In Your Dreams

When AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES released back in 2019, I did not play it right away as I was preoccupied with other games at the time and it wasn’t until mid-2020 that I finally got around to booting it up.

After completing the game, I wanted to kick myself for not playing it sooner as I thoroughly loved its wild story and fun cast of characters. It’s not surprising given my adoration for the Zero Escape series, that the same director/scenario writer would produce another hit in my books.

When a sequel to the game was officially announced, I was determined to give it priority over other releases for the month and was naturally more than happy to review it when given the opportunity.

Iris still loves her conspiracy theories.

MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: PC, Xbox, PS, Switch
Played on PC: i7 9700K, RTX 3080, 32GBs RAM
Length: 25~ hours

During a live broadcast of a quiz show, half of a corpse appears, seemingly out of thin air with a sign containing a QR code linking to a mysterious video. 6 years later, the other half of the corpse appears in the middle of a stadium, estimated time of death? Only a few hours ago.

In a tale spanning two different time periods, special agents Ryuki and Mizuki are determined to get to the bottom of the Half-Body serial killer and put an end to their reign of terror.

Outside of that brief synopsis, I do not wish to delve any further into the story as for a title like this, the story is main appeal and it certainly does not disappoint. As a mind-bending sci-fi story, there were plenty of surprises in store and I was glued to the edge of my seat to find out what would happen next, all the way to the end.

As a tale spanning two different time periods, it became difficult to follow but as I continued on and I was able to put together the clues presented to me, the more I was naturally able to see the full picture. It’s yet another example of brilliant storytelling from Kotaro Uchikoshi, who just can’t seem to miss.

Whether you have played the original or are going into the sequel blind, the game tailors the experience based on a question asked early on and while I can only speak to the experience as someone who has completed the original, it was apparent that they’ve planned for the latter scenario so newcomers wouldn’t be completely lost.

Having said that, I would still recommend newcomers start with the original first to get the best experience possible.

There are more investigation elements this time around to balance the pacing towards gameplay other than pure story.

From a gameplay standpoint, the sequel improves upon the original by simply adding more “game” to it.

Even though the majority of the game’s runtime is still spent conversing with others, there are additional investigation elements aside from the Somnium.

One element of note was the VR investigation, where a VR recreation of a crime scene could be created to explore, looking for vital clues. Using X-Ray and Thermal Vision and ultimately re-creating the events that transpired to make the crime scene look the way it does was a nice change of pace with my trusty AI partner bossing me around instead of the other way around.

Somniums range from charming and fun to sad and disturbing, it’s truly a roller coaster ride.

The Somniums, where I could explore the dream of suspects using a special Psync machine, have also seen major improvements- providing additional hints the more things were investigated. This was a nice change from the trial and error nature of Somniums in the original and all the better for it as most of the Somniums have become much more complex in nature. Timies return with their ability to reduce/increase time spent on an activity which requires some planning ahead to be successful.

The areas and puzzles within the Somnium felt more creative as well, one of my favorites being a series of unique escape rooms that had me take out a good ol’ pen and notepad to get the job done.

However, there were two puzzles specifically within the game that had me stumped for a while and even after I ultimately was able to figure it out, it gave me the impression that they were obtuse and poorly introduced leading to confusion.

I also ran into a weird glitch where the game would stop taking inputs from my controller and I had to disconnect the controller, input the command on the keyboard and connect the controller once more to get past that point which happened three times during the course of my playthrough.

The PR team has let us know that there is an upcoming day 1 patch that will fix some glitches/performance issues but it’s unclear if that will fix the issue I noted above.

Mizuki’s superhuman abilities are in fine display here.

Also, it’s worth noting that there are a lot more action set pieces which require correct QTE presses to complete which I did not mind as most of them were fun spectacles but the frequency of them did feel a bit excessive by the end.

To those that find these timed based elements difficult to deal with, there are multiple difficulty options for both the Somniums and the Action segments to tone down the difficulty significantly which is a nice touch.

Difficulty options like these that make the game more accessible is great in my book.

With added quality of life features and improved pacing, AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES – nirvanA Initiative is an impressive follow up to an underrated gem and one that should be on the radar of anyone who appreciates compelling stories in their video games.

Fun Tidbit – While the game didn’t crash or have any major performance issues during my playthrough, it would’ve been nice to have a more robust PC port for a change with more graphics options. Also, there was a bonus section I could access to spend points I accumulated through performing well in Somniums to unlock neat things like costumes, concept art and a special extra that will be sure to delight 999 fans.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.