It's so good to finally have real ranged characters. I have feelings about the particular fight, not as strongly as the confusion fight as this particular annoying fog isn't shitting all over the established narratives, but alas.
A minor thing I really like, is Kurara isn't real noble at all, but a generational corporate oligarchy who essentially believes she's the royal.
Yeah so I'm entirely unconvinced that the cast is human. I think the commanders are humans though, possibly the original forms of the cast. Would explain why killing the commanders give the cast power.

Shouma is just so aggressive, in a cast of comically aggressive people. It's not the usual kind of, dude has low self esteem so he's out of the way, but more like Reddit Nice Guy kind of bringing every conversation back to how he's worthless everyone he's interrupting again because he's worthless wait you are doing something anything that isn't centred around Shouma's feelfeels how dare you he needs to stand on a table to yell about well actually as a Shouma

Which is irritating enough, but also I need literacy points and he's the only person who can provide that which is just. Give him gift block your ears and do a runner.

Like how My Little Pony has absurd character names, but no more absurd than actual racing horses' names; Moko's absurd wrestling series names sounds about right in middle of the wrestling norm bell curve.
The cast is weirdly confident that Takumi isn't a body snatcher like Moko, after that 5 day disappearance act.
I always found the relationship between Takumi and Karua mildly creepy, but I can't quite explain why in the way that the twins were obvious at. Please don't move to nappies next.
PS how good is the music of Day Nice

You know what. I don't even care what the actual plot is. My entire point of this game is to lose my shit at everything Darumi ever say ever.

PS, how good is the pixel splash screen

I hope someone rolled Nozomi's mum in a carpet and pushed her off a bridge.

I'm at day 75, 25 days to go.

So far I unlocked 48 event images, with 520 yet to be unlocked. This is wild maths. Like, is it just gonna be 500 pictures of protagonist screaming

Videos: unlocked 53, pending to unlock 151.

At least about half of the music was unlocked.

My latest hot take is this cast should never do any events ever again, include but not exclusive to: BBQ, country fair, sports day, formal dance, picnic day, killing game, girl scout biscuits selling, school disco, graduation, etc etc etc
Interestingly, on 84 the official identity of the tin can was Ima. By 85, he's officially referred to as Sirei.
Yeahh so Moko's character screen was blacked out immediately when you found out she's dead, but Hiruko's isn't after she's buried.
Why are eternal flames everywhere in this city though. I thought it was exclusively used as a barrier protection for the last defence school?

what the FUCK

Edit: that interlude was hella cool-creepy

The plot so far be like:
> Humans destroyed Earth's ecolog
> Earth as a life form activated its own immune system to wipeout humanity
> Humans have the technology to leave Earth and thrive in space
> Instead of that, humans opted to kill everything that's alive on Earth instead, somehow believe that will make Earth inhabitable again

Yeah I don't know what metaphor it's trying to make but damn

Sorry I'm kinda meh about every death so far, considering all the characters who died seem to make the situation worse chronically just by withholding important information as a form of power trip.

Ah, pity. I like Eito.

And to be fair, humanity isn't exactly lovable in this series.

And clever move to make the character screen "commanders absorption" number rather than "souls absorption" because, hey if technically speaking the absorbed are not commanders...

Most importantly, now Darumi my precious got her classmates killing each other thing going, 5 days before deadline.

Huh so the ending suggestion is:

Because Takumi gets levelled up special power by absorbing Eito with levelled up special power, who in turn got levelled up special power by absorbing ???; AND Takumi can retain all his stats and just jump to a different time line.

So just... Kill every one the moment he meets them, absorb all their powers, then just restart with full god tier powers? Like killing your team don't even matter if they can be re-done from beginning, while keeping your stats

Oh fuck this pseudo choice. Pet peeve of mine.

If it's anything like Zero Escape, I'm estimating I'm at 45% of game completion. Tbh at this moment it feels less satisfying than either the first run of Zero Time Dilemma as well as Danganronpa V3, specifically because I hate pseudo choices and Zero Time Dilemma fully embraced throwing a hard WTF at the player right in the first playthrough without pseudo choice that later turned out to be core to the main plot.

