Throughout VLR I shipped Sigma and Phi. When I got to near the end of that game I felt creepy... then I got near the end of ZTD and felt REALLY creepy. 💀
Ace is top tier for me. His motives were dumb but he went from nice old guy to ridiculous comic book villain, which just made him such an entertaining character.
This list is missing VLR Akane. Probably the most interesting and eerie portrayal of her in the series. She's probably in top tier for me just cuz of how much a mastermind she is.
Dang I COMPLETELY forgot about VLR Akane lol. It's been a while for me so I'd have to go back and re-watch for full context but my initial reaction would be like a low A or so
Zero Time Dilemma Junpei on certified homie is very generous considering how gleeful he is to murder anybody and everybody so long as he can leave the building and ask Akane to marry him.
A year late, but Ace's motivation wasn't solely his prosopagnosia. In VLR he's revealed to be a member of Free the Soul, but even if we confine ourselves to 999 (yes, the original script), he says he has more reasons, but he's cut off by Junpei before he can go on. He's a pretentious, self-righteous piece of shit with a major complex about his intelligence and sophistry. Mega sociopath, and I love him for it. Otherwise your list has a lot of good qualities. Though I cannot believe Eric's shotgun made you put him above our Shit God, Dio. Dio belongs RIGHT next to Carlos. Personally I'd have put Alice in the lowest tier just above Kubota, lol. Her backstory is enlightening, and I really like how her whole existence is a Red Herring for ALL-ICE, but the suffocating nature she brings to every scene made a much worse impact for me than it did for you. Although I can be satisfied that you put Mira below Kubota, at least. Also, yes. Fuck Delta.
Fun fact: since Mira definitely suffers from ASPD, she would most likely not sleep with us as that would give us power over her and no way she’d do that.
16:20 Also, if you blame Diana for Radical 6, you also have to blame Carlos for it, since he was in the timeline for 10+ months and did nothing to stop the game. Honestly, I think mind hack has potential... on a good align character. Give me the morel dilemma of 'oh, using this ability could save lives, but it also invading my friend mind, should I actually do it?' instead of mr motives over here making the ability blatantly evil, where shift is a 'good' ability (do you know how much damage someone could cause with shifting? They could end countless worlds if they wanted to)
I was shocked to learn that ZTD was the final game. I did not know that going in and after the credits rolled I assumed there was going to be a fourth to tie everything together. Imagine my disappointment.
I skipped to the end and then watched it. And I was so crazy worried that this was based off of how well they were written and I was about to scream when so many really good characters were at the bottom while most of ZTD’s cast was at the top
Junpei for me is maybe the best character in whole story. It’s so interesting to see smart protagonist with personality. And his whole story where we saw 3 different versions of him - it just brilliant.
Alice is a character I love to hate. She seems clearly written to just be a conniving asshole and makes a better antagonist than Dio tbh. Hate her but I think as a two-faced backstabber she’s really frustrating in a way that’s fun to hate. Easily one of the more iconic characters to the VLR experience especially compared to someone like Quark. Her role as Schroedinger’s Shitheel based on if you Ally/Betray is easily one of the most iconic moments in VLR too
This is going to sound insane but Dio, despite a lot of the shitty things he says or does, is fairly enjoyable to me, more than Alice anyway. It could be that's because Liam O Brien is the English VA but the dialogue exchanges are pretty good. I guess I hate to love him. That said Phi, Luna, and especially K and Ten-man (whom some have issues with, same with Lotus) are still those I enjoy more of course.
Glad I'm not the only one who kinda liked Dio lol. I think for me it's because he isn't trying to pretend to be something he isn't (well, minus the whole undercover terrorist thing)
You missed one of Mira's biggest sins. The entire Zero Escape series is Mira's fault (though Delta tries blaming it on a snail.) Mira murders Eric's mother, which gets blamed on Akane's father, who is executed for that murder. Then Akane's mother passes away from grief, leaving Akane and Aoi alone with relatives, which opens them up to being kidnapped by Ace, which sets Akane on the path of creating 999 and VLR. And VLR is why the time loop has to happen to send old Sigma and Phi to ZTD to recreate the loop otherwise Phi and Delta's paradox would cease. Everything goes back to Mira's first murder. Also, super messed up to marry the son of your first victim. ETA: Aoi/Santa's conversation about hating clovers makes a ton more sense in the original Japanese. Clovers have 4 leaves, and four sounds very close to the Japanese word for death, which he obviously has some issues with because of Akane's situation. The word four is considered incredibly unlucky in Japan. Also, he made the money through a paradox, where Akane saw how much the soparil company would be worth thanks to seeing that through older Junpei's eyes, she told Aoi, and he invested heavily to make tons of money.
