#i want mizuki to be okay im so worried about her on this route but date is not paying attention to her i. what are YOU doing

[akashiayakashi]

Idk if it's too soon to write down all my thoughts because I don't know how much I've processed about this game but I prefer going right at it anyway hahahaha

Okay. so.

I think expectations worked well in favor of the sequel than when I played the first game.

When I went into aitsf, I think I was expecting more than one mystery, not that kinda crass humour, more gameplay. basically smth like ace attorney or danganronpa. i guess i was initially disappointed bc i didnt like 999 or just the zero escape trilogy in general. I honestly thought it was gonna be an L for me until I finally actually got my first ending and went through the other routes.

The strength of ai is in its mystery and how it fools the player and the detective through the limited point of view. Not pun intended since you know, they only see through one eye technically, but there were a lot of hints pointing to obvious truths that are so easy to dismiss until the truth is revealed.

My mind was like WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING a lot of the time but in a good way.

I think a big reason I didn't like 999 was that I just felt so unconvinced by the conclusion and that the development didn't feel enough whereas in ai it does a good job of linking everything together in a way that doesn't feel like a cop-out. I mean 999 gave foreshadowing but the sci-fi elements didn't feel very REAL until the end, it was more of ok fun theory i guess and then suddenly SCI FI HEAVY ENDING. Ai is more like hi we're technologically advanced and we're very silly so there's a lot of space for your suspension of disbelief.

well i'm sure that's a personal thing a lot of others would disagree with but for me that's a core reason why i did like ai.

i also thought that the dynamics in ai in general were just a lot stronger and better formed (but this is not a 999 hate post i swear so i will get on with it).

ANYWAY.

since i could curb those expectations with aini and sorta knew what i was getting into going in, i could enjoy it a lot more from beginning to end. i could just get lost in the BIG mystery and not worry about the what ifs and just think of all the alt routes as ultimately serving the true ending.

also omg i didnt love the ui in ai because i didnt know you had to keep interacting until you had to stop interacting, which just didnt seem obvious to me because huh the convo is done right why are we not moving on but no the convo was not done. i knew that going in now so i didnt feel as annoyed hahaha

aini is a lot more structured and well it's by design by the time you find out how fucked the timelines are. to be honest it's still hard to wrap my mind around it.

needless to say i was losing it when we were in that one bibi part where im like WE ARE MIZUKI BUT THIS IS CLEARLY 6 YEARS AGO WTF IS HAPPENING LOOK DATE IS RIGHT THERE ALSO WHY ARE THE SPRITES LIKE THAT

The last somnium with Amame was sooooo good like it uses her previous lightning round quiz show questions where it just seemed like kinda random questions to actually show all the choices Amame had to make in the end. It's even more impressive once you realize OH SHIT THIS WAS JUST A FEW DAYS AGO NOT 6 YEARS AGO like what you initially thought.

Though her story is so tragic...

Tbh it is pretty funny how it became a shounen final boss battle in the last part. It's very silly but I think it's fitting for protags like Mizuki and Mizuki...idk how to explain but they have the protag energy. Date was more low-key so him having that kinda ending where he had to let go of Aiba instead was a lot more fitting.

IDK THE POINT OF MAKING US THINK RYUKI DIED WHY DID THEY DO THAT. I was like: ok this was a good end but ryuki died so maybe i will opt for the alternate route thing i've been hearing about bc ryuki is alive. well i know the point of it, it's just a suspense thing they wanted to do but it wasn't really as dramatic as aiba's self-destruction which was the climax of that end scene.

I wanna hate that they claim that Date is just wearing a mask the whole time. I mean I GET IT IT'S FOR NO SPOILERS and like the story is not about Date but like we went through so much in the first game and we get this very convenient explanation....it's not a focal point but I thought it would be a big deal and it wasn't jxfvbjd

The secret not so secret ending was so meta hahaha. It sorta proves the ideology naix and shigure had but this was also only possible because it's a game. So it makes you think these people obviously don't think of themselves as game characters so how about you? Are you living in the real world or the simulation? I don't believe in those sorta conspiracy theories but I like how it just tied it all together.

I didn't do the joke end of atami(?) but the mere existence of it is funny lmao.

oh right the cast

i love ryuki but i think the boy has gone through some shit and needs a hug... i dont really ship him with tama but i guess the main difference between him and the aiba partnerships is that tama seems to not take ryuki seriously and to be doing her own thing at first glance but she is actually very indulgent of him and lets him do what he wants. she is also fiercely protective which is why ryuki couldnt share any of his burdens during the past 6 years.

i understand bibi hating him but im sorry i'm a ryuki apologist bibi

omg i was so excited to see adult shoma and then i went WHY DOES HE LOOK THE SAME but wow that was actually a plot point dfvdfvd i like his lil crush on mizuki but i dont see mizuki reciprocating any time soon...she just seems uninterested in romance HAHAHA

i feel like gen existed just for amame so he feels more like an extension of amame that existed to help her than his own character which is partly why im just kinda hmmm on him. sad he died in that one ending...which kinda sucks because everyone else had happy stuff in their endings in contrast. i guess it didn't pull my heart strings enough bc we dunno how amame and gen even became friends and everything so it feels like we're seeing this strong love but without the background of how it came to be.

in contrast we saw from the start how the lien and kizuna thing developed. i dont really ship them but i think how they turned out was sweet. i was initially very meh with the idea that lien just doesnt know how to take a no but well ig the story at least showed us he wasnt creepy like uh ota or moma so he gets an upgrade in my book as 'you're ok'

the shoma & komeji ending was the first i got and it was really sweet and it makes the reality of the true timeline sadder because the last thing komeji hears either of his children say to him before he gets sliced is that they're disappointed in him

but they actually loved him very much

which is to say the secret ending...ryuki gets the burden of knowledge even though everything is 'happier' but idk how it would do him good to just live in this perfect world we chose for him instead. we saved him going thru the bad 6 years but he has the knowledge that they existed in the first place. anyway some real fun meta shit they did.

the ryuki obsession with date wasn't enough methinks. i just dont feel convinced, it just seems like he feels guilty because he knows what he did which fair enough sure but everybody gave me the impression he was obsessed since the start so i felt disappointed in that regard

not enough date tbh or rather not enough date in the way i would have prefered hahahaha. like i wanted a more dramatic reunion with mizuki and/or aiba

i mean they were finally happy then 6 years of date just gone...wtf mizuki keeps getting Ls in her life

also ig bc as an aiba/date shipper i just felt deprived but im ok. i really am. i reallly am

oh right one thing i do want to commend on aini is how its somniums are just so much more logically driven so they're more fun to solve. it doesnt feel like the strange randomness of the first game where you just have to somehow hope you're doing the right thing. there is still randomness but it feels hmmm like there is more sense in the overall somnium than the past game

i probs have more thoughts but i kinda just kept playing and playing for like 20 hours and im sure if i had any thoughts during i forgot to write them down dxfvbdfcvj but i'll probs remember if im asked very specific things

if there will be another game, i will for sure buy and play but can we no longer have separation of date and mizuki + aiba? tnx.

#fandom tots #aini #spoilers