Decide 4 God

Reviewing this is a little silly because it is almost exclusively for people who played the first two games in the series, and if you liked those, you'll probably like this too, but there's a lot of assumed knowledge that, while some of it does get repeated, it can be a bit impenetrable if it's not in your recent memory. Which it a little bit wasn't for me, I replayed both games last year and vaguely remembered enough of them to not be too lost, and the details I didn't, generally weren't that important. But if you haven't heard of this game, the elevator pitch to sell it to you: What if Zero Escape, but it was a Rule Learning game ie Outer Wilds? Both the flowchart and the puzzles are designed this way, where you take knowledge from one random interaction on one route and unlock a path with it on another route, or you slowly learn all the puzzle elements and are tasked with doing them all under a time limit across multiple resets. Which, the puzzles on first glance will all feel terrible and you'll feel like a huge failure for the first ten hours of the game because you're supposed to fail everything and succeeding tends to necessitate multiple runs - many, many for some of the more complex puzzles, honestly, but even the most basic ones you're unlikely to solve on try one, no less because some stuff is hidden in obscure places and some of the puzzles are a little too obtuse for their own good. But once you start digging into them and once you get access to the flowchart the game really opens up and becomes incredibly satisfying watching all the pieces come together on the lore chart, or all the puzzle steps culminating in a perfect victory (as most puzzles have more than one win condition, often depending on the route you're on too). On a game level, it's really well done! The story is... good, I'd say, it's as mindscrew-y sci-fi as the first two games, maybe even moreso, but the slow buildup of knowledge makes it pretty easy to follow assuming you've read the prerequisite material. Wouldn't say I was all that satisfied with all of the answers and it ends with my least favorite trope, "one character exposits all of the remaining plot gaps to you for an hour", no real climactic finale to be found here, but, ehh, whatever. The ride was fun. The character writing is also pretty strong, though half the cast already having established personalities from Birth ME Code probably made it easier, though the new ones are all pretty fun too, and pretty consistently well-written. I do think Side A characters get a little shafted in comparison to Side B as more of the plot takes place there and Side B gets all the tower puzzles, which are the REAL toughies compared to Side A mostly being limited to the Octagonal Room, so you just tend to spend less time with them. Granted, ES and Anastasia feel a bit underutilized even despite that ([spoiler]no less because they end up dead in the "True" ending route[/spoiler]) but I have few complaints on this front. I do think the actual, death game, aspect of this is a little lacking, especially compared to Birth ME Code - the lack of any real "game" might be why, Head AS Code also kinda felt this way but even that was more gamified then "hope Side B finishes a puzzle otherwise RIP one pair" like this game has. And it leads to the suspense and drama being very low the entire time, it's the one thing not carried over from the Zero Escape games that feels sorely missing here. Did still overall enjoy this one a lot, moreso than either of the first two games despite its shortcomings, and it's quite lengthy to boot, more than satisfied with the amount of content here, yeah. Just. again. Play the other games first, haha.