7-Feb-26: Gray's Gaming Gabs -- Z.A.T.O: I Love The World And Everything In It

I did not like Z.A.T.O. I hate that I did not like Z.A.T.O. It's overwhelmingly positive on Steam, it has gorgeous art, as someone who makes their own visual novels I always want to look for the good and never critique except for when it's asked for and despite it all I cannot bring myself to say I liked Z.A.T.O. I should have liked it and it should be something that I aspire to and yet I just don't. And I'm making this blog post to digest why I don't.

First, of course, there's undeniable good. The art, the style, is done impeccably. Love the cutscenes of Asya's breakdowns, snow effects, the realistic backgrounds quantizied down to their barest elements -- that last one I do a lot myself, which is another point for why I should have liked this VN! The effect of it all being kind of windows except for the CGs is pretty amazing!

But it is a visual novel and good grief did I not enjoy the novel portion. The story's largely set in Asya's POV and yes, I'm aware that she's a moody teenager prone to philosophizing, but even then she's somehow still excessively verbose. Part of this might have been due to me reading this aloud, which meant no skimming over those thoughts, but even then I feel like there was a grating point that would have been reached. The pacing suffers past the point that it's trying to make.

And while I did not like the writing, I did like the plot, the themes. There's a point in the story where the trio of characters currently in the story go out and enjoy themselves with a couple of hairbrained schemes to contact Ira, then end with a visit to the movie theater. Asya breaks down by then, because she can't rationalize enjoying herself while Ira's possibly suffering. I can relate to that! There's a lot of themes relating to personal enjoyment and mental health in the front of something traumatic, trying to fill the gap of a sudden, tragic, and unresolved loss.

Even when the story turns supernatural, there's still good themes to be picked. Taking the stabilizer medication that dulls both emotions and connection to the 'code' of the world definitely feels like trying to tune out of social media, the world, isolating yourself. The universe trying to correct things to baseline, when applied to Asya's new friends, the day out, then everything returning to normal, it all feels like it's building to this all. Coping with loss, coping with isolation, coping with people's desire to return to normal from an event that's scarred you to the core, being able to send out a message that the world is worth love and being loved despite it all.

But, like, Z.A.T.O. doesn't really... follow-through with those themes?

A tangent, Asya has two breakdowns that go into stark black-and-white accented with red; one when remembering what happened to Tosya, another brief one when she's trying to get into Marina's apartment. Tosya shows up near the end, due to Asya's latent abilities to sort of, will things from the code? And she remembers Tosya's incident at the car repair shop again, but it passes without incident. And there should be that feeling of growth and moving past trauma at that moment, but there isn't. The story reflects that it's just boring to think on, and moves on past towards broadcasting the message. Tosya and Asya completely forget one another's names and their colleagues near the end, which, kind of just makes the final message of love she does transmit feel.. a bit hollow? The message of love is no longer broadcast in spite of all the difficulties Asya faced, but rather out of a kind of momentum?

I didn't mind the supernatural. It was built up towards, it was referenced through her disassociating and seeing the patterns, the bird passing, repeating dialogue. But it feels like the entirety of it kind of supersedes everything before it. Chapter 2 is like 60-70% of the run time of this VN and it feels like it's made irrelevant with chapter 3. Everyone is basically forgotten about in lieu of Tosya, who we never really get a good picture on or about for the majority of the VN. Tosya's possibly just an alter ego of Asya? Which would make that last declaration of love like, self-love, which would also be a good thing, but-

It not just that Asya forgets, but that the story doesn't even seem to care that she forgets. Her declaration of love for the world isn't made in spite of all the suffering she's for the entirety of the story, it's made out of momentum of climbing the tower, then she's relieved of the burden of broadcasting a message she's been constantly tested on to an uncaring god-like universe. She doesn't even remember that she meant for the declaration to go to the world rather than to Tosya. And this could be read as a tragedy because of the whole dissolving of Vorkuta-5, but it kind of just feels like it falls flat to me because the epilogue has students listening in think it's a convoluted love confession. The story themes it as being a genuine message of love, when I read it as a hollow one undoing the growth of Asya's character.

While tossing and turning, trying to digest my thoughts, one thought came to that one post on Fire Emblem writing about killing the Problem Dragon. But it doesn't even feel like Z.A.T.O. gets the Problem Dragon. It gets the corpse of the Problem Dragon, and everything is 'solved' because of the death of the Problem Dragon you didn't even get to fight. The entirety of the story and themes feel like they don't even matter from how the ending is presented. The story builds and builds and builds, and then makes a sharp right turn, then slams the brakes. All of the growth and trauma and tribulations that the four main characters go through is made irrelevant, which wouldn't be bad, but the story doesn't so much linger on their irrelevancy in the face of overwhelming disaster or tragedy. The closure and disappearance of Ira into the code barely gets a nod before the story moves on to 'this'll happen to all of us'. Vadim and Marina aren't eulogized or recognized, they're there and suffering the exposure to the code, and then the story acts as if they didn't exist, and they might as well not have by the end.

It's a puzzle set, but it's not missing a piece. I could live if there was a missing piece because I could extrapolate. Instead there's like three extra pieces that fit in to the completed picture, and I keep switching them in and out and in and out and the picture always looks completed but wrong and maybe fitting in that piece would complete it but it doesn't and I keep switching them. Surely, surely this piece fits in because why else would you include them? And it does, but it slots out another piece.

I think I'd still recommend Z.A.T.O., but not in spite of its flaws. More like, 'I really really hope you don't feel these flaws like I do.'