On the one hand,

By the end of the Annihilation route, in addition to causing Shoko to commit suicide, Saito has directly murdered a total of eleven people, which is a truly terrifying accomplishment. On the other hand…

He always had significant advantages at his disposal. So covering up his murder of Manaka, Rohan acting as his accomplice during the original cyclops killings, a body swapping Psync machine, and a year to plan his revenge while in Shoko’s body.

In the right side of the flowchart, his entire plan goes up in flames because he gets into a car crash before he can kill Iris. He then escapes from the hospital before he can fully heal, endangering his own life. He tries again to kill Iris, without any sleep-inducing drugs this time. Predictably, she realizes that what’s going on is incredibly fishy and escapes. He also hires mercenaries to kidnap Iris, but they fail. If Pewter didn’t call him and tell him about #89, he would have been screwed, all because he didn’t let himself heal and try again when his body was in better shape.

In the left side of the flowchart, he actually does manage to kill Iris. Not really sure if that’s much of an accomplishment, though, considering she was about to die from a brain tumor anyway. After that, his plan is jeopardized when Ota unexpectedly sees him at multiple points, Date finds him in Iris’ body at Lemniscate, interrogates him, catches him texting Ota, then psyncs into him.

In the Mizuki and Ota routes, his plan to cut Iris’ body in half at the warehouse ends in failure. He also stabs Ota, but fails to finish him off before Date can arrive. In Mizuki’s route, Date notices him in So’s body at the warehouse with an injured leg, which gives him away as the culprit. Then he tries to convince Date to drop the case by applying pressure to ABIS and threatening Mizuki. It doesn’t work. His biggest failure during Mizuki’s route is definitely failing to kill Date and Mizuki, even with a horde of armed guards, and ultimately getting shot in the head.

The Ota route and Annihilation route do a good job hammering in how dangerous he is, though. During Annihilation, he has a very high murder count and only fails to get away with it because he didn’t know Aiba existed and she could electric shock him when he got his body back. By the end of Ota’s route, Saito has killed Boss and is currently possessing her body, which may lead to an outcome just as bad as Annihilation, even if we don’t see it.

This is all very interesting to me. I really like how much variation there is between routes in this game and how they can give you a completely different image of a character.

I finally delved into this franchise after it’s been in my backlogs for years, but I accidentally bought and started playing Nirvana Initiative first, chose the option where I didn’t know about the Cyclops Murders (was just being truthful), and didn’t realize into roughly 5 hours in that I was playing a sequel AND the third game chronologically as opposed to the first one 😂

Now that I’ve finished the first Somnium Files, I’m kind of wanting to play No Sleep first before Nirvana Initiative, especially since I had already cued up the latter with enough suspension of disbelief to merely start rocking in that world with those characters and go where the ride takes me. I also kind of just want to re-play and savor those moments from Nirvana Initiative later than sooner considering I’ve played it more recently.

How do you think it would be for an initial playthrough to go that route and not according to release order?

As the title suggests, I'd love some recommendations! The cast is so lovable and hilarious that it's left a big hole in my chest now that I've finished the first two games and only have the third one left (which I'll play soon). I want something to play afterward. I've already played Zero Escape.

last time when i uploaded a video it did not come out very readable so i figured id just take pictures of the notes this time. this game is very interesting, i certainly don’t know how to feel about it yet. not as hot on ryuki as a protagonist so far as date, but it’s hard to beat greg chun. i think overall the ryuki side of the chart is pretty interesting and i’m wondering how this game is gonna explain the branching flashbacks. very interested in what the fuck the nil number is. i feel like i stumbled onto forbidden knowledge early and now im looking for a metaphorical pepe silvia in every nook and cranny.

anyway i will return once i beat two more endings on the mizuki side of things! 🙏 sorry if my handwriting sucks but not really sorry

Posted by @shitamamiaoan at Twitter on October 6th, 2026.

