What are you playing?

[Seraphim]

Just finished chapter 7 of Higurashi, somewhat later than expected due to me being pretty busy this past weekend.

Spoiler

If Chapter 6 was the most exciting and interesting chapter, Chapter 7 was the most satisfying one. Even the ending, while dark and gritty, left me with a feeling of hope for better things to come. I guess the proper term would be "bittersweet".

Satoko had to endure hardship much in the same way she did in Chapter 3, but it was heartwarming to see all the people come together and fight for the sake of ending her torment.
I do have to say though that I think the whole rescue operation was poorly handled. Asking Satoko to openly rebel against the person who's supposedly abusing her, knowing full well that she's currently alone with him, seems to me like one of the most idiotic ideas they could have come up with. It worked out in the end because the police secretly stormed the place right after the phone call, but if that hadn't been the case, who knows what would have happened to Satoko by the time rescue had arrived.

When Satoko went bonkers in the classroom, it was revealed that she, due to her illness, needs to be injected with some medicine to calm down. This reminded me of a few other scenes, namely when Rika tried to inject Shion with something in Chapter 5 and Rena in Chapter 6. The reader was probably expected to think of it as some kind of dangerous substance at the time, but I'm pretty sure by now that it was the same type of medicine Satoko uses. After all, Rika brought it when Shion and Rena started exhibiting erratic behavior.

The Hinamizawa Syndrome twist itself didn't come as much of a surprise. I had started suspecting there might be some sort of mass delusion, mental illness or something along those lines influencing the citizens of Hinamizawa. When I learned at the start of the chapter that Satoko was undergoing treatment for something, that more or less solidified that theory in my mind, and it was confirmed later on in the story. I'm glad to finally get a real explanation about the particulars of why some people have gone delusional/crazy in the previous chapters. It seems pretty clear by now that Takano deliberately sowed seeds of doubt in the minds of the characters for that purpose specifically. Coincidentally, Ooishi does the same thing, but I doubt it's intentional on his part.

I have to say I'm a bit disappointed that Takano turned out to be a bad guy, since that's basically the picture the game has been painting all along. I was hoping there was something more to it than that; that it might be meant as some play on misconceptions with the reader and that she'd turn out to just be an ordinary person. In a way, I feel like that would have been more interesting.

One thing that blows my mind is that Rika knows a ton of information about the Tokyo company, including their goal of weaponizing the Hinamizawa Syndrome, that Takano works for them and that she is in charge of a special task force specializing in kidnappings, assassinations, manipulating information and whatnot, and despite all this, Rika, over the course of 100+ years, doesn't think even once that "Gee, maybe I shouldn't trust Takano". I mean, she's basically strutting around right in front of Rika's eyes with a huge signboard saying "Guilty, hee hee!" while playing Billy Eilish's "I'm The Bad Guy" on a loudspeaker.
If I was Rika, I would have been highly suspicious of her right from the getgo and would have asked Hanyuu to spy on her in secret to make sure of her intentions.

Some random thoughts:
- The thing I'm most confused about right now is what Takano means by all the talk about realizing the curse of Oyashiro-sama, becoming a god, etc. She might just be batshit crazy, but that doesn't seem like a very interesting pretext.
- If Hanyuu is indeed a supernatural entity and it's true that she goes on living when Rika dies and also retains her memories, that should mean that she knows full well what actually happens to Rika in her final moments but she's choosing not to tell her for some reason. This doesn't seem to sync with her claim that she wants Rika to stay alive, since giving Rika information about her unfortunate demise should increase her chances of doing just that.
- We're told that Satoko is a terminal Hinamizawa Syndrome patient and that there's something she shouldn't remember. This seems to indicate that she's actually the one responsible for her parents death, pushing them off the viewing platform in a state of delusion and then forgetting all about it once she recovered her sanity. However, there's some info at the end of the chapter claiming that a terminal patient will never recover from their delirium, and that seems contradictory in this case.
- Big shocker that this trustworthy-looking guy turned out to be a not so nice person.