Huh I never pieced any of this together. Idk if it would've made me put Mira below Delta though, when I made this video I was VERY upset at Delta lol. Thank you for pointing this out though!
I feel like 999 Junpei took notes from Aoi/Santa and kinda incorporated some of his a-hole.. somewhat uncaring personality with him to ZTD.. At least in the apocalypse future we know edgy Junpei grows up, gets his crap together, and becomes a gigachad when it comes to calling out Alice on her crap.. and being very honest that if you mess with him and/or Quark in anyway.. you will eventually pay for it and deservingly so.. I feel like Ace/Hongou's ranking is dependent on when you find out he's the true main villain in the game.. If you get the safe ending as your first ending then every scene with him pretending to be a good guy will feel kinda shallow since you already know he's just waiting for the right moment to strike.. Of course when he finally gets caught and let's out his insanity.. that's when you begin to like to hate him. (opposite of vlr Alice, Delta, and Mira) The va for Ace/Hongou is also really good when his true colors are revealed and does a 180 in personality.. Snake automatically should go up a tier for even though when he's gone for most of the game.. when he comes back he still shows up with Gigachad behavior.. especially during the incinerator scene where he literally takes I believe all 6 bullets of the revolver, gets kicked repeatedly be Ace, and only dies at the same time when Ace and him get cooked alive.. the fact that Snake survives both attempts at his life from Ace and manages to make sure burns alive is just fantastic.. Just wish he came back later in the series because VLR makes us assume that he either caught Radical 6 or got blown up by the antimatter explosions.. I like Sean because when you think about it, he got screwed over by many unfortunate events that led to him dying of whatever surgery he needed as the human boy which made Delta feel like he needed to give him another "chance of living" which is the bare minimum amount of kindness that Delta had at least.. that is until you remember that Delta also forced robot Sean to participate in games where he literally was shot point blank with Eric's shotgun or grenade launcher got stabbed and shot by Mira, got exploded by the collar and the bomb when team D tries breaking out, and then learns the truth he's literally a robot copy of a boy who died a long while ago.. Genuinely a tragic character when you go more indepth with him, and he handles all that info in the end and continues living very well as he, Eric, and Mira go on their own adventures. Only issue with ZTD Phi is that we don't get enough of her.. I feel like the plot needed her to get removed near the beginning of the story and for her only to show up at the end because of how the whole twins plot had to work out.. She still had her character arc finished, and when there was impacful scenes with her and Diana, I did feel emotional.. I think the problem in my opinion is that we had so much Phi content in VLR that it made ZTD Phi kinda be put in the backburner as like "She's still here and the same ol Phi, but right now we need to progress with Carlos', team Q's, and Sigma + Diana's arcs more urgently right now." Anyways though, love this franchise for what it is.. Probably spent over 40+ minutes typing all these thoughts down, but yeah I definitely will put this franchise in high regard and recommend to anyone wanting to get into a visual novel esc game(s) while wanting to solve puzzles..
