General CommentsMy conclusion about this game is... mixed. There were parts I genuinely enjoyed, but others that I loathed. I'd probably give it a 6/10 if I was a reviewer, mostly due to the unsatisfying hot mess the ending turned out to be. And it wasn't any one thing, not even the massive plot twist that we were experiencing the story scenes out of order. I just expected more things to tie up.
There was a lot to talk about, so let's section things off:
Returning CharactersMost of the surviving cast of
Somnium Files returns, even the inspector whose name Date could never remember. I liked how Boss and Pewter were handled. They serve a function in the story and get out of the way when they aren't relevant. However, Iris and Ota were oddly prominent for how little they do. I could see keeping Iris around because she's Mizuki's friend, but Ota was a waste of space and has no relationship to Mizuki or Ryuki and is completely irrelevant to everything that happens in the story.
Part of the reason Iris feels unnecessary is that we get two new teenage girls in Kizuna and Amame and they fill much bigger roles in the story, so Iris feels like a hollow echo of a character. She does nothing except spit out some conspiracy theory stuff and get traumatized by dead bodies at the same time as other people. If I was a player new to the series I'd wonder what her deal was.
I think how Hitomi was handled was better done. Though I love her to bits, she similarly has no role in the
Nirvana Initiative story and is just there as a nod to show she still exists and has a strained relationship with Date.
Date as Supporting CharacterRelated to returning characters, I don't feel like Date was handled well. While he was a bit of a perv in the previous game, it was usually a wacky distraction and not the sole definition of his character. He could be calm and cool, and the fact he was so obsessed with porn was "haha funny" on the same level as getting locked out of the bathroom by his twelve-year-old foster kid when he really needs to go. Perhaps because we were playing him in
Somnium Files and there's a lot of time when he's just investigating, it felt like he was 25% porn freak and 75% everything else.
Somnium Files also implied that the reason he was so randy all the time was because his host body was oxytocin-deficient so Aiba had to make up for it by giving him regular injections. But now that he's in his own body that's not a problem. I've seen some online chatter that says Date had a dirty mind when he was still Falco, but come on. Most people's minds can have a cruise in the gutter without sounding like Date.
In
Nirvana Initiative it feels like he's flipped to 75% porn and 25% everything else. There are multiple instances of him powering up through porn and he's not even in most of the game, making him come off as a flanderized version of himself.
Also, his disappearing for six years due to having amnesia just felt like such a let down. It's fine swapping protagonists. Games often pass the torch from one character to the next. The game could have used him as a more senior agent in the field doing other things off-camera. Heck, it might have been a great twist if he was doing something shady that would make the characters doubt him, and thus make the player wonder if that's why he's not the protagonist this time around.
But amnesia, again? The guy has had amnesia for a quarter of his life at this point. He could have been killed on-camera at the cathedral instead of disappearing and the plot would have moved on to the ending without him. That's how unsatisfying the mystery of his disappearance was.
Also he didn't have to be bullied into dancing in the credit sequence like he did in the previous game where you could tell he thought it was a load of hogwash, because this gung-ho weird Date would be fine with it. Not the Date who existed at the end of
Somnium Files.
Lastly, I don't think the Saito mask was worth it. They could have just left Date in his original body out of the trailers for new people, who are probably going to play the first game before the second anyway seeing the previous game is only a few years old and still easy to get. And the player who can't or won't get the first game probably isn't going to care about spoilers regarding it.
Bibi as Hidden Third ProtagonistI harped about this a bit already, but the game doesn't play fair with the existence of the two Mizukis.
They dress identically despite being different people separated by a span of six years and fashions change! Even identical twins don't normally dress the same just because people have more than one outfit in the closet. I've heard some people say she's wearing a school uniform, and now that I look closer it does seem to be one underneath the yellow jacket, but if that's the case the two would have to be going/would have gone to the same school, which is
not a guaranteed thing in Japan due to having to test into particular schools rather than going to the nearest one.
The only reason the game gets away with this is because most characters will only have one outfit to save on artist labor. The adults don't get new outfits because the story doesn't require them to. The teenagers do, since they go to school and Amame has a part time job at the mermaid cafe. On the other hand, Mizuki and Bibi wear identical outfits not to save on artist labor, but to obscure Bibi's existence from the player. Aside from that, they both wear their hair in identical long braids which makes even less sense. Mizuki didn't wear her hair in that style when she was younger and she didn't get to hang around Bibi past age three (which she doesn't remember) so it's not like she could have chosen it to emulate an older sister figure.
