Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

 (Mild)

 

The Nintendo DS has plenty of graphic adventures and visual novel games, some of them still perking my interest for trying them someday. I have also played all available titles for a particular franchise I will be talking about soon. But today, I'd like to focus on 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, developed by Chunsoft.

You wake up on a sinking ship, unable to remember how or why at first. Soon after, you meet up with the 8 other “contestants”: you have been put inside the “Nonary Game”, orchestrated by Zero, their mysterious mutual foe.

999 felt a bit like a Saw movie, and the dialogue starts out slow and rather dull, but once the first incident happens, the game is on a roll with its intelligent writing, bringing up scientific and historic topics occasionally, most of the time being relative towards their current insane situation. So it takes a while to build up, and I can easily imagine that some of the gamers will be put off by the speed of the text appearing. 

However, there is no need to rush in actual game time if you want to progress, even though you have basically only nine game hours to survive. The characters are dull at first, but progressively start opening up their personality and interests, creating teamwork but also conflicts.

Surprisingly there is a lot of cursing to be found here, I’m usually reading things like “darn” in adventure or RPG games, but not here. Some perversity here and there as well, not that I mind. And there are some disturbing images hidden. 

Multiple endings with extreme different results make it a replayable one, especially the first time for me, as I had acquired the bad ending where practically all the nine persons died with no revelations, tempting me very much to start over again, because a fast forward button and “memories” from the first playthrough were now available. 

The puzzles were quite fine, with their hexadecimal numbers and digital roots alongside mysterious music to back you up throughout the trials. They even became quite difficult the farther you came. I wouldn’t say that it’s a humoristic game in general, but it exists. 

Anyway, after beating the game, and most likely leaving you behind with finding out about the truth, the next time I beat it, under the normal ending, many twists were revealed, however, the game once again ended unexpected, or let’s say, not wrapped up.

And as I started on my third fastened playthrough, even more twists, theories, mysteries and clues dropped by, resulting into 999 being a very well written mystery plot, given that you have what it takes to beat the game three times. 

Thankfully, my urge to find out about the mysterious murderer who after all killed all people the first time around motivated me to speed through the two upcoming playthroughs that followed until the respective new events emerged. No doubt was I left with curious questions even after beating it completely.

It's rare for me to be interested into beating it consecutively three times, but 999 had me quite interested by finding out the motivation and the purpose of this all. I'd say that it's a very good graphic adventure with a strong narrative plus plenty of suspense and drama moments to fill in your experiences.

Rating: 8.5