Funnily enough, my reasoning for Alice and Dio are switched. In routes where Alice betrays you, she’s pretty mean about it, but the game punishes her enough to make things fair. Any time she’s selfish or mean, someone (usually Tenmyouji) will call her out on her bullshit. And when you do pair up with her, I feel like she pulls her weight enough to balance things out. She’s a lot like Lotus, where she’s more than willing to make the selfish choices that’ll screw everyone else over, but at the same time get called out when she’s being hypocritical. But Dio… honestly he was a pretty underwhelming character. When I first played VLR, I thought he was way too obviously bad to be the traitor who stole Grandma June’s bracelet. But then he literally is just a traitor who stole Grandma June’s bracelet. They added a plot line where he’s the vice president of an evil cult, but it doesn’t really change a whole lot. He’s still a really predictable and lame villain. But overall, I agree with basically every other choice. Omega based for putting Tenmyouji so high
ngl zero escape will always have a special place in my heart, 999 and vlr are probably one of the best games i've ever played and will play, but holy crap ztd was probably the worst last game i've ever played lol
Ngl While playing VLR i never actually found Alice Unlikable ? So then i was pretty surprised to see her low on alot of those ranking but looking it back i realized why people woudnt really like her but my honest reaction to thing like Every time she basically called Sigma stupid were like : OMG YAS SLAY QUEEN !! EAT HIM UP DIVA 😍 I also have a similar thing with VLR Clover where i dont really though she was dumb, She has definitly less smart moment than the 999 version but i do think that she is just clueless most of the time due to the fact that this is a completly different scenario and she just cannot be a genius about everything especially about thing that she literatly could not has known about, And her being really bad at hiding her mission with Alice i mean...its not being dumb its just bad at being subtile and the fact that sometimes clover just talk with Alice and doesnt do or say anything wrong but the game will just make you hear their conversation doesnt help at all And even tho i enjoy way more ZTD than the average opinion of this game, Carlos Gotta be my least favorite Protagonist of the entire franshise. He is not Bad and i understand why people would love him but Hes just not for me, We got to see Junpei's evolution towards all 3 games, We got to see the two sides of Sigma's life, Diana brought Emotions, Q brought mystery, Carlos...was just a good guy which is my least favorite kind of main character cause its just boring, and its not gonna make me care about his firefighter life or his sick sister And its even worse when there is Sassy Emo Junpei next to him who is way more fun and enjoyable than mr action hero.
lol i hated the vlr twists so much that I dropped the series for a while (the sigma twist is the stupidest twist ever). ended up really enjoying ztd since they ignored most of the previous game lol. might even be my favourite cast.
@@B_Skizzle I actually liked that twist lol. surprisingly, it didn't really cause any plot holes, unlike the sigma one. yes, his entire existence is a paradox, but 999 resolved itself with a paradox, and the phi twist was sweet, so i give it a pass.
@@VGInterviews why didn't he notice his reflection when you go through the garden in the other route, or on any screens? why didn't he notice a huge piece of junk on his face, or why didn't anybody point it out? 0 thought was put into it, it's just there to be shocking and it ruined his character. thankfully, he was a lot better in the next game.
@@MarsofAritia because to see his reflection at the end he needed to get extremely close to the pond, it is described that when he does look for it he has to kneel down, during the escape section of thr B garden the puzzle doesn't require you to get so close to the water as you only need to see the stars.....in the dark As for screens or mirrors The only mirror we see is in the infirmary and examining it shows that is is dirty and pretty much useless For screens, even todays screens (tvs, pc monitors etc) are no longer no longer good mirrors, if you dont believe me try and look for your reflection in any modern screen you have, you'll notice they have an anti gloss finish in order to avoid glares, add to that the fact that the screen in the infirmary where they play the mars mission audio or the screens in the security room are placed high up so even if you were able to see any sort of reflection it would be blury and darkened, hard to make out details And for the eye thing, even by 2029 technology to create his robot arms already existed so makes sense that a bionic eye wouldn't be that farfetched even for people in that Era (Clover and Alice are already undercover secret agents so they would be used to weird tech, and Phi really doesn't care about anyone's backstory and just wants to win the game), as for others native to 2074 they would have even less of a reason to consider it weird And if it REALLY bothers you, just consider it an aesthetic detail, since unlike the reveal of his arms, the fake eye never affects the plot in any way, there story would be exactly the same if he had only lost his arms and had normal eyes
![Zero Escape [999|VLR|ZTD] Game Systems Analysis](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/lW2Fy3HG9dI/mqdefault.jpg)
![Zero Escape [999|VLR|ZTD] Game Systems Analysis](/img/tr.png)
![[Joseph Anderson] Virtue's Last Reward Part 1](/img/n.gif)
Throughout VLR I shipped Sigma and Phi. When I got to near the end of that game I felt creepy... then I got near the end of ZTD and felt REALLY creepy. 💀
Carlos is the GOAT, it's too bad we only got one game worth of him.
Ace is top tier for me. His motives were dumb but he went from nice old guy to ridiculous comic book villain, which just made him such an entertaining character.