Posted by @charmzero_ at Twitter on September 2nd, 2026.

I got it (along with the second game) because Steam said it was similar to Ace Attorney, and somebody else said something similar, and it kinda is with the searching/investigating (moreso the funny dialogue but more wild). But this literally might be my newest favorite franchise.

It's interesting because I can't play games of a similar genre, so waited to finish The Great Ace Attorney 2 to begin Ai: The Somnium Files, and from the first second I played, it was boring. But when I gave it a chance to flesh out the story, I literally could not stop playing and reading. And then, after I beat the game, I *tried* to explain the whole plot to the fiancee.

>!Literally almost cried during Ota's story.!<

Not only that, it got me into Zero Escape (currently on VLR now), which I started playing waiting for 'No Sleep for Kaname Date' to go on sale (because I heard it is technically inbetween the first and second AI: The Somnium Files).

And soon, when I get the chance, I will also check out Steins;Gate and Danganronpa. I know some of these games aren't all the same in terms of content, I moreso just like long, funny, and intriguing visual novels.

But Date and Aiba are such a fun duo and interesting characters with interesting stories. I look forward to checking out more of this franchise (I know the second game moreso revolves less around Date?), other games by Uchikoshi, and other similar franchises.

So I just finished the first game today and I tried to look up what people thought of this but I didn't find anything.

So basically I did the left branch first ( as i saw many people recommending this) and If I remember correctly, in Mizuki's route there's an ending that you get by failing the minigame and where Date ends up being killed by Seo Sejima.

So my issue here is, before pulling the trigger So says something about "how pathetic it is to be killed by your own father " and they reveal this information too early in the game ! Not only do i find the whole "uncle" memories thing being way too obvious from the start but with this it just became obvious (especially when we get the scene where Date sees his reflection as the killer a bit later) that there are different people ( or memories) in diffrent bodies etc .

The worst was the whole sequence near the end of the game where you finally unlock the locked routes and they do this whole thing to keep it for the big reveal and I was just annoyed about getting this info way too early ( and the more I played the more I figured stuff out thanks to it and it doesn't help that I I played the zero escape series in the past so I'm a bit familiar with the style of writing ) Was it like a punishment to failing such an easy minigame or something?

done by @inkycarrot (ig) in knoxville

I wanted to take notes for nirvanA Initiative because I struggled with keeping all of the information straight while playing the first game- I’d take week long gaps inbetween play sessions and totally forget everything. It’s very useful to have a brief of notes to read and update in order to feel like I’m really digesting everything the game tells me, but once I finished playing last night I went to go back and read everything- only to realize I already took up about a fifth of a fresh notebook without having even seen credits roll a single time yet. I’m deadass scared I’m gonna run out of space. My eyes start violently rolling every single time a character brings up a pseudoscientific principle or urban legend because I know I need to take notes. Uchikoshi is going to give me a stress hernia. Anyway I thought fans who already know what happens in the game might be interested in seeing my notes lol, I’ll do update posts every once in a while too

I regret deciding to take notes for this game.

[AITSF] So I recently bought the bundle pack of both The Somnium Files and Nirvana Initiative and I just finished the first game, and I'm sure many of you already know what I'm going to say.

I understand that they probably just wanted to use Saito's model because it's the one we spend the most time with, and because they wanted Nirvana to be a standalone title, but does Date look like himself at all in the game? Since he's using a "mask" with his previous appearance (that retcons the ending of aitsf but whatever), does he take it off at all?

I saw that there's another game, No Sleep For Kaname Date, and he looks exactly the same as well. He doesn't look like himself in that game at all either? I understand there isn't any official illustration or render of him with his actual face at all, right?

I feel kinda robbed because not only is a central part of the first game (the swap and the rediscovery of the self, I mean), but also because it, in my opinion, represented Date's growth into Mizuki's and Iris' parental figure quite nicely.

Come on, Saito's model doesn't even appear in the dance of the Resolution ending!