The two girls even ride around on identical motorbikes (with the same decals) even though they must have obtained them six years apart and the model should be more recent for Mizuki.
Apparently it's possible to notice a scar underneath Mizuki's black leggings that isn't present in the Bibi's scenes, but it's on her character model rather than showing up in cut scenes, making it really hard to see since the leggings are sheer, but
black.
Also, the number of characters who know both Mizuki and Bibi is ridiculous and quite frankly amazing that no one ever asked one of them if they have an older/younger sister since there's someone else who looks a lot like them. I mean, Bibi could have blown it off with an excuse since she knows the truth, but Mizuki would probably have lodged that in her memory somewhere. I mean, I've had similar questions asked of me before about non-existent relatives due to looking similar or having the same last name.
I Missed RyukiI didn't know what to make of him when he first showed up, and to be frank, when he was announced as co-protagonist with Mizuki I was a little annoyed. Mizuki had been introduced as the new protagonist first, and the thought of her having to share the spotlight with some new dude felt like somebody was worried about whether she could carry the game on her own.
This was not helped by Ryuki's rather generic young male anime protagonist design.
But once I started playing as Ryuki, I have to say he never bored me. He made fantastically terrible decisions, let himself get bullied by his AI assistant, and (TC-Perge aside) needed mental help quite badly, but despite so much psychologically stacked against him he still pushed to make up for a massive screw up that had nothing to do with his mental problems.
I was reading the online wiki to chase up details I couldn't remember, and what Tearer wanted Ryuki to do was take Date to the execution chamber, which is the cathedral where Date was nearly killed at the end of Ryuki's route. Ryuki might have been willing to tase Bibi, but he didn't want to get anyone killed, and the thought that Date had died in the collapse because he lured him there is probably what drove him to bury himself in alcohol for six years.
(And Mizuki's right that Ryuki knew something about the Half-Body Case that he hadn't been forthcoming about, but it was being blackmailed by Tearer.)
I didn't realize just how much I'd gotten attached to Ryuki until I found myself wanting to check up on him during the Mizuki segments. Even if he was a bit nutty or having one of his more lucid moments, I just kind of wanted to see how he was doing and what he was up to.
The only thing I don't particularly like is that his mental illness is not well handled by the story. It's not immediately apparent to the player that Ryuki is actually ill and not suffering from some other weirdness, but at the same time his illness is not unknown to the people around him, including Tama, who as an AI-ball is capable of being a medication dispenser.
We don't know what Ryuki suffers from in particular (though schizophrenia would be a good guess), and that like other details was likely obscured so the glitch out moments could be interpreted as part of the simulation rather than Ryuki having a psychotic episode. But a lot of illnesses have medication that can manage symptoms in order for someone who suffers from them to go to work and otherwise enjoy life normally. Considering Ryuki's job is as a psyncer/detective and he gets to run around with a gun, it seems it would be especially important for the chemical balance in his brain to be in good shape. It's just a matter of safety both for him and the general public.
That scene where we hear he shot at an amusement park employee off camera? I thought that was in the present since it was a Mizuki segment, and it was an example of how bonkers Ryuki had gotten, but it was an even-numbered day so it was in the
past. He hadn't even been exposed to TC-Perge yet and here he was thinking a park employee was Tearer.
So anyway, I was glad he survived the game. He's different, and we don't have many protagonists who struggle with a mental illness that isn't PTSD. Ryuki might actually be my favorite
AI protagonist at this point. I don't really like Tama though, so I'm not sure I really want him as a protagonist again. I get that she really cares for him in an abrasive older sister sort of way, but a lot of times it feels like she's needlessly bullying him instead of giving him a firm shove to do the right thing.
Timeline DivergencesThe first
Somnium Files was really neat because you could pick the exact reason why the events differ between the two halves of the flowchart. It largely depends on whether Date calls Iris and tells her not to let anyone in. If he does, Saito-in-Renju's body is forced to take more and more extreme measures to exact his revenge, all while looking like an out of control Renju. If Date doesn't, then lots of people die as Saito daisy-chains his consciousness from one victim to another.
But
Nirvana Initiative's branches seem to run independently of each other. For instance, after Komeji's somnium, Tearer kidnaps Shoma in one and merely threatens Komeji into showing up at the studio in the other. Why doesn't Komeji get murdered in the Shoma ending when Tearer still needs a corpse to plant at the studio and the amusement park?
