on the beginning of the story: nine people are trapped in an evil event called the Decision game. You are divided into three teams and must compete to escape the bomb shelter you are being held captive in. Unfortautly, the only way to escape is to kill six of the other people or wait for them to die on their own.

This is all I’m going to say about the plot, becuase any more would break the mood. If you have played a Zero Escape game, you know what to expect. This one is full of twists and turns, and definitely some plot points which I did not see coming. This is a great story that will keep you on the edge of your seat until you complete it.

The characters are great for the most part making you care about them and wanting to help all of them survive. Because of them, you want to keep pushing through the game so you can see how they develop.

The other major part of these games are the escape rooms. There are 13 total rooms in total, and each one has a really different feel and a very specific challenge. The goal is to use the items within the room to escape so that you can proceed with the Decision game.

Every room is well designed with clever puzzles that will make you think for a while. All the solutions have the proper clues in the game, so you should be able to discover how to beat them. If you are struggling with the solutions in the game, they have a great hint system which will start off with small hints and, eventually, give you some big direction on to where you should be looking to find the answer.

The game looks gorgeous on the Vita, switching up the 3D characters from VLR to a cleaner cell shaded look. I loved the design approach as it made it look like anime as you are watching the visual novel segments. I also think that down the line that this art style will hold up better overall. The music is great and actually does a great job pulling at your heart strings at some locations in the story, it can create suspense and fear when needed. Great work overall on the audio/visual presentation of the game.

Zero Time Dilemma has a platinum trophy, and it took me about 20 hours to get it. If you complete all the story lines in the game, you will receive the platinum trophy. Trophies are based on discovering things or getting out of the escape rooms. It is excellent to see a Platinum trophy in this game, and I had a blast getting it!

Final Thoughts

Zero Time Dilemma is a masterpiece and a must play game for Vita owners. I would love to see more from the series, but think this might be swansong on it, but we shall see. As stated earlier this game is awesome, and you should be playing it. People will be talking about this game for years to come. If this Zero Time Dilemma review hasn’t made it extremely clear, you should rush out to buy this game.

[review
pros=”Challenging puzzles
Excellent Cell Shaded graphics
Mindbending Story that you do not see in games usually” cons=”This is potentially last in the series” score=100]

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Cost: $39.99

PSN Game size: 987 MB

You can purchase Zero Time Dilemma from the PSN store

Disclaimer

This review is based on a PS Vita copy of Zero Time Dilemma provided by Aksys Games

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