Review: Zero Escape - Virtue's Last Reward

I'd seen people on forums hyping this game for a long time but I was always hesitant to play because I don't typically enjoy games which are too story heavy. However on a recent train trip from Munich to Berlin I had some spare time to give Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward a fair go.

First impressions were good, the initial story sequence looked interesting and I really enjoyed the first escape puzzle. Maybe I was about to open up a whole new genre of gaming?

Alas, things started going downhill during the first novel sequence. The interesting story started becoming more tedious with every dialogue box and it just dragged on far too long between the action. After 5 minutes I wasn't even reading the dialogue and was just mindlessly clicking through as fast as I could. Short attention span maybe, but I just found the delivery way too stop-start and slow moving.

Stop talking now

Mercifully I made it through to the new escape puzzle which again was very enjoyable, and tricky enough to provide a challenge. Each room has a safe which will provide the key to escape the room and move on. There are numerous sub-puzzles and clues that you must complete to get to the final solution. The interface is slightly clunky and requires quite a bit of time to adjust and play smoothly.

As you work through the game, your "flow chart" will keep expanding and it allows you to jump to other parts of the game, which you will need to do as there are 20-odd different endings to the game including one "true ending". Thankfully you can skip dialogue if you have already seen it before.

The Flow Chart

This is an easy (but not quick) platinum trophy as just completing the game fully will deliver the bulk of the trophies, just make sure you find all of the hidden files along the way to save yourself from having to re-do too many parts.

The safe where you input an unlock code

In conclusion I found the puzzles and escapes themselves to be great fun and if they could remake the game sans-dialogue then I would highly recommend it. As it stands I can only recommend Virtue's Last Reward if you enjoy games with long story sections. To be fair the story is actually quite good, however the delivery method is so drawn-out, tedious and repetitive that I found it a real chore to complete.