AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative

 PC
User Score
8.3

Generally favorable reviews- based on 104 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 83 out of 104
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 104
  3. Negative: 12 out of 104

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  1. eri41205
    Aug 25, 2022
    7
    Not his best work, but certainly not a big let down. I'm happy with all the memes and old characters coming back. I had a great time playing it.
  2. fewcus
    Jul 5, 2022
    7
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I'll present my issues for the game in bullet-point format, since it's probably easier to read/digest:

    - In comparison to the first game, it felt like the overall cast were weaker. The stand out additions to the cast are Tokiko, Komeji, Ryuki and Tama. Even for the latter two, they suffer from a general lack of screen time and hasty resolution to their characters. This also extends to their relationships with one another, such as the relationship between the protagonist pairs of Mizuki/Aiba and Ryuki/Tama being largely undeveloped.

    - Building on the above, certain relationships totally ignore their development from AI. This is most noticeable with Date's relationships with the various characters, especially Mizuki and Aiba, who brush past his 6-year disappearance and reappearance with bad emotional payoff.

    - The core twist in the narrative relies on heavy contrivance and needs some pretty heavy suspention of disbelief to work. Whilst i can just about get behind it, I can't blame anyone who is sorely disappointed or upset by it. My suggestion going forward regarding these sorts of twists would be: if you need to bend the narrative and characters in unnatural or unbelievable ways to get it to work, rethink how you twist works or, more drastically, scrap it and start again.

    - Also regarding twists, but there's been a habbit across these two games to provide minimal justification for some the more out-there Sci-Fi ones. In this one I'm talking about everything involving the Frayer. Why do we experience the game as we do? What is our purpose within the simulation? Etc.

    - The somniums in general are an improvement over the last game, with more variety of mechanics, but I'd personally have liked them to be more challenging mentally. I also think they're not as satisfying emotionally / narratively compared to the best of the last game, but there are still some greats among them.

    - There are a few moments in the game where you're asked to input the solution to a puzzle but aren't able to examine the clues / evidence to work things out. There are also moments where you're asked to remember a series of words or a number but there's no in-game means of jotting this down (from what I can remember). Something like the memo pad from the ZE games would be appreciated as a QoL feature.

    - The action scenes last longer than they should and so feel exhausting and, in the case of Mizuki's action sequences, feel low-stakes due to her super-human abilities.

    - Minor complaint, but the song / dance number for this game was overplayed too much. Made the actual final instance of it in the game not be as impactful.

    Overall, though, I still enjoyed my time with game quite a bit. This website doesn't let me input half-scores, but I'd give it a 7.5 or so, higher on a good day.    … Expand
  3. 4u9DnIq7eEiVxEP
    Jul 4, 2022
    5
    Character writing was mostly pretty good, but Uchikoshi continues to force low brow humor through Tama so often that it stopped being funny and was just uncomfortable.

    There are several twists in this game, one of which was pretty clever, the others just didn't feel particularly satisfying and felt like "magic scifi nonsense" to fill a few plot holes the first major twist opened. The    Character writing was mostly pretty good, but Uchikoshi continues to force low brow humor through Tama so often that it stopped being funny and was just uncomfortable.

    There are several twists in this game, one of which was pretty clever, the others just didn't feel particularly satisfying and felt like "magic scifi nonsense" to fill a few plot holes the first major twist opened.

    The culprit's motives felt weak by the end considering how little we saw of their connection to the victims.

