i’ve played a lot of video games in my time. not quite as many as some of the people who frequent this site, not quite as many as those decades older than i, but enough to not feel like a beginner. corny as it is, i can call myself a “gamer” and have that title make a hell of a lot of sense. and, of all the games i’ve played in my day, no single game has been ruined by its ending as much as virtue’s last reward.

through the eight non-phi character endings, VLR feels like an amazing puzzle. learning clues from other timelines, jumping between routes and gaining new information; more than any other game, VLR feels like a game where the story changes drastically due to your actions. it’s a massive mystery to unravel, but unlike other games, everyone experiences all of it differently. different orders, different character routes, hell, even something as simple as doing the good ending before the bad one makes a drastic change.

VLR’s storytelling tactics wouldn’t work if the characters weren’t so well-written, but they do, because each character is given the time they deserve. their motives, their backgrounds, who they are and what their purpose is, it’s all laid out over multiple timelines. you want to see alice avenge her father, you want luna to be able to enjoy her life, you want dio to burn in hell for all eternity. there are points where their stories fall flat, but it’s made up for because the information you learn is transferable.

unfortunately, this game’s ending is absolutely atrocious and serves to absolutely shit on anything that made the rest of the game engaging. jumps through time don’t feel adventurous anymore; just confusing. the characters you knew from this game are thrown aside, hell, the characters from 999 are butchered so badly it’s laughable. the ending becomes this massive dump of exposition, into a twist, into exposition, into a twist, and none of the twists feel engaging or fresh anymore, because it’s clear they want to tie all the loose ends.

GOOD! tying loose ends is cool and all, but at some point, you’re fucking around with 5 timelines and quantum mechanics; it’s okay to allow the player to suspend their disbelief just a little. what makes VLR’s conversations surrounding quantum mechanics interesting ISN’T how it works, it’s how you can use those concepts and practices to help people. by the end, VLR has not only ruined a genuinely interesting and well-written character from 999 (who i will not spoil for extremely obvious reasons), but has also thrown a lot of what we know about the protagonist out the window. to me, the only character that kept my interest all the way through was phi, and even then, her story became pretty shaky by the end.

look. i won’t tell you this game isn’t worth playing, because it is. i had an extremely fun 20 hours playing through 8 of this game’s main endings, and i would recommend the game based on those endings alone.

but i also will note that it’s significantly worse than 999 in pretty much every facet related to its story. it’s almost the opposite of 999 to me; what made 999 so compelling was its last ~2-3 hours. what ruined VLR was that same ~2-3 hours.