Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward

Genre: Visual Novel / Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward is a game with Visual Novel and Graphic Adventure elements. This is the second game in The Zero Escape trilogy, and it was first released on Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita in 2012, and then included in a compilation, Zero Escape: The Nonary Games, along with the series’ first game, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, with this compilation releasing in 2017 on PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita, and then getting ported to Xbox One in 2022.

I’ll start by saying that much of the story of Virtue’s Last Reward refers directly to the events of the first game in the series, making this a poor choice for those looking to start this series. What’s more, some of the more absurd and outlandish concepts explored in this game build on the absurd and outlandish concepts from the first game, and players may be taken aback at just how bizarre the sci-fi elements get here. Without spoiling anything, I’ll simply say that there’s more going on here than there initially appears to be, and there’s quite a lot that appears to be going on right from the start.

Players in this game take the role of Sigma, who finds himself drugged, kidnapped, and waking in a strange facility along with eight other apparent victims of the same fate. They all soon find out from an AI presenting itself as a jovial childlike rabbit that they have been inducted into a sadistic game they’re being forced to play involving escape rooms filled with puzzles, with life or death stakes hanging in the balance. What’s more, they are told from the onset that one of their fellow “players” is in fact the one who orchestrated the game, leading to a healthy dose of paranoia to spread amongst the nine participants.

Much as with the first Zero Escape title, the setup here has strong echoes of horror films like Saw and Cube, and thankfully the strong characters help the game’s decent-sized cast of characters stand out from one another, though at first most of these characters come across as simple archetypes. Well, and then there’s Alice, whose manner of dress is… provocative… and K, who appears as a man in a suit of armor, face covered with a mask, completely hiding their identity. So there’s definitely some bizarre Japanese weirdness going on here, and that’s before all of the oddball sci-fi concepts come into play.

Beyond the unusual story, this game’s presentation makes use of fairly simple 3D rooms that get the job done but don’t do much else, along with well-animated anime-style 3D characters. These characters are all voiced in both English and Japanese (players can choose either at the game’s onset), with an unsettling soundtrack to highlight the tense situation. It’s not impressive on any technical level, but it works well enough for the game.

As for the gameplay, Virtue’s Last Reward jumps back and forth between Graphic Adventure style “escape room” segments where players must search the rooms for objects to use to solve that room’s puzzles, and Visual Novel sections where players must make choices that can greatly impact the game’s story.

For the Graphic Adventure sections, these are mostly pretty standard fare, but they do have a few frustrating quirks that can cause problems. Firstly, the areas players need to select using the touchscreen can be pretty small, making it difficult to touch the proper place to do what you want. Also, some of these puzzles involve minigames that make gimmicky use of the features of the Nintendo 3DS, such as one early block-sliding puzzle where players must tilt the Nintendo 3DS to slide the blocks. Issues like these make for a good amount of frustration, and it seems like these issues could have been easily resolved if the game’s designers had a mind to address them.

At the very least, to this game’s credit, players are tempted with an “Easy mode” where the game’s characters offer hints to the puzzles if the player is having trouble solving it on their own. Of course, players wanting to dig in to all the game’s secrets will have to avoid choosing this mode, as this extra content can only be unlocked in the standard “Hard” mode.

In the end, I had really mixed feelings about Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward. On the one hand, the story is nothing if not interesting and ambitious, and the mix of Graphic Adventure and Visual Novel elements here works well. Unfortunately, the way the game makes use of the Nintendo 3DS’s unique features doesn’t fare as well. What’s more, players who never played Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors will be at somewhat of a loss regarding this game’s story, which directly refers back to that earlier game’s story. If you have played the first game and want more of the same on a handheld platform, this game won’t let you down. However, most players who are interested in this concept will likely be better off getting Zero Escape: The Nonary Games on one of the platforms that received that Compilation.

tl;dr – Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward is a game with Visual Novel and Graphic Adventure elements that is a direct sequel to Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, and as such should probably only be played by those who played through that earlier game first. What’s more, the poor use of the Nintendo 3DS’s unique features can cause some frustration here. If you’re not bothered by these issues, this is still a great story with some good gameplay for fans of this game’s respective genres, but said issues mean the audience for this game will be pretty niche.

Grade: C+

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