I sure hope there's a good inbuilt ending map though, no way I'd be able to remember what ending was caused by what and how what what the f

Hey, it could be worse. As someone fond of Raging Loop, that game spent 13 hours(!) setting up by forcing you to sit through people playing Mafia badly.

You know that thing in Zero Time Dilemma where you start the game, flip a coin of life and death at 15 minutes, immediately get a good ending with credit rolling and be like what the actual fuck just happened.

The Hundred Line isn't quite that over the top, but I'm getting sus that the real game is about to start from the point and onwards, as there hasn't been any decision trees other than the infuriating pseudo decision. Ultimately what I liked about Zero Time Dilemma is it's a linear game with many branches that acts as parallel chapters, and it's well communicated accordingly.

What I would really want now, is a clear route path laid out in flowchart. Zero Time Dilemma, Raging Loop, Quantum Suicide, and Ai the Somnium did this well. Gnosia barely gets away without it only because of achieving each ending is fairly straightforward with a guide.

I'm just too old and too tired to keep track on 100 routes otherwise, even super good games like Buried Stars just left me with, nah, I can't force myself through that many repeats and hope something's gonna change.

I should also point out Zero Time Dilemma, Gnosia, AND Raging Loop was meh at first ending, but then it got _good_.

HOLY SHIT THE TITLE SCREEN'S BACK GROUND VERTICAL RED LINE TURNED INTO A RED 2.

So, upon game completion, it's The Hundred Line 1 -> The Hundred Line 2.

Zero Escape team, please fuck me up. I expect a lot now.

Edit: yes "The Hundred Line 2" is completely expected to be the second half of the branched out game. Look at on the saving file, it stated number of clears is 0 even though we've seen the credit once already.

Roflmao not only continued at where the first playthrough ended, if you go to backlog it has the backlog of the last conversation you had at the end of the last ending. It's basically Day 101 rather than NG+.

Also your entire party kept their stats, and the various rocks, rags and sticks you collected from last game are still here. I don't even want to know what their storage looks like.

I fully admit I have the temptation of wiping my entire team to absorb their powers, then reset to a new game.

Thankfully the actual game play don't reward this. Thinking about how Raging Loop got to the point that the characters were murdering each other for fun because they were so sick of the loops.

Lol finally there are actual options in a game that's all about 100 endings.

Interestingly so far Eito comes across as a lot more in the right than everyone else, considering what's allegedly done by humankind is so demonic that getting rid of humans is doing this world a service.

But also it's one of those games less about playing as me, and more about fuck around and find out. So behaving outrageously is the entire point.

Not a spoiler, things people probably want to know getting into The Hundred Line, QoL wise.

1. There is a good, clear laid out flowchart of choices. I was most worried about not having this and losing track.

2. While it started off screaming Danganronpa, indeed the Zero Escape shines through later on. Seems like you can't fuck up lost forevers in terms of the branching stories, though I can't confirm it at this point.

3. While the battle system isn't quite Nippon Ichi, as far as Too Kyo goes it's competent enough. I was worried it's another replaying skateboard minigame hell, but thankfully I'm wrong.

4. One good decision made that I don't expect to love, is the mandatory flow of time. Given the scope, the game don't want you to be dwindling on one day for 25 hours. Which is wise.

Sometimes I get to a point and think, hmm I should get an achievement/trophy pop up now, except because it's Switch such a thing don't exist, and I feel such relief for the lacking of another silly KPI that I should know better to care about. So I might not 100% the game. I'll play until I had enough then I will stop.

#TheHundredLine

I opted to keep Eito alive mostly to see what shit and giggles he's gonna come up with.

My theory is Hiruko is someone who time travelled a lot more than Takumi, a common trope that's more common than the trope where protagonist is the only time traveller, also her specialty is "torture and murder". I also suspect there will be more core characters because of the weird empty gaps in explore layouts.