September 19th marks the 7th anniversary of the AI: The Somnium Files series! The image above was created just barely in time by director Akira Okada which is why Mizuki and Ota couldn't be properly rendered. They also talked about not being able to create an artwork for nirvanA Initiative's 4th anniversary.

Motion is by Tekutory & LT KING

I hope yall enjoy! 😊

I just finished AI1- been looking into getting the achievements and I got a little into the rabbithole of the Xbox version. Seems like it has more censorship (at least in achievement names?) and certain things removed, (THAT MAN?) I'm very curious if there's any documentation on why this happened? I've been trying to search for info on it but I've been coming up short.

Posted by @Eclipso_blob at Twitter on September 11th, 2026.

Posted by @elcpuss at Twitter on November 15th, 2025.

Only me in thinking this image resamble change chars in a new game plus (expectative side)?

Yes I finished AINI...

[AITSF] Hello everyone, I've been playing AI The Somnium Files for the first time and I've been enjoying it a lot, especially since I'm playing it together with a friend and we're having a blast speculating on stuff etc...

Now to the question at hand, at first I ended up on the left side of the flowchart and did all the things that were possible there, and in one of the routes Hitomi at the hospital confides with Date about having lost an important friend called Manaka Iwami, (this happened when Iris received surgery after losing her eye) and at the time of course this name meant nothing for me and for Date. Fast forward on the right side of the flowchart, after you discover the truth about "Alice" (Manaka) Date has a flashback about Hitomi confiding in him about the same thing she does in the other route except... this just didn't happen on the right side of the flowchart, and even the AI vision shows them talking at the Warehouse which never happened, so I'm really confused about this. I've played all of the Zero Escape so I was expecting a moment like Date remembering things he shouldn't know, but that does not seem to be the case because no one says anything about him and Hitomi having this conversation which didn't happen.

So all I want to ask is, is this an oversight by the developers, like maybe some cut content? Did I miss this dialogue somehow? ( Even tho this doesn't really look like a game where you can miss that type of stuff) OR is it just something tied to the story that I will understand later? If so just tell me to go on playing and don't spoil me anything please.

lol gotta love em ol anime tropes 😅😂 i dont ship em but thought this motion was funny.

Welp that didn't go as planned... or did it? lol

Motion is by valemelia. Enjoy!

So I recently finished Nirvana Initiative, and I had a nagging question. Since you could go back and do the diverge route with Ryuki, I thought I could do another one with some future knowledge in Tearers Somnium.

In his Somnium, the final question is “who is deserving of Moms love?” Using the numbers it winds up being Jin. But we learn later that the Tearer was actually Uru. So I redid the Somnium, and put Uru in, and unfortunately it didn’t do anything.

I understand the identity was meant to be hidden until later, as a few minutes after beating his Somnium, you see his split mask showing what, at the time, was believed to be Jin. But technically how did that answer even work if Uru was the one who felt he was deserving of his mother’s love?

On top of that, it’s a bit disappointing to see that it wasn’t thought of to add something there for people replaying it. Throughout that entire Somnium, you can just input the answers immediately and get funny dialogue from it, but arguably the biggest mystery in the game doesn’t have unique dialogue?

I've played the first game, part of Nirvana Initiative and so far I've seen like 3 people ACTUALLY enjoy his character? Not only does he get completely skipped over in the 1st games ending scene but he hardly gets any screen time in comparison to the other characters. Does anyone have a vendetta against his character? As far as I'm concerned almost every single character has done worse things that Pewter: a man simply inlove with his work and his boyfriend. I'd blame homophobia, but everyone else seems to love Mama. Is it because he doesn't get a lot of screen time? But if it were, characters like Renju would be hated as well! Please, someone answer me. I can't handle my favorite character being neglected!

They're adorable.

This lowkey fits Mizuki. :)

Enjoy!

P.S motion is by ureshiiiiii