AI: The Somnium Files

AI: The Somnium Files

What makes a game good? Is it the story? The characters? Or perhaps, the graphics?

You see, to me, it’s the combination of the writing, the characters, the soundtracks, and a strong voice acting performance. AI: The Somnium Files fills all the criteria, hence, making this a good game. Actually? Scratch that, it’s better than “good”, it’s a wonderful game and i don’t have to be a detective like, say, the protagonist of AI, Kaname Date to figure that much. But you might wonder, what is AI: The Somnium Files?

Real player with 90.1 hrs in game


Read More: Best Anime Mystery Games.


An AI for an Eye

It’s been a while since I was this hooked on a game and this one hooked me right from the start and didn’t let go. I was supposed to just test it to see if it works on my potato laptop, but I couldn’t put it down. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me experience a whiplash of emotions.

AI: The Somnium Files is a game by Uchikoshi Kotaro, the creator of the famous Zero Escape trilogy, and developed by Spike Chunsoft so you should expect high production values. It’s an adventure/visual novel hybrid similar to Zero Escape, but this time the two segments are completely intertwined every step of the way. It gave me that same feeling of a larger looming mystery you gradually reveal in a non-linear way the previous trilogy had. It’s also quite different at the same time.

Real player with 57.4 hrs in game

AI: The Somnium Files on Steam

Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma

Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma

This is, without any doubt whatsoever, the dumbest story I have ever experienced in my entire life.

And I’m not even disappointed. I’m actually impressed by the amount of effort that was spent on writing every single detail of this ginormous pile of garbadge. Congratulations to everyone involved.

The disjointed narrative structure makes it impossible to care about anything. Characters will constantly reference things you haven’t seen yet or specifically chose not to do. Imagine if someone told you to direct a movie. But you’ve never read the script before until they hand it to you one page at a time and completely out of order. There’s basically no coherent story up until maybe the last 25% of the game. At which point it all comes together on the premise that nothing mattered anyways, that there was never supposed to be any story in the first place. The arbitrary decision points and branches just boil down to a check list. Sometimes it even feels like you’re playing a 90s Sierra game: “Do you want to go left or right?”. “Left”. “An anvil drops on your head! Game over”.

Real player with 24.7 hrs in game


Read More: Best Anime Puzzle Games.


game looks awful, is poorly structured with weird flag triggers that’re hard to find and the story is barely passable imo.

get it only on a sale and if you REALLY want to play it yourself instead of just looking up the story beats online.

Real player with 24.2 hrs in game

Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma on Steam