At this point seems like the studio owners are struggling financially too tbh. And holy fuck the scope
... And seems like the cast is a reality show after all.
Expect to fight a commander, ended up with Organisation XIII
The moment you start to interact with the real Sirei again, he immediately turns back to that dodgiest fucker
Tsubasa has a SVU. She made everyone WALK with her to the other school..ಠ⁠﹏⁠ಠ
Boooooo this is going to be a worse run than 49/50/51/52 because no Darumi.
This is terrifying tbh, given whose comment it is.
Turned out when Shouma isn't trying to hog every conversation to make it all about him, I actually found him quite likable. Pity 99% of the time it's all about him+ unable to read the room.

Kako had a vision in this timeline that Gaku must live to prevent a disaster so Takumi must protect Gaku.

You'd think it's protect him from the war but no. This little shit is such a sex pest that Takumi is fighting the urge to strangle him now.

They are enjoying themselves. A meteor will fall and everyone will die now

This battle is actually infuckingfuriating

1. I can easily kill V'ehxness within two rounds, but no it's a scripted loss that is poorly communicated so, so you waste time for the futility for agea

2. I can easily rescue both Kurara and Gaku in one round, but no scripted one or the other.

Script the fucking fight better then.

Ok I don't know who else can pull this off, the post Kurara death scene rapidly whiplash between absurd hilarity to sadness to absurd hilarity to sadness as the music rapidly alternate between the two, as Sirei encourage substance misuse among the cast.

And it works.

This route is shaping out to have the strangest yet most effective mood whiplash so far. Yes this is the part where Eva's brainwashing was broken because she's forced to eat Kako's durian fish gut Carolina reaper toast.
I'm so bored of this route and it won't stop branching lol
Tell them how you really feel

ANOTHER BRANCH I'M SO SICK OF THIS ROUTE OH DEAR GOD

On one hand it gave most context.

On the other hand, this route distinctively have pacing problems.

Entire game up until now per Sirei: this war is just! We are Good! They are Bad! You are doing this so the invaders cannot take your home!

Now Sirei being forced to review we are the genocidal imperialists who tried to burn every creature on this planet to death:

I feel like, can I just have an option and an ending where Takumi commits seppuku for committing genocide against the indigenous people of Futuram, and just let humanity die. Humanity isn't worth it.

But also.

From the V'erxness route, seems like Futuram people are basically humans in their awfulness. Actually I take it back, they looked after their planet.

I feel like, this is shaping out to be the "true ending" route. Shouma blew the whole thing out of water. My mate, even though you are a whiny little shit up until now, I mad respect you after this.

Tsubasa: wtf yugamu you can't just get that excited about dissecting our allies

Also Tsubasa: WOOHOO I GET TO DISSECT SIREI SO EXCITING NEW MECHANICAL FINDINGS

Here is a new horror for you.

You were a child, who just happened to ran into a test specimen, who you talked to like to a tree.

This specimen just decided to give you a brand new identity, and now in his mind, you are obligated to be his soulmate forever. You must love him back. Marry him. Give birth to his children. Revolve your life around him.

Important plot dump:

- Confirmed Shion is a kidnapped Futuran

- Confirmed the entire cast except Eva and Nozomi were genetically modified via Shion and were given false memories

- Confirmed only purpose for the teens to exist were to be humans' weapons

- Confirmed each backstory were explicitly created to make most numbers of point of view if things got weird. So Darumi's formative abuse were entirely created intentionally.

What I don't get, is then give Eito such dangerous memories that is almost guaranteed to backfire?

So the entire cast agreed that they are really siblings, even Eito is on board.

You know what that means. All romance are now incest.

Seems like one of the least shitty endings, and unfortunately seems like despite that Nozomi had proven to be not a villain, her physiology that isn't her fault just turns her into a parasite who kept on killing others to stay alive. Which sounds like a pretty dangerous person to keep around.

I still prefer an ending where the cast is convicted as war criminals instead though.

Lol I love the "you chose Nozomi. You stupid fuck. Now this world is also ruined" dropkicking from this ending.
I mean what do you expect lol

Lol to the game's credit, if you chose to save humanity, the game really hammers in that you are a bad bad person, the proof of why humans are the worst, and you are a nasty selfish bastard.

Which given the context, it isn't wrong.