I hope Chapter 8 has some glorious retribution in store for Takano and the people who side with her. I'm not entirely sure that will happen, though. I've heard that in Umineko, there's supposedly a character that spoils Higurashi, and Takano seems to fit the bill better than anyone for that particular role. Then again, I don't even know when Umineko takes place. If it's before Higurashi and Takano's actually part of the Umineko story, she might still meet her demise in Higurashi. Time will tell.
As for the other characters, I hope they'll finally be able to find happiness at the end of this long and winding road.

As of right now, the 07th mod for Chapter 8 has yet to be released. The previous ones have been completed roughly a month after the release of the chapters themselves, and if that's the case this time as well, I'm still on schedule to read that chapter this coming weekend. Otherwise, I'll have to put off reading it until the mod is released.

[Silvz]

1 hour ago, Seraphim88 said:

Just finished chapter 7 of Higurashi, somewhat later than expected due to me being pretty busy this past weekend.

  Hide contents

If Chapter 6 was the most exciting and interesting chapter, Chapter 7 was the most satisfying one. Even the ending, while dark and gritty, left me with a feeling of hope for better things to come. I guess the proper term would be "bittersweet".

Satoko had to endure hardship much in the same way she did in Chapter 3, but it was heartwarming to see all the people come together and fight for the sake of ending her torment.
I do have to say though that I think the whole rescue operation was poorly handled. Asking Satoko to openly rebel against the person who's supposedly abusing her, knowing full well that she's currently alone with him, seems to me like one of the most idiotic ideas they could have come up with. It worked out in the end because the police secretly stormed the place right after the phone call, but if that hadn't been the case, who knows what would have happened to Satoko by the time rescue had arrived.

When Satoko went bonkers in the classroom, it was revealed that she, due to her illness, needs to be injected with some medicine to calm down. This reminded me of a few other scenes, namely when Rika tried to inject Shion with something in Chapter 5 and Rena in Chapter 6. The reader was probably expected to think of it as some kind of dangerous substance at the time, but I'm pretty sure by now that it was the same type of medicine Satoko uses. After all, Rika brought it when Shion and Rena started exhibiting erratic behavior.

The Hinamizawa Syndrome twist itself didn't come as much of a surprise. I had started suspecting there might be some sort of mass delusion, mental illness or something along those lines influencing the citizens of Hinamizawa. When I learned at the start of the chapter that Satoko was undergoing treatment for something, that more or less solidified that theory in my mind, and it was confirmed later on in the story. I'm glad to finally get a real explanation about the particulars of why some people have gone delusional/crazy in the previous chapters. It seems pretty clear by now that Takano deliberately sowed seeds of doubt in the minds of the characters for that purpose specifically. Coincidentally, Ooishi does the same thing, but I doubt it's intentional on his part.

I have to say I'm a bit disappointed that Takano turned out to be a bad guy, since that's basically the picture the game has been painting all along. I was hoping there was something more to it than that; that it might be meant as some play on misconceptions with the reader and that she'd turn out to just be an ordinary person. In a way, I feel like that would have been more interesting.

One thing that blows my mind is that Rika knows a ton of information about the Tokyo company, including their goal of weaponizing the Hinamizawa Syndrome, that Takano works for them and that she is in charge of a special task force specializing in kidnappings, assassinations, manipulating information and whatnot, and despite all this, Rika, over the course of 100+ years, doesn't think even once that "Gee, maybe I shouldn't trust Takano". I mean, she's basically strutting around right in front of Rika's eyes with a huge signboard saying "Guilty, hee hee!" while playing Billy Eilish's "I'm The Bad Guy" on a loudspeaker.
If I was Rika, I would have been highly suspicious of her right from the getgo and would have asked Hanyuu to spy on her in secret to make sure of her intentions.

