Nin­tendo 3DS XL, check.  Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward, check.

No time to waste, let’s get to the point.  A con­tin­u­a­tion to my pre­vi­ous adven­ture in this game’s pre­quel, this play notes is an ongo­ing log of ran­dom stuff I care enough to jog down after every­one one or two end­ings.  First time play through was blind, and it landed myself in Phi’s bad end­ing.  Not too shabby, since it appears Phi’s true end­ing requires me fin­ish­ing other char­ac­ters’ endings.

There are nine end­ings in Virtue’s Last Reward that can be con­sid­ered “Good End­ing”; one for each par­tic­i­pant of the Nonary game.  Because of this kind of com­plex­ity, I decided to ditch bad end­ings and only shoot for character-specific end­ings, by fol­low­ing a handy walk­through.

0. Phi’s BE
1. Clover [page 1/continue]
2. Dio [page 2]
3. K [page 3]
4. Quark’s Bad End (Lab­o­ra­tory) (Unlocks step 5 and 6) [page 4]
5. Ten­my­ouji [page 5]
6. Alice
7. Sigma (unlocked by Alice and Ten­my­ouji)
8. Quark
9. Luna [page 6]
10. Phi (unlocked by all of the above)

Of course, the order is not set in stone and will be sub­ject to change if nec­es­sary.  The rest of this post will con­tain accu­mu­la­tive spoil­ers of the said end­ing, and all that are before it.  Also, the game’s pre­quel, 999: Nine hours, Nine Per­sons, Nine doors, is inevitably spoiled to the core.  You have been warned.

Edit log:

  • Nov. 23 — Phi’s BE, Clover’s Ending.
  • Nov. 23 — edits to Phi’s BE, Clover’s End­ing; added edit log section.
  • Nov. 23 — Dio’s Ending
  • Nov. 23 — K’s Ending
  • Nov. 24 — I just got hit by the PEC room save file cor­rup­tion bug.  20+ hours into the game, first time I need to exit it and add a friend, this shit happens…
  • Nov. 25 — Tenmyouji’s Ending
  • Nov. 29 — Alice, Sigma, Quark, and Luna end­ing added.

 

Phi BE; Clover’s End

 

Focus point 1: Zero

It’s inter­est­ing to see the rab­bit itself sug­gest that the real Zero is among the par­tic­i­pants.  With­out play­ing 999 I’d cross it off as an attempt from Zero to cause inter­nal con­flict among the abducted.  But it seems the pat­tern is already estab­lished, and the story would be bor­ing if all nine par­tic­i­pants turn out to be clean.

Rab­bit (Zero Jr.)
The game’s set­ting is very much scifi now… maybe that’s why nobody seem to doubt maybe the Rab­bit talks a bit too nat­ural to be an AI?  It is made clear that nobody within the nine par­tic­i­pants is directly con­trol­ling the avatar.  Also, the rab­bit naughty.  Lied about the AB room being an ele­va­tor that was going to fall, and also with­hold­ing impor­tant rules.

K
Just what the hell.  Ok, so the Rab­bit can be an AI, what’s the chance of K being some kind of cyborg?  I think the tech­nol­ogy cer­tainly allows it when there’s anti­mat­ter bombs and cryo­genic pro­ce­dures that is safer than air­plane trav­els.  Don’t for­get how he went all super­man when he jumped through the AB’s ceil­ing vault.  Total mem­ory loss is such a cliche, most cer­tainly a fake, and def­i­nitely is related to Zero.  Let’s step back and say if he isn’t a robot/AI/cyborg, why does he wear full body armor?  To con­ceal iden­tity, to become resilient from attacks like knifes, and to keep the virus at bay?

And I also won­der where he is when Sigma wit­nesses the mass deaths at end of Clover’s End.  Signs point­ing to K are too obvi­ous and too early, so he may be or may not be an impor­tant culprit.

Ten­my­ouji
Sav­ing Quark would be a motive strong enough to set up the Nonary game.  But call­ing it the motive is still too early and lack of any sup­port­ing evi­dence at this point.  The old man cer­tainly has too many secrets.  Why not just say he’s Quark’s grandpa… wouldn’t it arouse less sus­pi­cion?  What’s his rela­tion­ship with the dead old woman found in the first AB Room?  Why did he not help Sigma when Quark was throw­ing a fit?

Phi
Cool-headed leader of rea­son, or crazy bitch of betrayal.  I bet her flash­backs are of polar oppo­site of the “sweeter” flash­backs Sigma saw.  The ques­tion is: is she cold­blooded enough to kill?  And of course, why is she and Sigma hav­ing visions?  I’m not expect­ing an answer so soon though… see­ing her end­ing is the True Ending.

 

Focus Point 2: Radical-6

This virus is a cheat.  It basi­cally would cause peo­ple to become sui­ci­dal with­out much of a sign of symp­tom…  Was every­one infected in the begin­ning?  Nobody seem to have cared about how this virus may be con­ta­gious when Quark was diag­nosed.… One thing that can be sure of is that this virus is cen­tral to why the Nonary game is set up, so says my guts.  Let me take a wild guess: the Nonary game is about nine peo­ple reverse the course of his­tory when most humans were wiped out by Radical-6!

 

Focus Point 3: After 999

Ah Alice.  I can’t decide which one is cooler: an ancient undy­ing Egypt­ian princess, or a mod­ern Amer­i­can spe­cial agent.  I sup­pose she can’t be some mys­ti­cal being after all, as she’s con­firmed to be infected by the virus.  Once again I see Uchikoshi is vil­i­fy­ing the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try to a new bound­ary… Ter­ror­ists now? Lol.

Regard­ing whether K is another 999 char­ac­ter… I’d say the chance is slim, if he really lost  his mem­o­ries.  K is too much of a gen­tle­man, and assum­ing los­ing mem­ory doesn’t com­pletely change per­son­al­ity, it’s hard to find a match.

And, I’m sorry, I can’t recall who Luna is.  I’m pretty sure that name is men­tioned in 999… orz.  At last, who­ever is behind Zero in Virtue’s Last Reward must have deep con­nec­tion to the Nonary game took place in 999, hence the gas mask.

 

Focus Point 4: Discrepancies

Why is it a sim­ple choice of going to a dif­fer­ent door leads sharp turn of event, start­ing with the first round of AB games?  Why going with Ten­my­ouji instead of Alice through the first Chro­matic Doors result in a dead old woman in the first AB room?  Utter mys­tery it is, as nobody within the nine par­tic­i­pants have time to set up the body.  Did Zero had some­one place the body if Sigma and Phi go with Ten­my­ouji?  If so, why?

Time of Quark’s col­lapse is another dif­fer­ence.  If going with Ten­my­ouji first, Quark hits the floor ear­lier, right after round 1 AB Game, else if going with Alice first, the time is later dur­ing the 2nd puz­zle.  Noth­ing too fishy here.  Though it seems that the sec­ond per­son show­ing symp­tom from the virus actu­ally varies.  Alice went berserk right after Quark if she went with Sigma, while Phi becomes the unfor­tu­nate vic­tim in Clover’s route shortly before the mas­sacre end­ing.  And of course, the lat­ter case appear to be a mass infection/outbreak of the virus.