To give some context, I played 999 after Patrick was hyping the shit out of this game in one of the Bombcasts. I completed 999 with all the endings and the game blew my expectations. After that, I did some post-game research to learn about what others had to say about the true ending and discovered that 999 was a spiritual successor to Uchikoshi's Ever 17. I completed Ever 17 and noticed some similar plot devices used in both games.

Learning about this diluted my appreciation for 999. I was wondering if anyone else had a similar experience? Or maybe this is what a spiritual successor is supposed to do. I still haven't gotten a chance to play Remember 11 (the next game after Ever 17) and VLR (the next game after 999) so maybe completing those games would change my mind.

@yyninja: I suppose this is to be expected somewhat, but for me at least it didn't dilute my appreciation of it, i mean we see this a lot all over the place in games and other mediums were certain ideas and plot points appear in multiple unrelated places, for example as giantbomb calls it, the "all story" or whatever, same ideas in different games by different people, the difference with this to me is that to my knowledge there isn't a whole lot like this out there, at least in English, and its been quite a few years since ever 17 came out to when 999 came out, it's more unique than other things, but maybe its more obvious since there's so little of it.

But VLR is still a great game though apparently it to shares ideas with Remember 11, but i've never played that so i can't say for certain.

@yyninja: yeah this isn't to uncommon with visual novels. It's pretty common for a company/writer to use the same plot devices and structure, an example would be every VN "Key" has made.

EDIT: also when you say you beat Ever17 did you really, theres like 120 hours in that thing.

@elessarLOTR said:

EDIT: also when you say you beat Ever17 did you really, theres like 120 hours in that thing.

The 100+ hours gameplay for Ever17's wiki is exaggerated. I can only imagine that happening if you decide to read every single scene (even those you watched before) and decide to play from beginning to end for each playthrough. In Ever17 you can skip dialog you already read like in 999 and you can also skip entire chapters you already played.

That said, the game is still long. It took me around 60 hrs to complete all the good endings. I watched the bad endings on YouTube.