On the other end of things in the present day, whether or not Kizuna breaks up with Lien is dependent on whether Mizuki focuses on finding the research results in Bibi's somnium. The two should have absolutely
nothing to do with each other, but the event changes regardless. I suppose Lien and Kizuna could manage to break up and make up without Mizuki, but there's no indication a break-up ever happened and they jump straight to eloping.
Unanswered QuestionsI've mostly sorted through the timelines now, and have figured out how/why some things happened the way they did, but I still don't understand the following:
- How did Ryuki know both "Dahlia" and "Boat" when they came from different timelines?
- And for that matter why did Tearer tell Ryuki "Dahlia" or "Boat" when neither are his real name?
- Why does Ryuki tend to BSOD when he sees the videos?
- Why did Tearer want Bibi to come to the Horadori basement?
- Why did Tearer want Ryuki to bring Date to the cathedral and then shoot him?
- What did Tearer want to do with Date after dragging him out of the collapsed rubble?
- Why did Gen take Tearer's clue balloon?
- What was up with that ABIS calling in the SAT team in the Amame and Gen ending?
- Who/what is the voice who possesses Mama? Because the secret ending literally would not happen with it.
- And possibly most importantly, why did Tearer wait six years in between planting the corpses and launching the rocket?
Since I'm free to read spoilers now, I've seen some theories that Tearer was trying to create his own Moksha moment like Tokiko does in the secret ending, where Ryuki comes into knowledge he shouldn't have through the Frayer. If Ryuki is able to give Tearer both the names Dahlia and Boat then that will tear a hole in the simulation for Tearer to escape, which I suppose is a decent explanation, but if that was his plan he died before it could be enacted.
Ryuki freaking out from the QR and Nirvana videos is really weird though since he isn't been affected by the TC-Perge virus the first time he sees one and they seem to be an odd trigger for an unrelated mental illness. And because that starts right at the beginning of the game it's easy to mask his actual illness (versus the "we're all in a simulation" madness) until much later in the story.
Tearer wanting Bibi to go to the basement doesn't pan out because she's interrupted in the past (whereas Mizuki finds the machine and Tearer's room in the present) and ends up leaving and never coming back. For... some reason... It seems odd that she wouldn't reinvestigate at some point considering there's a serial killer on the loose, and equally odd that Tearer isn't upset that she gave up on solving his puzzle.
And manipulating Ryuki is just weird. It seems like Tearer wanted to get at Date for some reason, by ordering Ryuki to kill him and then dragging him out of the rubble personally for some purpose, but there's nothing that ties the two characters together. It feels like a dropped plot thread.
Much like the ABIS connection in the Gen and Amame ending, where it's implied ABIS has something to do with what's going on, but it never comes up again.
As for Gen and the balloon, I really don't know. Someone who wrote an otherwise really nice chronological order doc suggested that Gen did it to protect Amame, but she has no connection to the Horadori Institute at this point in time, where the clue leads, and I don't think catching Tearer would necessarily mean leading the police to Jin's corpse. (And in Ryuki's secret ending when he catches Tearer early, Komeji takes all responsibility so she ends up avoiding jail time for mistreatment of a corpse, though I suppose Gen wouldn't know that.)
Mama's other voice, if we buy into the simulation idea, is probably the creator or a user of the simulation program because they always give answers that characters would otherwise have no way of knowing, like where one of Tearer's balloons is and how we the Frayer experienced the events out of order. But even though this is probably what's happening, I don't particularly like it just because it feels rather arbitrary. There are games where the player becomes a character in the story (
Panzer Dragoon Saga and the first
Baten Kaitos did this pretty well), but there's not much reason for the Frayer to reside in the game world and if anything it enforces the idea that the world the characters are living in is a work of fiction. Is that such a good thing? It's not like the game really pushes that as an existential question. It's brought up, but more as cultish gobbledygook than something the protagonist is expected to think through.
As for my last question, I got nothing. Tearer revealed the coordinates for his rocket launch six years before the launch was going to happen and then.... what? Was there a delay in the virus manufacturing process or something? ¯\ (ツ)/¯ He actually just stopped doing anything between the cathedral collapse and calling Amame over and getting himself killed.
The SomniumsI'm not sure if it's because there's a different designer at the helm or a desire to try new things, but I liked the ones in this game a lot less. We have mechanics leftover from the previous games like timey buffs/debuffs to increase or reduce the amount of time it takes to do an action in the somnium, but they frequently felt worthless in the later somniums because of the introduction of other mechanics that have a one-way drain on the player's time or because there are a lot of actions that only take a few seconds each so it's not even worth using them.
