Okay so with my Christmas money, I finally bought myself Golden Sun, a game that I really want to play, but I haven't opened it yet. I've been wanting it for the longest time and I was a huge fan of the original Gameboy Advance versions, so I just had to have this one. I luckily got the guide book for only $9.99 even though it said $19.99. I wonder what the price is supposed to be.===
So, why haven't I opened it yet? Because I came across this game:
It might not look like much, but this game is absolutely amazing. 999 is a visual novel adventure game. It's similar to that of games such as Phoenix Wright and Hotel Dusk. Playing games like these is almost like reading a book, except it's interactive and you can sometimes affect the outcome of the story based off your decisions. 999 does in fact have multiple endings which I'm not aware of. I'm not done playing the game yet, but I have to say, it is preventing me from playing anything else on my DS. When I was young, I always enjoyed children's mystery books, although I don't think I have the attention span to actually read a real novel these days.. These visual novel games, however, are an exception to that. I absolutely love these mystery type video games! They're thought provoking and engaging. Okay so, on with the game.
Basically some crooked dude named Zero kidnaps nine people and tosses them onto a ship. He then blows up part of the ship causing it to slowly sink. On the ship are nine doors each with puzzles and clues behind them. The nine kidnapped people basically have nine hours to find the ninth door, which is their only escape before the ship becomes completely submerged in water. Zero calls it the "Nonary Game". Just hearing that already had me interested when I first read about it. There's actually a lot more to it. Each person has a metal bracelet attached to them label with a specific number one to nine. The only way to enter one of the nine numbered doors is by having the same "digital root" as the door. The digital root of a number is when you find the sum of all the digits in a number, and do that over and over again until your result is a single digit. For example 375 is 3+7+5=15, which then 1+5=6. So the digital root of 375 is 6. So in the game, 999, three to five people can enter through one of the numbered doors by equaling the digital root of the door. So the people labeled as 3, 5, 7 could enter through door number 6. But then this suggests that not everyone can make it through door number 9. So even though they're playing the game against each other, they have to work together as a team to get out. But that's not it! Each person has a bomb planted inside their stomachs. When you activate and open a door (with 2-4 other people), you have 9 seconds to enter the door. Once inside, you have 81 seconds to find a device similar to that of the one used to get in. That second device deactivate the bombs. If it's not deactivated, then the bomb will explode. So if a person were to enter a room alone, he wouldn't have the other people inside with him to deactivate the bomb and therefore die. This suggests that players can kill each other via this method, but then you don't want anyone to die because each person can only open a door with the numbered bracelet they're wearing. Behind each numbered door is a unique puzzle that requires pointing and clicking of the Nintendo DS stylus. You can't actually move in the game, but you point and click to which area you want to look at. You can examine almost every part of each scene and collect any items you find that may help you solve the interesting puzzles. Throughout the game, many historic stories, scientific facts, and other fascinating discussions occur between the characters. I've written down a bunch of things they talked about so I could google/wikipedia search them. Seems like game makes an interesting twist of fact and fiction. The character development is done extremely well in a way that they're not boring characters and you can still learn about them, while not discovering who they truly are. They never reveal the other characters' real names nor their true intentions because you really don't know who to trust in the game, however each character still has a unique personality that you can love or hate. The game tells the story from a narrative third person point of view using very vivid descriptions for each scene on the bottom screen, while displaying the characters' dialogue on the top screen. The audio is really good too. The songs match each situation well, and the sound effects depicting foot steps, doors creaking, and other sounds makes the game even more life-like. I still haven't finished the game yet, and I definitely plan to play it again because I want to see what happens when you choose different doors. Since there's different endings, hopefully I have the patience to play through the game again.
EDIT: Okay I just beat the game once. I got one of the bad endings. There's 6 endings total. The bad ending I got was pretty... bad... Oh well. Once you finish the game once, you can play again with the ability to fast-forward through all parts you've already seen! I'm gonna try again but choose all choices I haven't made yet this time.
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