This list is missing VLR Akane. Probably the most interesting and eerie portrayal of her in the series. She's probably in top tier for me just cuz of how much a mastermind she is.
Dang I COMPLETELY forgot about VLR Akane lol. It's been a while for me so I'd have to go back and re-watch for full context but my initial reaction would be like a low A or so
Zero Time Dilemma Junpei on certified homie is very generous considering how gleeful he is to murder anybody and everybody so long as he can leave the building and ask Akane to marry him.
A year late, but Ace's motivation wasn't solely his prosopagnosia. In VLR he's revealed to be a member of Free the Soul, but even if we confine ourselves to 999 (yes, the original script), he says he has more reasons, but he's cut off by Junpei before he can go on. He's a pretentious, self-righteous piece of shit with a major complex about his intelligence and sophistry. Mega sociopath, and I love him for it.
Otherwise your list has a lot of good qualities. Though I cannot believe Eric's shotgun made you put him above our Shit God, Dio. Dio belongs RIGHT next to Carlos.
Personally I'd have put Alice in the lowest tier just above Kubota, lol. Her backstory is enlightening, and I really like how her whole existence is a Red Herring for ALL-ICE, but the suffocating nature she brings to every scene made a much worse impact for me than it did for you. Although I can be satisfied that you put Mira below Kubota, at least.
Also, yes. Fuck Delta.
Fun fact: since Mira definitely suffers from ASPD, she would most likely not sleep with us as that would give us power over her and no way she’d do that.
16:20 Also, if you blame Diana for Radical 6, you also have to blame Carlos for it, since he was in the timeline for 10+ months and did nothing to stop the game.
Honestly, I think mind hack has potential... on a good align character. Give me the morel dilemma of 'oh, using this ability could save lives, but it also invading my friend mind, should I actually do it?' instead of mr motives over here making the ability blatantly evil, where shift is a 'good' ability (do you know how much damage someone could cause with shifting? They could end countless worlds if they wanted to)
I was shocked to learn that ZTD was the final game. I did not know that going in and after the credits rolled I assumed there was going to be a fourth to tie everything together. Imagine my disappointment.
I skipped to the end and then watched it. And I was so crazy worried that this was based off of how well they were written and I was about to scream when so many really good characters were at the bottom while most of ZTD’s cast was at the top
this video is so underrated, your commentary made me crack up several times within the first few minutes
Watching through the video currently, i think ZTD Junpei works for me because we know that he mellows out eventually
Junpei for me is maybe the best character in whole story. It’s so interesting to see smart protagonist with personality. And his whole story where we saw 3 different versions of him - it just brilliant.
Alice is a character I love to hate. She seems clearly written to just be a conniving asshole and makes a better antagonist than Dio tbh.
Hate her but I think as a two-faced backstabber she’s really frustrating in a way that’s fun to hate. Easily one of the more iconic characters to the VLR experience especially compared to someone like Quark.
Her role as Schroedinger’s Shitheel based on if you Ally/Betray is easily one of the most iconic moments in VLR too
This is going to sound insane but Dio, despite a lot of the shitty things he says or does, is fairly enjoyable to me, more than Alice anyway. It could be that's because Liam O Brien is the English VA but the dialogue exchanges are pretty good. I guess I hate to love him. That said Phi, Luna, and especially K and Ten-man (whom some have issues with, same with Lotus) are still those I enjoy more of course.
Glad I'm not the only one who kinda liked Dio lol. I think for me it's because he isn't trying to pretend to be something he isn't (well, minus the whole undercover terrorist thing)
if you replay vlr its hilarious to see dio try to bs when he hears about the bomb and free the soul
You missed one of Mira's biggest sins. The entire Zero Escape series is Mira's fault (though Delta tries blaming it on a snail.) Mira murders Eric's mother, which gets blamed on Akane's father, who is executed for that murder. Then Akane's mother passes away from grief, leaving Akane and Aoi alone with relatives, which opens them up to being kidnapped by Ace, which sets Akane on the path of creating 999 and VLR. And VLR is why the time loop has to happen to send old Sigma and Phi to ZTD to recreate the loop otherwise Phi and Delta's paradox would cease. Everything goes back to Mira's first murder. Also, super messed up to marry the son of your first victim.
