Recent reviews by Loerwyn

This is not the best remaster that has been released, there's a number of issues with it. The dialogue audio sounds like it is being played through a phone speaker, there's numerous grammatical and spelling errors in the text and the visuals are very inconsistent in quality (the worst looking almost like it was worked on with AI upscaling). It is also missing features from other versions of the software, particularly a TIPS system.

That said, I have enjoyed playing it. I completed my first route today and I did have a good time. Once you get into it you become accustomed to the problems and enjoy it for what it is. There are definite shades and hints of Uchikoshi's later works in this (time travel, fate, etc.) so it's very interesting to see what he did before we got Zero Escape and AI.

It would be great if Spike Chunsoft and MAGES released an update to fix the issues, but I think this VN is playable and enjoyable as it stands. It's just a very weak attempt at a remaster.

I feel really bad putting this as "Not Recommended", but I feel like this DLC has not lived up to the quality of the previous content. The new ships are big - REALLY big - and it takes hours to just do the contracts for each, but there's so little fun or innovation in these new ships. They're beyond repetitive, contain few to no hazards, and tend towards boring.

There's also no upgrades for the player with this content, and whilst capacities/speed/etc. have been increased in updates and patches, you're still going to be spending a lot of time picking up the same few parts over and over and over again. That means there's no real progression beyond getting the collectables and achievements, because the money gained is absolutely worthless with no incentive to fully complete a ship.

I do still stand by my recommendation of SGS2 and the early content, and the dev team have clearly put work into this content, but it is utterly soulless and doesn't iterate on the content that came before. They're basic ships at ridiculous sizes.

This is a must-play for all Zero Escape fans, particularly those who enjoyed Virtue's Last Reward (it is more a sequel to that than 999, in my opinion), because it gives a lot of back story to some of the characters and shows some connections.
However, it is easily the weakest of the ZE games. It has the fewest puzzles/escape rooms and the difficulty is the lowest of all of the games. Towards the end of the game it is easy to get "stuck" when you are missing some vital information and you can spoil some reveals if you put the right information in at the wrong time. The animation quality is pretty poor and the visuals aren't amazing either. For the PC version it definitely feels like an upscaled port of an earlier console game.

I do recommend this, but with the caveat I only recommend it to Zero Escape fans and you have to go in knowing it is the poorest of the series.

If you're a fan of SGS2 then this DLC is definitely going to be of interest. The biggest ships in the game! The first three ships are pretty routine and use existing mechanics and pieces except for steam, which is new to this DLC and is a minor challenge but can be dealt with fairly easily. The final ship, however, has some unique assets and I feel it's the best part of this DLC. I wished the other three ships were more like this.

However, I don't think this DLC is close to as good as it should be at the time of writing. The final two ships are utterly exhausting to do and with no new tool upgrades there's no reason to 100% them beyond the contracts as you won't need the money. The final ship itself is an absolute bore to do once you clear most of the easy stuff, and you'll find yourself spending literally hours picking up the same pieces you have done since the very first ship and chucking them in your truck or mobile cargo bins, and this is made worse by the appalling first contract which has unreasonably high weight targets for Low-Alloy Steel, Wood and Iron - targets so high that even at 75% of their current value they would still be obscene.

I do recommend this DLC if you like SGS2, because it adds a new challenge and some new ships, but I would like to see this one tweaked and future content bring further tool upgrades.

Honestly, this game was really fun and enjoyable. I found the story interesting and the gameplay is varied enough that it doesn't tend to feel like it's too much of one thing and not enough of another, though it does tend more towards combat than puzzle-solving. The voice acting is reasonable for a game of this size and budget, and it's better than some I've heard in bigger games.

It's not perfect, however. The cinematics seem to be rendered at a low resolution and can be quite jarring, they would have generally been much better if they had taken place in the engine with the game's assets. The early hour or two of the game is disproportionately difficult compared to the later stages which seem to just get easier and easier. The pacing of upgrades and knowledge (how the game rewards XP for ability upgrades) is also a little rushed towards the end and I ended up with 11 or 12 surplus ability points by the end after completing the whole ability tree.

If you want a short game with an interesting story, I think you could do much worse than getting Scars Above, and I would like to see this game get a sequel.

This DLC was extremely welcome after completing the original ships in the game. The new ships are bigger and more complex, and the addition of the radioactivity mechanic makes it more interesting and adds a new level of challenge to dismantling the ships. The crane also gets to be used more as you work through the ship, and combined with the improved crane system, this makes progress much smoother and more natural.

The comparisons to Hardspace: Shipbreaker are not unwarranted! This is a pretty relaxing way to spend some time, methodically dismantling sections of a ship (and later, full ships) with a selection of tools. Aside from the main objective of scrapping the ship, there are three contracts per ship type to fulfil which require you to gather certain amounts of material and which reward you with currency, and you use that to buy bigger projects or put into upgrades. You can't die in this title unlike Hardspace, but mistakes are punished by destruction of materials so there is still some risk.

The game isn't hugely balanced in terms of its economy or pacing, I felt like I could get a substantial number of upgrades very early in the game and I haven't yet noticed a limit to how much weight the truck can hold. The rope tool is quite useful for getting around ships but it can be a little frustrating to use and at one point I felt as though I had gotten stuck as I couldn't climb up onto the rear end of a ship to dismantle the last panels - a ladder tool may be a useful addition for climbing one level at a time. It also can get quite dull and repetitive in the final stages of each ship when you are just picking up girders (themselves often a bit frustrating to remove as they don't tend to follow the physics of the rest of the items) and the floors/walls for a considerable period of time.

This is an interesting and mind-bending narrative game with puzzle elements, and a story I found both compelling yet also a little too abstract for myself.
The puzzles are generally fairly easy (time-based puzzles are a part of this game, though). I had to look up the solution for one or two puzzles, particularly one of the final ones as it's abstract, but also one of the earlier puzzles is prone to bugging out.
Overall I'm glad I gave this another chance and I very much enjoyed playing it, but I do feel any meaning to the story went over my head.

Pretty fun and silly game, and the glitches and jankiness make it even more fun. You never know if the game is suddenly going to screw you over.

However, it's pretty easy to get to a point where the rabbits (the 'enemies') are generally not a threat, and the survival mechanics can be handled with ease due to the frequence of water and food. Hopefully this is something that will change as the game gets more updates and more content.

I recommend this game based on the feeling that it has a lot of potential, even if the base game as it stands is a little shaky.