So I just finished watching 999 on my iPad, and I really liked the story and the timespace-philosophical narrative - but holy crap is it slow-paced. I thought the Metal Gear series was bad about padding dialogue with needless repetition, but this one takes the biscuit. I think the last segment, the "true" ending, took me 4 or 5 hours to sit through from the final story branch, at the highest text speed setting, for what in-game should be an hour. I was tearing my hair out at the needlessly slow pace of the dialogue boxes and the all the needless repetion. Think: "Metal Gear?! No! It can't be!" over and over and over and over.

So yes, I loved the narrative, even though they should have cut half of the lines and made the transitions a lot snappier.

So - how is VLR in this regard? Have they tightened up the dialogue direction and given options to advance quicker through the dialogue?

I can't speak to the iPad version of 999 but in VLR you're able to skip to the end of the current text box just like you could in 999. They've also added a button to skip through previously read text.

What ImHungry said. Although I would like to note that it's my understanding that the iOS version of 999 is the FAST version of that game. The original DS version had puzzle rooms you needed to solve every time through, and I believe iOS has a few other quick dialogue options not present originally.

It was kind of a hassle.

Needless repetition and endless longwinded writing is a staple of visual novels. I haven't personally played any of the zero time series, but I would bet that if you thought 999 had writing issues along those lines, VLR will too.