Game Review | Virtues Last Reward

Language: Japanese
Original Developer: Chunsoft
Publisher: Aksys Games
Type: Visual Novel
Format: 3DS/PS Vita

Everybody dies… …can you escape the inescapable?

Kidnapped and taken to a mysterious warehouse, Sigma awakens in an elevator with a girl named Phi. He soon discovers that there are seven others playing a sick game of life or death with guidance from a mysterious rabbit named Zero III. Their mission: survive and escape the warehouse. But with secrets, betrayal and intrigue everywhere, who will survive this warehouse of hell?

I’ve just finished my first play through of this game, and frankly it was awesome. However I haven’t completed the game by a long shot, since there’s multiple endings to the game. When i say multiple endings I don’t just mean one or two, or even five or six, there’s a staggering twenty-four endings. As you can see on the flow chart below:

When i first bought the game i was a little concerned over the price, since i paid £29.99 for it (though i do feel rather peeved that literally a day later it fell to £19.99), however even at that price i feel it was money well spent. It took me about eight and a half hours to finish my first play though, so i consider it a success on the cost to played ratio. Especially if you want to factor in the fact that I’ve only gotten one of the twenty-four different endings.

This is a sequel to 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors, which I’m disappointed to say isn’t on the Vita. I hope Aksys port it to the Vita at some point, as i would like to play the original without having to buy a 3DS.

The art style is different from your usual visual novel however, with partial 3d animations over the usual sprite animation that we see in visual novels usually. Part of me likes the new look, there’s something nice about seeing the characters faces move when they talk and their reactions to things around them. However, given there was a lot of times when they used 3d still shots for things it feels like a waste at times.

The general art style of the game was pretty good i felt, i liked the character designs, they were varied and each giving off a different feel. this was great i felt as in a few visual novels I’ve played I’ve felt the characters to be carbon copies of each other, wooden and uninteresting.

I found i was genuinely influenced by the characters because of their personalities. For example, i wanted to really betray Luna, but because of her personality i just felt so bad doing it i couldn’t.

The game is a blend really, with a large chunk of it being reading text as a Visual Novel. So if your not keen on that style of game I’d avoid this one. It does have some puzzle elements, requiring you to find the clues needed to escape from various rooms. Some of them are easy, even on the hard difficulty. However some of them are really hard, even on the hard difficulty.

The difference between the two is subtle, all puzzles (as far as i know) start on the hard difficulty. However if you spend to much time, or get certain elements wrong to many times, it switches over to easy mode. On easy mode the character your with gives you clues to solve the puzzles, and if you still struggle will apparently give you the answer out right.

From what I’ve seen in the first play through all the puzzles are point and click and observation games, Where you have to observe things in the rooms to find the clues that are hidden all around it.

There was a lot of criticism surrounding this game when i was initially looking for reviews. however I’ve come to the conclusion that the person reviewing the title was clearly not a fan of the genre, so they were pre-disposed to low rating the game.

There are a few points i agree on, the translation at times is bad, and i do mean bad. We’re talking HK-rip bad at times. Thankfully these are usually just for a sentence or two, but it did leave me wondering what was going on with the translations at times. In my initial play though there were several times where the japanese was a word or two, but the english translation was several sentences.

Other than that i was really impressed with the game, one of my faves on the PS Vita. though that isn’t saying much since it’s the first I’ve played on my Vita lol, but regardless it’s a game worth getting.

However if you have PlayStation Plus the game is currently one of the free games. So as long as your subscribed to PS+ you’ll have access to the game for free. Cool deal IMO