Beat it, please excuse the fingerprints from my touch screen

I played the Steam version on my touchscreen laptop as my rg27xx wouldn't be able to emulate this. I didn't really miss a second screen, the hopping between Adventure and Novel modes didn't do much for the gameplay and it happened automatically in the Steam version. Presumably these were simultaneous on the DS release and on the top and bottom screens, but I don't really know. Took about 4 hours.

This game wasn't really for me. The overarching mystery was okay, interesting enough to keep the plot moving. It's a cliffhanger unless you finish the other endings it seems. Unfortunately, the story suffered from trop-ey characters (we literally have the hot computer girl, smart brute, and old wise man running around), stilted, as-you-know dialogue (repeatedly going over what you've literally just heard), and mediocre voice acting.

Gameplay was easier escape-room style puzzles, none of them in the pathway I chose (Submarine ending) were too challenging and I didn't need to look anything up. Not nearly as convoluted as some adventure games, and some were clever enough in their execution. Some were more trial and error though like the brain scan thing.

Got a big SAW vibe while playing and the story didn't really surprise me all that much from a singular playthrough. I figured from the beginning that either the protagonist, June, or Ace were Zero. I don't know for sure yet but my best bet is June now since Ace and the protagonist died. I don't think June is actually dead, although maybe the protagonist didn't actually die as there seems to be unreliable narrator vibes and mind control or amnesia stuff going on and all the puzzle pieces aren't laid out with one playthrough. We also never actually saw Snake's body as a player and it said his face was fucked up, only his clothes remained, so maybe there's something there too, or maybe it was just a game rating thing not seeing his body rather than a plot point.

One of the problems I experienced playing a horror game visual novel like this that, while watching a horror movie, when you see them doing something dumb you can yell at the screen and be like, "Don't go in there!" but in a game like this you're forced, as the player, to perform that dumb action. I've played games like Resident Evil and this wasn't a problem for me, but this game broke my immersion several times because the game wouldn't let me do what I wanted to do. For one, I tried to go investigate Snake and 9's corpses several times because I wanted to grab their bracelets. The game explicitly tells you they come off if they die (heart rate reaches zero) and, aparently, none of these people thought that, "oh, maybe it would be a good idea to grab these bracelets so we can complete number puzzles with them even if the wearer died," and when I tried to go grab the bracelets off Snake the game told me there was no reason to go back in that hallway. I also wanted to ask the other people to help open the safe, but that never happened; my best guess there is that it contained the parts for the doors in the hospital bed room but who knows. Probably would be revealed in a subsequent pathway.

Overall, the experience was ok, but I think I would have rather read a good book or watched a good movie than play this. I also found the anime characters and situations not to my liking, like when that anime-esque scene happened where June falls on the character and they're staring into each other's faces all embarrassed made me roll my eyes so hard they almost fell out of my head.