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In the second chapter of Mizuki’s route in AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative, you’ll need to enter the psyche of Gen, the lovable owner of the restaurant B🐼rahman World Cuisine. As with the other somniums in🌊 the game, you’ll need to solve a series of puzzles in order to unlock mental locks and clear the somnium.
Gen’s somnium focuses on his love of cooking as a metaphor for his life, meaning some of the solutions to this sequence's puzzles may be familiar to you if you’ve been paying attention to Gen’s dialogue during the story. This somnium also only contains four mental locks and has no branching p꧅aths, so it’s a bit simpler ♊than some of the other somniums in the game. Follow our guide below to solve the puzzles and uncover the mysteries of Gen’s mind.
Mental Lock #1
The first mental lock of Gen’s somnium is fairly easy to solve if you know wh๊at to look for amongst the many intractable elements you’ll come face-to-face within the resꦍtaurant.
After Aiba introduces the somnium with their hilarious salmon impression, you can move around freely and interact with a number of interesting things in the restaurant, such as the print of Ganesha or the table for only a few seconds each.
In order to advance, however, you’ll need to find Gen’s cooking notes behind the counter in the centre of the room. These notes will elucidate Gen’s deep love of cooking as a𝓰n art, and provide a hint towards what this somn๊ium will involve.
Mental Lock #2
The entire restaurant will suddenly transformไ into an Iron Chef tournamen𝄹t stage! Aiba is elected as Super Chef A to participate against Gen in a culinary tournament.
Aiba will note that they do not have any cooking skills at all, so Mizuki suggests using their ‘timie’ item to reduce a lengthy amount of training time down to only one second in reality. A choice will be presented to you between training or not training. You should choose training, but note that the countdown time reduction on the training will be incredibly long unless you apply the item that reduces it to one second.
After training in cooking for nearly a year, Aiba is now ready to take on Gen in the iron chef tournament. When the tournament begins, get ready to take part in a minigame that will require some very rapid inputs under a time limit. Press the buttons listed f🌳rom left to right as quickly as you can, anꦑd Aiba will cook up a very impressive salad.
This minigame will occur twice more for the main course and dessert.
It’s important to note that it doesn’t matter if you mess up on an input as each button is counted individually rather than as a whole sequence.
After creating the ‘god cake’ and having your meals judged, you will have won the tournament, unlocking the second mental lock.
Mental Lock #3
For the third mental lock, you’ll need to release Gen from his cage. To do this, as Aiba suggests, you should f🐠irst inspect Gen’s v🔯arious dishes to see if they contain any meaning.
Move to Gen’s Salad and choose the option to eat it. This will give a flashback from Gen’s perspective and advance your depth in the somnium slightly. Repeat this for Gen’s Main Dish and Gen’s Desert, respectively, eating both to get more cutscenes te﷽lling us Gen’s tragic backstor🌠y.
After eating all three dishes, you can go and talk to Amame, who is sitting at the judge’s desk. You’ll be asked to select what Gen’s food is missing. Select the option self-love, which Amame will agree with.
Amame will then help Gen get out of the cage they’re in, unlocking the third mental lock.
Mental Lock #4
For the fourth and final mental lock of the somnium, your objective will become a fairly nebulous instruction: find the last clue.
Gen will present you with a plate of omelet rice and you’ll be offered two choices: eat it or throw it away. Knowing that Gen gains a sense of value from their role as chef at Brahman World Cuisine, you should choose the option to eat the omelet rice.
Inside the meal, you’ll find the final clue you’re looking for. Convenient! This will unlock the fourth mental lock and complete the somnium, giving you another valuable clue in the case of the Half𓄧-Body Serial Killings.