I feel like the main reason people would be looking at AI: The Somnium Files is because the director and writer of the game is Kotaro Uchikoshi who is mostly known internationally for the Zero Escape series. It’s both the reason I ignored the game since its release and the reason I eventually decided to give it a go. After all, Zero Time Dilemma was a notorious mess that even the brightest memories of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors wouldn’t be able to hide. And now, on one hand I am glad that I’ve given it a go. But on the other, I have to accept that I didn’t really enjoy playing this game much.
AI: The Somnium Files, just like the Zero Escape games, is a mix of a visual novel-style storytelling with several possible timelines and puzzle sections that play somewhat like escape rooms, though the mechanics are different this time around. Additionally, there are some action sequences full of QTEs and also several dialogues where you can select correct evidence to proceed with the story, not unlike something out of Ace Attorney, if simplified.
The main gimmick for the puzzle sections this time around is a concept of managing time. Every puzzle has a set time limit and every action that you can perform inside the section has a time “price”, but may also result in a special token that will positively or negatively affect time for your next interaction, if you want it to. The concept is actually really neat and it does get more complex as the game goes, with earlier stages being more about trying to optimize your path to get a bonus artwork unlock, while in the later stages you will be carefully managing every second just to complete them. You do get checkpoints and retries, though I did feel like some of the later stages, because of the more “abstract” reasoning behind the puzzle solving, were a bit too reliant on trial and error and restarting. Still, a very neat idea.
Which isn’t something that I can say about the story or the characters. There’s charm to some of it, especially if you give the game time to show characters as more than just insufferable obnoxious buttholes they are most of the time. But that’s also where the whole story variability comes into play. If you follow one of the main paths at the first junction, you’ll get several hours of complete utter nonsense which will eventually lead into something good. If you follow another (like I did), you’ll very quickly get a bit too many hints about what’s going on and then will proceed to wait up to 15 hours until the game spells out what you’ve already figured out long ago, with no meaningful extra flavor on top of what you could guess.
It’s not like the story is absolutely terrible and luckily this time you don’t get complete nonsense “twists” like what we got in Zero Time Dilemma, but it’s a very hit or miss situation. Characters are often annoying and no matter how much you explain later on why that is, they still remain mostly unlikable. Most of the jokes are very bottom tier “haha, perv” kind of variety too, which gets tiring very quickly. Sadly, most of the soundtrack is forgettable and uninteresting, so unlike Zero Escape you don’t even get that to carry you through the boring or stupid bits. And the story at first might feel like it could get beyond basically copying the plot point from a very popular movie, but it really doesn’t and stays very basic throughout the whole thing.
I didn’t entirely dislike it, yet I don’t think I will even remember this game in a few years. Zero Time Dilemma, for how unlikable and terrible it was, was at least audacious and stupid enough to become memorable (and the soundtrack helped). AI: The Somnium Files at its best moments is just kinda cute. But ultimately forgettable.