    Ultimately, an okay mystery, but Uchikoshi continues to demonstrate that he peaked at 999 and VLR. The man clearly still has some interesting ideas but has yet to stick the landing on any of them since then.    … Expand
  4. BillyHerrington
    Jul 3, 2022
    7
    A lot of contrived things in this game just to make "that" work. It's sad the story fell apart this bad since i really liked everything else about it. Kotaro really needs some help when making the main story. Also action scenes are a waste of resources.
  5. hp95
    Jul 21, 2022
    6
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. An overall strong first half, colossally messy second half that does a disservice to many characters, including it's protagonists, for the sake of a clumsily executed twist

    Ryuki was a likable, engaging, and sympathetic protagonist, and it's a damn shame that the story basically threw him to the side with no real closure or resolution in it's second half, his mental illness ultimately used as a plot device for the sake of the big twist

    Mizuki, likewise, starts out promising, but has no growth or change to soeak of, her relationship with Date is basically irrelevant, and she's the victim of a pointless retcon that, again, is only there for the sake of a twist. And her screentime is essentially cut in half for the sake of a same twist. The protagonist that was initially promised to us only gets maybe 10-15 hours of screentime?

    The Date is Missing subplot is similarly pointless. There's no payoff, hardly anyone besides Ryuki seems particularly bothered by it (for some reason, Iris has nothing to say???), and the reason for his absence is essentially an unfunny joke. He gets written out of the story for 6 years, tainting the ending of the first game, and it ultimately doesn't actually matter.

    The Big Twist is essentially a worse version of what Ever17 did. The game just lies to the player and the game has to break the fourth wall to explain it because there's no way to reveal it naturally within the story (except there is, with Ryuki, but we know he was totally squandered), and the game has to jump through so many hoops to justify it, no matter how unnatural and regardless of how the characters suffered for it. The plot and characters have to bend in order for the story to not collapse in on itself, all for the sake of a twist that doesn't matter outside of shocking only the player and the story's underutilized metanarrative (that only has payoff in an optional ending some players may not even find)

    The core cast of this game doesn't even really compare to last game's. Again, i like Ryuki, Tama is endearing, Tokiko is interesting and hilarious, Komeji and his family are great, but Gen is basically a satellite to Amame and rarely feels like his own person, the Masked Woman is...fine, I guess, but once again she feels like she exists purely for the sake of a twist so she doesn't have much development, Kizuna and Lien's relationship is honestly embarrassing (not helped by the fact that we miss 6 years of their life), and Tearer doesn't even compare to the Cyclops Killer. And while I do like what was done with Amame, I wish she had more of a presence throughout. She's just kind of, there, silent and recluse for most of it. For understandable reasons, but I feel like I only really know who she is as a person by the end of the game, and the emotional payoff just isn't really there for me.

    I'm honestly not really even sure what the game is about...per, se? It's trying to do stuff about opposites and halves but then it goes and does something completely unrelated with simulation theory. It tries to do both and the whole thing feels unfocused and incoherent.

    Overall, i think...it's pretty disappointing? And i hate saying that because the first game is possibly an all-time fave, so it hurts extra hard to see this one miss the mark on what made that game special. :(    … Expand
  6. JPJun
    Jul 5, 2022
    5
    I'll start this off by saying that the first game is my favorite game of all the games that I've played, so keep in mind that my expectations were very heavily set by the first game and I did still find this game somewhat enjoyable, just extremely bad compared to the first game.

    The worst part of this game is the cast, they're just not that enjoyable at all, which the cast was the best    I'll start this off by saying that the first game is my favorite game of all the games that I've played, so keep in mind that my expectations were very heavily set by the first game and I did still find this game somewhat enjoyable, just extremely bad compared to the first game.

    The worst part of this game is the cast, they're just not that enjoyable at all, which the cast was the best part of the first game. The new additions were alright, but nothing great and there were a lot of times where Tama just came off as extremely annoying. She has her good points where she shows care for Ryuki, but most of the time she acts like an immature brat and the what feel like constant dirty jokes don't help. They were funny at first, but they were so overdone and they were pretty much the only jokes surrounding the two the whole time. The story was alright, but the first game's was much better.

