Part 26: New game +

With the first ending acquired, we get a bit of an explanation from the game about how things work from here on in.

This game has multiple endings.

6, in fact. You might have worked that out from the Submarine Ending image after the ominous "the end." One of them is the proper/real/true ending, which is a concept I kinda dislike since it feels like it actively undermines all the other stuff you go through. Yet at the same time, I also kinda like it since it gives you a final goal to work towards when you want to really finish the game.

More importantly, getting it is a bit... odd. We'll cover that when it becomes much more relevant, though. Which is not now.

...And because I trust you to not be incompetent enough to get the Submarine Ending again, I'm letting you take control of this route too.

In order to experience all the endings, you need to save now.

Once you've saved, you can restart the



Once you begin the game again, you can skip through text you've already seen. Simply press "right" on the +Control Pad to fast-forward through lines you've already read. Once you reach lines you haven't seen, or new choices, it will automatically stop.

This is a godsend for repeat playthroughs, since it skips through the text pretty fast. It's not preferable to skipping directly to new things, but I'll take whatever I can. I'll demo this function when we're back in the 3rd class cabin.



Memory of Escape enables you to play the stages you have completed. It is recommended to save after this in order to unlock Memory of Escape.

This is both useful and useless at the same time. It's good for quickly picking any room you want to do without the hassle of sudden mid-room cutscenes and such, but it's more or less useless in practice (save for one minor detail that will be mentioned when we're done completely because it is a giant massive spoiler) since there's no real reason to ever use it. Apparently you can get some interesting dialogue only ever found in it, in lieu of the lengthy mid-room scenes, so if I find some we'll come back to this eventually.





For now, though, we'll just go back to the title screen which has our two new options available. In our current situation, "Continue" and "Begin with Memories" are functionally identical but Begin with Memories works more for if you decide you want to change a decision you've already made but also want to abandon your current path.

Which basically means you'll only ever use it if you realise you're going to end up with the same ending as one of your previous attempts at the game.




[Video: New Game+]

Either way, every time we start a new cycle we must sit through the opening. This gets rather tedious eventually, because there's one thing that you must also do every single time:





...Yup. The 3rd Class Cabin is not skippable ever. Even with our ability to skip through dialogue faster, it still takes a bit of a while since there's some stuff that's not skippable.

There's a lot that is, at least.





You'll never be seeing this room again. I'll be seeing it at least three more times. Only for a few minutes each time, but it's still kind of annoying.

[Video: End]



From here, we run out into the central staircase meet everyone else (except Akane/June/Kanny who comes shortly afterwards) which leads into the short version of the rules, code names and...



The 9th Man losing his shit.



And then everything else too.



It's immediately afterwards we get our first choice, and get to see the second advantage confered within a second (or third or fourth...) cycle. All of our previous choices are greyed out. We can still select them, but this way we can track the progress we've made previously.

This decision changes all of one line of dialogue so I picked June and Santa here just to make sure we didn't get anything different. We don't.

The door opens, June freaks out, gets a fever, collapses. Santa wigs out, Snake mocks him, question time!



Junpei got it right last time, but let's pretend now that he gets it wrong. He does have more moments of idiocy than anyone else after all.



No... Wait, that was wrong.

It was on the tip of Junpei's tongue when Lotus beat him to the punch.



That's what the letter said. In other words, no less than 3, and no more than 5.



Junpei, fortunately, keeps his wrong thoughts to himself rather than exclaim them immediately so he doesn't look like an idiot at least. No matter which wrong answer you pick, Lotus answers before Junpei can correct himself.

Afterwards it continues as normal...



With Snake reading his rule addendum, regarding the RED, DEAD and bracelets. The group cogitates for a while on Zero's identity but don't get anywhere with it, save for minor foreshadowing regarding Seven's occupation.

And then, we come to the doors.



Ace shows that he's a pretty cool dude and volunteers to help Snake, Clover and Seven go through door 5 leaving Santa, Junpei, June and Lotus for door 4...?



But we have to check the maths of that question ourselves. And Junpei isn't sure it's 4 this time!



Wait... No, that wasn't right. No, something didn't seem right.

Junpei ran the numbers again.

8 + 3 + 6 + 5 = 22 → 2 + 2 = [4]

Junpei always gets this one right in the end, though. Things continue from here pretty normally until we're presented with one final choice:



Do we hang out with our bros or not?






...This time, we won't be. We did it already after all. We'll go hang out with Santa, June and Lotus this time. Plus, we did spend every room last time with Seven and look how that ended. Also June might get a bit jealous if we don't spend at least one real room with her. Ideally one in which a man has not exploded. I'm pretty sure door 4 fits that criteria; no one mentioned a corpse in it last time at least.









Junpei Concept Art