Why is nobody talking about this game? I know there are a lot of 999 fans here and the game is almost out. The demo is out (for Vita, anyway), and I played it today. So here are some thoughts:
The good:
Seems like a pretty solid localization. The voice acting is good.
Some nice puzzles, at least in the limited amount I got to see.
Interface works nicely, for the most part.
The bad:
I'm sorry, but this game is just ugly, both technically and artistically. I suppose you can argue the latter, but I really don't care for the flamboyant character designs and constantly-recycled over-the-top pre-canned animations. Technically this game is garbage. Low polygon counts, crappy low-res textures, etc.
Moving to 3D character models was a controversial move but it can open up a lot of possibilities. Unfortunately they don't really take advantage of them, except maybe in cutscenes. If you're in the room with somebody else, would it be that hard to show them there? Instead of having them magically appear when there's dialogue and then completely vanish when there's not? (Even though you have complete freedom to look around the room...) Yeah, that's hard to do with 2D character art, which is why it's not something you would usually see in a visual novel type interface, but since they already switched to 3D character models why not use them for something? Not to mention that these aren't even good character models...
But if the character models are bad the environments are positively barren. Yes, they're supposed to be kind of barren, but I mean video game barren--where every wall looks literally exactly the same because they only have one texture.
OK, I wrote a lot more under "The bad", but they were all superficial things. It does seem like a solid game.