TBH the premises makes the humans even worse than just being genocidal, willing to wipe a planet of its all life to steal the planet for themselves, AND that's after destroying Earth.

Because the only humans having the resources to get into the evacuation would be the Elon Musks and the Jeff Bezos. As in this functional verse humanity is already worse than ours, and on top of that all the non-greedy people never made into the spaceship.

I'm doing be a complicit run to see what happens, but really. Hell to humanity.

I'm getting into this route with resentment, but loving how the team was being underhanded af, Moko apologised to Dahl'xia for bad sportspersonship, and Dahl'xia complimented the team on understanding there are no honour in wars.

Turned out if you chose to support humanity, the game double down on how bad humanity is and how you are bad.

There is an option near the end that you just, fuck this. Seems like that's the true ending.

Given that this ending has a FMX I'm guessing it's as close to true ending as you get. A nice one too, V'ehxness is neutralised. Humans completely were wiped using the same technology as humans wanted to use on the native lifeforms. The cast dies preventing the human weapon from destroying this planet, so redeeming themselves.
Holy fuck if you chose to not fight against Sirei to wipe the planet, you get the most horrifying I Have No Mouth ending where your entire casts' memory is wiped, and you are subjected to a lifetime of forced births.
Eito's perspective route. My first change of protagonist route, and I'm loving it. I always liked Eito more than Takumi anyway.

Takumi accidentally triggered the fuck out of Eva, resulting in full scale Eva fainting. He felt bad about it

So the next day he intentionally does it again. This fucking guy.

Another fascinating branching. I loved every single one that deviated from a school of teens obediently fight a war by protecting a human weapon.
All these routes where suddenly an entire genre or priorities change are my favourite tbh

Not sure if this is an intentional design decision or a bug, the time flow here are out of whack. Seems like it skips between afternoon and morning and nights randomly

But it also makes narrative sense in context

Your punishment is you lose the privilege to die alone.

On one hand, if you get brought back to life after every death, but have full recollection of the pain of each dying moment, the best weapon against a body snatcher would be "pain is my kink ;) ".

On the other hand, the ending here is another complete non-ending.

Mad props how Takumi managed to commit intentionally agonising suicide 500 times in 1 day. That's one every 3.5 minutes, and realistically he only had about 20 hours so even less time than that.

I'm really having trouble keeping up with the plot here. Summary, Shion was asked to concentrate on making fire, Eito returned for invasion and was obliterated by Shion, the team lost a lot of their firewall due to Shion used too much energy, and now it's back to back fights for like 6 times.

Meanwhile, Moko did a Big Risky. I expect nothing less from someone whose wrestling mentor is called Anal Boss, and her troupe is called Chromic Haematuriac Maniacs.

Hell yeah Shouma got some self awareness, and it's just vague enough that I don't need to worry about spoilers.

#TheHundredLine

This has to be the shittiest route if anyone unlucky enough to start their first route here. It's just back to back slammed with battles, and nothing else. The banter between the team was A++ but still.

As for me I just skipped every fight. Video game edition of tldr

This entire route is absurd, but the quality of the in battle banters are really in battle bangers.
It just added a new plot point: the Futuran commanders can call for help to other commanders via timeline overlapping. That's rather FFVIIRebirth of them.
THE ROUTE NAME IS SERIAL BATTLES ROFLFMAO
One of the more structurally interesting routes, but the endings are both unsatisfying. Felt more like a trailer than an ending, and probably the most half arsed ending to date.
Nigou may be hacked by the anti exodus humans in this timeline. This is getting exciting.
What's interesting was earlier Kako said Gaku must be kept alive for the best ending. And if Gaku was alive, Anti-Exodus Faction never awakens, humans opposing the invasion never got to communicate with the cast, and paradoxically the real good ending was humans were wiped and Futurans get to get on with their lives.
It's interesting how red pill (as in the literal pills from The Matrix) came in. As much that terminology has been ruined, until today I'm still convinced red pills were the Wachowski sisters talking about transitioning.
You know how some routes are like 10 hours long and only has one ending? This route is comically the opposite. Every day you get a new option of being murdered by Gotoh. Which is funny, because you'd just get revived right back.