Some random thoughts:
- The thing I'm most confused about right now is what Takano means by all the talk about realizing the curse of Oyashiro-sama, becoming a god, etc. She might just be batshit crazy, but that doesn't seem like a very interesting pretext.
- If Hanyuu is indeed a supernatural entity and it's true that she goes on living when Rika dies and also retains her memories, that should mean that she knows full well what actually happens to Rika in her final moments but she's choosing not to tell her for some reason. This doesn't seem to sync with her claim that she wants Rika to stay alive, since giving Rika information about her unfortunate demise should increase her chances of doing just that.
- We're told that Satoko is a terminal Hinamizawa Syndrome patient and that there's something she shouldn't remember. This seems to indicate that she's actually the one responsible for her parents death, pushing them off the viewing platform in a state of delusion and then forgetting all about it once she recovered her sanity. However, there's some info at the end of the chapter claiming that a terminal patient will never recover from their delirium, and that seems contradictory in this case.
- Big shocker that this trustworthy-looking guy turned out to be a not so nice person.

I hope Chapter 8 has some glorious retribution in store for Takano and the people who side with her. I'm not entirely sure that will happen, though. I've heard that in Umineko, there's supposedly a character that spoils Higurashi, and Takano seems to fit the bill better than anyone for that particular role. Then again, I don't even know when Umineko takes place. If it's before Higurashi and Takano's actually part of the Umineko story, she might still meet her demise in Higurashi. Time will tell.
As for the other characters, I hope they'll finally be able to find happiness at the end of this long and winding road.

As of right now, the 07th mod for Chapter 8 has yet to be released. The previous ones have been completed roughly a month after the release of the chapters themselves, and if that's the case this time as well, I'm still on schedule to read that chapter this coming weekend. Otherwise, I'll have to put off reading it until the mod is released.

About Umineko, were you in the discussion we had on 07th Mod's discord channel these days? There are in fact characters in Umineko that spoil some of Higurashi's twists, but as for the one that you mentioned, it's not the same character, but just a red herring [according to Ryukishi himself]. About when Umineko takes place:

 

Spoiler

It takes place in 1986, but the story is completely standalone and aside from some references to Higurashi and its worldbuilding, [and one character that is the same], there is no relation storywise to it.

 

[Seraphim]

2 minutes ago, Silvz said:

About Umineko, were you in the discussion we had on 07th Mod's discord channel these days?

Nope! I've never checked out their channel.
 

5 minutes ago, Silvz said:

as for the one that you mentioned, it's not the same character, but just a red herring [according to Ryukishi himself]

I guess I'll find out more about what that entails in the near future then!
 

5 minutes ago, Silvz said:

About when Umineko takes place:

Unless it's something that's revealed early on, like how you learn more or less immediately when Higurashi takes place, I think I'd rather not know. Thus, I'm avoiding that particular spoiler box.

Anyway, if the mod for chapter 8 of Higurashi is released this weekend, like I hope, the plan is to get started on Umineko as soon as I finish that. Not sure if I'll end up writing impressions and theories for every part like I did with Higurashi, but it wouldn't surprise me if I get the urge to!

[Silvz]

1 hour ago, Seraphim88 said:

Anyway, if the mod for chapter 8 of Higurashi is released this weekend, like I hope, the plan is to get started on Umineko as soon as I finish that. Not sure if I'll end up writing impressions and theories for every part like I did with Higurashi, but it wouldn't surprise me if I get the urge to!

It won't. They've already said that it will be released in the end of the month, if not later.

" It's time for the news! Matsuribayashi has been coming along great, with @orian34 making great progress since he took over. From the script count, he should be around the middle already. There's a 100% chance we will miss the 30 days ETA (since the game was released in May 14th), but I believe that if we keep this pace, we should be talking about the release by the end of the month. No promises, though. Let's see what happens next week!"

The full statement.