Introducing timed hazards like creepy Ryukis and time-sucking void balls inside somniums feels like the worst thing ever since it's no longer about making smart decisions and using your timeys wisely, but how the player is able to act under pressure. You have literally seconds to find a hiding place to avoid Chikara and if you fail it's an instant loss.
Payoffs at the end of somniums also feel more hit or miss. Oftentimes I can't even remember what I found that was so important we had to dive into a person's head for.
Somniums are supposed to be when the subject can't or refuses to talk. The first game actually has Date or Boss try conventional means of questioning before resorting to a psync.
Nirvana Initiative often skips that and does questioning post-scan, putting the cart before the horse as it were, particularly in Mizuki's route where she tosses both Kizuna and Lien into the psync machine without even trying to question them first, and they're people who might be willing to open up to her if asked. In fact Kizuna is more than willing to explain after the somnium is finished without even being told what Mizuki saw in her head, making the whole thing pointless.
Also, I just miss the fact that somniums are supposed to be a person's dreamscape, and things don't always make sense in dreams. This time the somniums are more straightforward puzzle solving and you rarely do anything whacky (at least as the correct answer) in order to progress. My favorite somnium is probably Shoma's because it
is silly and unpredictable with Ryuki and Tama telling dumb jokes and trying just about anything to see if it works. I really liked having to try a bunch of things and find that the answers I gave could lead to different but equally valid results, though this is likely constrained by the fact that most of the somniums don't branch anymore.
Random DetailsFor all my complaining, I did like that there are a lot of details dropped that made nice "ah ha" moments when previously minor details became relevant. Like Lien mentioning that he'd tried breaking into the Horadori Institute before (which was with Bibi) and Amame visiting the Horadori Institute just before the game starts.
If I had the time, I didn't hate half the new somniums, the occasional jump scares, and the creepy ass videos that made me want to BSOD as bad as Ryuki, I would consider replaying the game in chronological order to see how everything fits together. After reading the chronological order doc it was really interesting seeing how much dialogue refers to things that have a different meaning once you know the order events happened (like Boss's threat to demote Ryuki actually stems from him shooting at the park employee rather than screwing up in his chase after the blue figure) and there are a lot of events where you can infer what a given character was doing on a certain day even if they were not who you were currently playing (with the exception of Mizuki on present day 2/14).
Uchikoshi is usually pretty good about getting details down, because his games rely on little nods like those to reinforce the narrative, so I really wish he'd handled the twist and Bibi better. This is the sort of series where fans noticed that Hitomi was moving her arms in the final dance sequence of
Somnium Files, even though she had been shot six years previous, rendering her right arm useless. When Hitomi shows up in the final dance of
Nirvana Initiative, despite being a minor character with only a couple of scenes, they actually
fixed her dance so her right arm now hangs at her side during the performance.
There is, however, no reason for why Aiba and Tama are able to participate in the dance, nor any commentary on how everyone practiced for this. Pewter gets to join the dance this time (whereas he was jailed at the end of the previous game), but Amame is absent since she's incarcerated.
Concluding ThoughtsWith the existence of Marco inside Bibi's left eye, I think the door was definitely left open for a third game with Bibi as a protagonist with a non-binary AI-ball companion. (I thought Marco was a "he" but Uchikoshi's Twitter confirms Marco is a non-binary AI that uses he/him pronouns after discussion with the English localization team.) While I don't think I've become completely turned off by the idea of a third game, it's become more of a sit and wait for a review and maybe a sale rather than a blind pre-order.
I'd really want to know how the somniums are handled and maybe general impressions of how people feel about the story versus the other two games. Checking out Reddit it seems like there are people who really loved
Nirvana Initiative, prefer the newer somnium designs, and the randier Date, so there are people who feel differently.
Though, I'd consider a day one purchase if it went back to tying up Date and Hitomi's relationship. I mean, it's nice that they seem to be together again and he's not still guilt tripping over having accidentally shot her twelve years ago, but I just feel like that baggage hasn't been properly unpacked. We literally went from Date barely being able to speak to her to putting his head in her lap so she can play with his hair (or the hair on his mask lol), and we can see from his facial expression that the guy is just blissed out. Put a ring on it already! They aren't getting any younger. Both of them are now in their 40s post-timeskip.