    There were good points of course, but frankly most of them were the jokes that they kept from the first game like Kagami and the bones. If you haven't played this or the first one, I highly recommend the first and not so much this one. This one might be better for those who didn't like how goofy the first game was. The reason I liked the first game was because of it's silliness, but I know there were a lot of people who didn't like it for that reason, so perhaps this was the attempt to appeal to those people.

    I am very disappointed the new addition to the series of my favorite game did not even come close to it. I hope that if this series ever gets another game that it will be much better than what was created here.

    Also Aiba best girl.    … Expand
  7. morrinigan
    Jul 5, 2022
    6
    Only doing because Mr. Uchikoshi asked on twitter. While the first entry into the series was average in terms of gameplay, it had very charming character writing. However, the second game has sacrificed character-writing for the sake of superfluous twists that are inconsequential to the player's emotional investment of the game outside any initial surprise they might instill. Ryuki isOnly doing because Mr. Uchikoshi asked on twitter. While the first entry into the series was average in terms of gameplay, it had very charming character writing. However, the second game has sacrificed character-writing for the sake of superfluous twists that are inconsequential to the player's emotional investment of the game outside any initial surprise they might instill. Ryuki is well-defined, but essentially forgotten about by the third act of the game. This game relies solely on the growth and endearment Mizuki earns in the first game, choosing not to explore her interiority any further in this installment. Another major character is left without any major development for the sake of a twist that also has no real bearing on how the player feels towards these characters or the emotions evoked by the game. The first game may have been rough around the edges, but at least the somnium gameplay segments had the task of figuring out the logic to the character's dream and figuring out how to apply that in changing contexts. It could be considered a genuine puzzle game. This has been done away with and streamlined to the point that the game will essentially tell you what to do in the somnium, even on standard difficulty, and you must simply listen. The prior game had multiple solutions to how a somnium could be completed, but in this game there are no alternatives to the solutions presented by the game, no chance for the player to think on their own. The only somnium that asked for critical thinking on the player's part was what is the "last" one the player does. The game is additionally padded with "QTE action segments" reminiscent of those seen in Quantic Dream games. The only true improvement in terms of gameplay are the VR segments, which in true point-and-click mystery tradition, allow the player to investigate the scene the for clues and piece together the order of events. If they wanted to make a reading-focused visual novel instead of a point-and-click adventure game, there are many other ways to go about it. With this game's own publisher, Spike Chunsoft, bringing Disco Elysium to Japan this August, it couldn't be a better example of how far behind this game is in terms of gameplay among its peers in the genre. And Disco Elysium was 1/3rd cheaper than this game when it came out. AiNi feels like both the writer and the gameplay directors relying on relics of their styles while everyone else has moved on without them and indie studios have already blazed past them.… Expand

Awards & Rankings

11
#11 Best PC Game of 2022
62
#62 Most Discussed PC Game of 2022

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
88

Generally favorable reviews - based on 10 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 10
  3. Negative: 0 out of 10
  1. Impulsegamer
    Jul 11, 2022
    86
    AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES - nirvanA Initiative is a superior game compared to its predecessor in almost every aspect. While some of the puzzle segments are a bit long-winded and can be quite complicated, the experiences they provide alone are incredibly worth it, and the characters make the game so fun to play.
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  2. Hey Poor Player
    Jun 27, 2022
    90
    AI: The Somnium Files – nirvanA Initiative isn’t a perfect game, but it offers one of the best mysteries I’ve ever seen in a game. Combine that with a wonderful cast and somnium sequences that blow away the original game, and you have a visual novel that is a must-play for anyone interested in the genre. AI: The Somnium Files was minor Uchikosi, but nirvanA Initiative stands among his best work.
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  3. Destructoid
    Jun 26, 2022
    85
    If you’re looking for a compelling detective adventure with heart and smarts, it’s easy to recommend AI: The Sominum Files – nirvanA Initiative. It feels like the realization of what this world can be, and a promising step forward from its predecessor. It might still have a few wrinkles, but by the final credits roll, it’ll likely win over any investigator’s heart.
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