VNs I played in 2018 part 2, Zanki Zero and Lost Echoes

Zanki Zero by Spike Chunsoft https://vndb.org/v23381

It’s actually a horror/action/survival game with roguelike elements but it has enough text to be considered partly a VN too.

For a quick synopsis, 7 young adults and a kid wake up one day on a desolate island, the only apparent link to the outside world is a black and white cartoon that play intermittently to give them instructions to facilitate their survival.
Soon after, they find that a new island appeared overnight, deciding to explore it to find food and hints about their situation they realize that this island was part of the city several of them lived in, with the building in the center of the island being the workplace of one of them. The investigation of that building cuts short when 2 of them are killed in a very graphic way by a zombie lookalike monster.
This is where they find out 3 things, the 8 of them are clones who can respawn infinitely using a coin machine. Their lifespan is only around 2 weeks starting a kid to young adults, in their 40’s and old. And that they are the last survivor of humanity.
With only a cartoon that at time guide them and at other time torment them with their past and trauma, the 8 of them have to find a way to survive and look for answers: Is humanity really extinct? Who made the cartoon? Why do new islands appear overnight? What are these monsters about?…

Anyways as expected of Spike the setting is pretty busy, I’ll talk about what I think the story/narrative and cast in general a bit later but first the gameplay.

Zanki Zero is a survival/horror game played in the first person, your goal is to explore the new islands that appear to progress the story, the game is composed of 8 chapters and therefore 8 different islands/dungeons
But before exploring you also need to survive, the characters will need to eat, sleep, will be stressed, sick, will need to go to the toilet (and if you don’t an accident can happen…) and will die very very often.
And of course kids or old people can’t hit as well as adults so you have to be careful about the state of your characters too.
You’ll need to hunt to get food, find various material to build things necessary to your survival aka clean toilets, a kitchen, a place to sleep, etc…create your own weapons and tools to survive against the various mutated animals, zombies and bosses that can be found at the end of each chapter.

The actual gameplay is satisfying and mostly fun, especially in the first half of the game where it feels like you are always walking a tightrope, the second half of the game is much easier survival wise but I thought the horror ramped up in a good way, especially the dungeons in chapter 6 and 7 are well designed and really creepy.
There is various things to do beside just surviving and progressing the story, the islands all have their share of hidden rooms and loots, by revisiting them you can also unlock bonus scenes that often have their own CG and are quite fun, you can also pair up characters as you want by letting them sleep in the same room, you get bonus scenes this way and they gain affinity points toward each others (you can also get some by letting them fight in the same group or having a character give food or healing someone else), by getting the max affinity you get a bed-in scene with a CG of the characters half-naked in bed (really). Of course you can pair any character with any character and that mean M/M or F/F are possible with a very explicit bed-in scene at the end, there is even 2 of these scenes for each pairing based on who is the top/bottom…They definitely had fun writing this game.

The fights are mostly about strafing to avoid hits and attacking weak spots, it’s nothing complex but compared to ZZS the team previous action game it’s definitely a big improvement, you can gain special loots by destroying specific parts of an enemy which is pretty cool

For the actual story and VN parts.
First there is thing I should have mentioned earlier, Zanki Zero focuses on themes that I didn’t think I’d see in a commercial game.
Suicide, murder, adultery, pedophilia, incest, extortion, sexual abuse, and more… it goes further than most eroge I read in pursuing the various traumas of the characters and is honestly one game that would really need a trigger warning.
Everything I cited above, and it’s not exhaustive, is shown in a very explicit and non-glorified way.
One scene in particular shows a kid being repeatedly stabbed while blood fly all over, the scene itself isn’t portrayed in a comical way like Dangan Ronpa, it’s just extremely raw and sick.
Definitely not for everyone.

The other particularity of the narrative is that each chapter is narrated by a different character and of course that particular chapter will focus on that character and their past.
It’s pretty interesting since the characters all have their own voice and personality so the narration ends up being completely unique between each chapters.
You get to see what they really think about their situation, how they react to seeing their past and trauma revealed to others, etc…, it’s pretty nice.
The final thing to note is that for all intent and purpose Zanki Zero’s narrative is rather straightforward, definitely don’t expect a new Dangan Ronpa and you should have no problem but if you do you could be disappointed. Well to say it in another way it’s not a game you play to shit bricks at twists and stuff.

Now to talk about my own opinion of the story I’ll just say I really liked chapter 2 to 6, so much in fact that I’d rank them at the same level as the best parts of the DGS series.
But unfortunately the resolution of the plot aka chapter 7-8 are quite weak and mostly half-assed, I did enjoy the ending a lot though.
So while it ended in a rather weak way I’d say chapter 2 to 6 were strong enough on their own so I didn’t mind…that much.

Zanki Zero definitely proves that Spike Chunsoft still has it even without Kodaka, a good surprise and one of the hit of 2018

Lost Echoes https://vndb.org/v19817

Lost Echoes is the first eroge of a new company petitlinge focusing on Riku the protagonist who is tasked by a Goddess, Umi, to travel to the past (to the sengoku era) to save his childhood friend who is cursed by the karma of her past life.
Lost Echoes is mostly a charage, I’ll guess that around 80% of the scenes takes place in present and 20% in the past but the writers tried pretty hard in portraying a very specific part of that era, namely the beginning of the sengoku period in the region of Kyushu, there is some infodumps but a lot of names of people and clans active during that period fly around without much of an explanation so it’s better to be acquainted with these to follow.

There is five routes, 3 are unlocked at the beginning and mostly follow the same style, Yuika’s route, the childhood friend, is unlocked after doing these 3 and has events that are quite different. After finishing it a new scenario appears focusing on Umi the goddess.

Now the main problem with Lost Echoes is that it tries to bit more than it could chew, I respect the kind of ambition they had but doing club activities one day and trying to stop a war from breaking out the following day just don’t mesh well.
Especially in the first 3 routes where the main conflict is solved at the end of the common route by…talking for a few few minutes. No real catharsis, it just dumps you in the routes pretty much.

But I’ll just say this, the main reason I managed to finish this game is that as a charage it’s quite successful, the writing is actually pretty nice and the scenes well paced, the cast is good too.
Especially Hinao

I mostly finished the game for her

She is a riot in every scenes she appears, which is good since she has a lot of screentime.
There is a few other things to note:
some of the tracks are quite nice
as expected of a company called petitlinge, it was actually one of their policy to give each heroines several unique underwears.

The game itself is a bit too long for its own good and doesn’t really succeed at being anything other than a charage, I could easily see people dropping it during one of the first 3 initial routes too but I’ll just say that Lost Echoes ended up being a strangely memorable eroge for me, not one I could recommend but I am quite fond of it.
Good effort for a new company, hoping for more in the future, also next time don’t release your game the same day as a blockbuster like Rance X