ETA: Aoi/Santa's conversation about hating clovers makes a ton more sense in the original Japanese. Clovers have 4 leaves, and four sounds very close to the Japanese word for death, which he obviously has some issues with because of Akane's situation. The word four is considered incredibly unlucky in Japan. Also, he made the money through a paradox, where Akane saw how much the soparil company would be worth thanks to seeing that through older Junpei's eyes, she told Aoi, and he invested heavily to make tons of money.
Huh I never pieced any of this together. Idk if it would've made me put Mira below Delta though, when I made this video I was VERY upset at Delta lol. Thank you for pointing this out though!
Ace is the weirdest fucking origin to the game. Every other part of the game has some logic to it except his motive
He was secretly part of Free the Soul though. Lots of motives there, perhaps.
I feel like 999 Junpei took notes from Aoi/Santa and kinda incorporated some of his a-hole.. somewhat uncaring personality with him to ZTD.. At least in the apocalypse future we know edgy Junpei grows up, gets his crap together, and becomes a gigachad when it comes to calling out Alice on her crap.. and being very honest that if you mess with him and/or Quark in anyway.. you will eventually pay for it and deservingly so..
I feel like Ace/Hongou's ranking is dependent on when you find out he's the true main villain in the game.. If you get the safe ending as your first ending then every scene with him pretending to be a good guy will feel kinda shallow since you already know he's just waiting for the right moment to strike.. Of course when he finally gets caught and let's out his insanity.. that's when you begin to like to hate him. (opposite of vlr Alice, Delta, and Mira) The va for Ace/Hongou is also really good when his true colors are revealed and does a 180 in personality..
Snake automatically should go up a tier for even though when he's gone for most of the game.. when he comes back he still shows up with Gigachad behavior.. especially during the incinerator scene where he literally takes I believe all 6 bullets of the revolver, gets kicked repeatedly be Ace, and only dies at the same time when Ace and him get cooked alive.. the fact that Snake survives both attempts at his life from Ace and manages to make sure burns alive is just fantastic.. Just wish he came back later in the series because VLR makes us assume that he either caught Radical 6 or got blown up by the antimatter explosions..
I like Sean because when you think about it, he got screwed over by many unfortunate events that led to him dying of whatever surgery he needed as the human boy which made Delta feel like he needed to give him another "chance of living" which is the bare minimum amount of kindness that Delta had at least.. that is until you remember that Delta also forced robot Sean to participate in games where he literally was shot point blank with Eric's shotgun or grenade launcher got stabbed and shot by Mira, got exploded by the collar and the bomb when team D tries breaking out, and then learns the truth he's literally a robot copy of a boy who died a long while ago.. Genuinely a tragic character when you go more indepth with him, and he handles all that info in the end and continues living very well as he, Eric, and Mira go on their own adventures.
Only issue with ZTD Phi is that we don't get enough of her.. I feel like the plot needed her to get removed near the beginning of the story and for her only to show up at the end because of how the whole twins plot had to work out.. She still had her character arc finished, and when there was impacful scenes with her and Diana, I did feel emotional.. I think the problem in my opinion is that we had so much Phi content in VLR that it made ZTD Phi kinda be put in the backburner as like "She's still here and the same ol Phi, but right now we need to progress with Carlos', team Q's, and Sigma + Diana's arcs more urgently right now."
Anyways though, love this franchise for what it is..
Probably spent over 40+ minutes typing all these thoughts down, but yeah I definitely will put this franchise in high regard and recommend to anyone wanting to get into a visual novel esc game(s) while wanting to solve puzzles..
Funnily enough, my reasoning for Alice and Dio are switched. In routes where Alice betrays you, she’s pretty mean about it, but the game punishes her enough to make things fair. Any time she’s selfish or mean, someone (usually Tenmyouji) will call her out on her bullshit. And when you do pair up with her, I feel like she pulls her weight enough to balance things out. She’s a lot like Lotus, where she’s more than willing to make the selfish choices that’ll screw everyone else over, but at the same time get called out when she’s being hypocritical.
But Dio… honestly he was a pretty underwhelming character. When I first played VLR, I thought he was way too obviously bad to be the traitor who stole Grandma June’s bracelet. But then he literally is just a traitor who stole Grandma June’s bracelet. They added a plot line where he’s the vice president of an evil cult, but it doesn’t really change a whole lot. He’s still a really predictable and lame villain.
But overall, I agree with basically every other choice. Omega based for putting Tenmyouji so high
ngl zero escape will always have a special place in my heart, 999 and vlr are probably one of the best games i've ever played and will play, but holy crap ztd was probably the worst last game i've ever played lol
Ngl While playing VLR i never actually found Alice Unlikable ? So then i was pretty surprised to see her low on alot of those ranking but looking it back i realized why people woudnt really like her but my honest reaction to thing like Every time she basically called Sigma stupid were like : OMG YAS SLAY QUEEN !! EAT HIM UP DIVA 😍
I also have a similar thing with VLR Clover where i dont really though she was dumb, She has definitly less smart moment than the 999 version but i do think that she is just clueless most of the time due to the fact that this is a completly different scenario and she just cannot be a genius about everything especially about thing that she literatly could not has known about, And her being really bad at hiding her mission with Alice i mean...its not being dumb its just bad at being subtile and the fact that sometimes clover just talk with Alice and doesnt do or say anything wrong but the game will just make you hear their conversation doesnt help at all
And even tho i enjoy way more ZTD than the average opinion of this game, Carlos Gotta be my least favorite Protagonist of the entire franshise. He is not Bad and i understand why people would love him but Hes just not for me, We got to see Junpei's evolution towards all 3 games, We got to see the two sides of Sigma's life, Diana brought Emotions, Q brought mystery, Carlos...was just a good guy which is my least favorite kind of main character cause its just boring, and its not gonna make me care about his firefighter life or his sick sister And its even worse when there is Sassy Emo Junpei next to him who is way more fun and enjoyable than mr action hero.
This video was so funny PLS i'm dying 😭 I'm subscribing
How dare you forget the name of the high end AI-Rabbit Puddingway!
(It's Lagomorph by the way)
I was close with Loporrit
Wheres the terrorist?
lol i hated the vlr twists so much that I dropped the series for a while (the sigma twist is the stupidest twist ever). ended up really enjoying ztd since they ignored most of the previous game lol. might even be my favourite cast.
I was able to stomach the stupidity of that twist, if only just. No such luck with Delta in ZTD. That one legitimately gave me a migraine.
@@B_Skizzle I actually liked that twist lol. surprisingly, it didn't really cause any plot holes, unlike the sigma one.
yes, his entire existence is a paradox, but 999 resolved itself with a paradox, and the phi twist was sweet, so i give it a pass.
@@MarsofAritia What are Sigma's plot holes
@@VGInterviews why didn't he notice his reflection when you go through the garden in the other route, or on any screens? why didn't he notice a huge piece of junk on his face, or why didn't anybody point it out?
0 thought was put into it, it's just there to be shocking and it ruined his character. thankfully, he was a lot better in the next game.
@@MarsofAritia because to see his reflection at the end he needed to get extremely close to the pond, it is described that when he does look for it he has to kneel down, during the escape section of thr B garden the puzzle doesn't require you to get so close to the water as you only need to see the stars.....in the dark
As for screens or mirrors
The only mirror we see is in the infirmary and examining it shows that is is dirty and pretty much useless
For screens, even todays screens (tvs, pc monitors etc) are no longer no longer good mirrors, if you dont believe me try and look for your reflection in any modern screen you have, you'll notice they have an anti gloss finish in order to avoid glares, add to that the fact that the screen in the infirmary where they play the mars mission audio or the screens in the security room are placed high up so even if you were able to see any sort of reflection it would be blury and darkened, hard to make out details
And for the eye thing, even by 2029 technology to create his robot arms already existed so makes sense that a bionic eye wouldn't be that farfetched even for people in that Era (Clover and Alice are already undercover secret agents so they would be used to weird tech, and Phi really doesn't care about anyone's backstory and just wants to win the game), as for others native to 2074 they would have even less of a reason to consider it weird
And if it REALLY bothers you, just consider it an aesthetic detail, since unlike the reveal of his arms, the fake eye never affects the plot in any way, there story would be exactly the same if he had only lost his arms and had normal eyes