As for the spoiler, there's nothing major in it. I only said the year the story takes place and if it's related to Higurashi or not

You can start Umineko before Chapter 8, as long as you only read the first episode in order to avoid all spoilers [as what can spoil the end of Higurashi is only shown in the beginning of episode 2].

But if you want to avoid this risk, you could start reading Ciconia, that as for now doesn't have any relation to the other games, besides character references.

[Seraphim]

That’s too bad, but waiting a couple of weeks shouldn’t be that rough, since Persona 4 Golden, one of my all time favorites, just released on Steam!

Edited June 16, 2020 by Seraphim88

[Dreamysyu]

@Seraphim88 By the way, ideally I would recommend to read Saikoroshi-hen from Higurashi Rei right after finishing the main Higurashi series. I wouldn't really call it a requirement, but it gives the proper closure to the character development of

Spoiler

Rika.

The problem is that, even if it does have a fan translation available, there's a chance that Mangagamer will retranslate it. At least, originally they were planning to translate the whole PC release of Higurashi Hou, which includes Rei. I'm not sure if the plans are still valid though.

[Seraphim]

Is it a quick read? After reading the other chapters with the 07th mods applied, I'm not sure I'd be able to endure Ryuukishi07's own artwork for more than a couple of hours.

[Dreamysyu]

18 minutes ago, Seraphim88 said:

Is it a quick read? After reading the other chapters with the 07th mods applied, I'm not sure I'd be able to endure Ryuukishi07's own artwork for more than a couple of hours.

To be honest, I don't really remember how long it was. I'm pretty sure it's shorter than the main story chapters though.

Edit. I don't think it was shorter than two hours, but I doubt it was much longer than that.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Dreamysyu

[Seraphim]

Well, if you recommend reading it, I might as well do so! It's not like putting off Umineko for a few hours more is going to kill me (I hope )

[Silvz]

1 hour ago, Dreamysyu said:

@Seraphim88 By the way, ideally I would recommend to read Saikoroshi-hen from Higurashi Rei right after finishing the main Higurashi series. I wouldn't really call it a requirement, but it gives the proper closure to the character development of

  Reveal hidden contents

Rika.

The problem is that, even if it does have a fan translation available, there's a chance that Mangagamer will retranslate it. At least, originally they were planning to translate the whole PC release of Higurashi Hou, which includes Rei. I'm not sure if the plans are still valid though.

It's already confirmed that they'll release Rei. The OG translation is of low quality.

[Dreamysyu]

4 minutes ago, Silvz said:

It's already confirmed that they'll release Rei. The OG translation is of low quality.

Yeah, but hasn't it been 5 years since they confirmed it for the last time or something? As for the translation quality, honestly, I don't remember much about it. Unlike the main game, it was done by fan-translators, and I seem to recall that it was better, but maybe it's just my low standards.

[Seraphim]

There's an article from Siliconera five years ago, but I can't find anything else about the announcement. It's probably safe to say that it's going to take quite a while for Mangagamer to localize Rei, if they actually do it.

[Silvz]

They had to finish re-releasing the main arcs before working on Hou.

It's important to note that there is only one person working on Higurashi, so it would be impossible to start the work on Rei without finishing the other arcs. That is also why they took so long to finish the series.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Silvz

[adamstan]

Today I read Reina's route in Making Lovers. The route itself was okay. Not exceptional, but fine, and it was pretty funny. But then, that epilogue, OMG

Now there's Ako and Karen left.

 

[fuyopon]

[11eyes] I finished Yuka's route yesterday... If I had to rate it, I'd give it a 3/5 but I'm not sure if that's even for the route itself because I couldn't notice that much of a division between the main action plot and the romance plot. Some would say this is good, myself included, but it was done in such a way that nothing actually changed until suddenly boom, the protagonist loves her. It feels really weird and artificial. Besides that, I never liked Yuka, not one bit. She is insufferable  Anyways, the ending left me with even more questions than answers, but I'm guessing that is on purpose, as there is the true ending waiting for me but still;;;; I don't like when the vn is written in a way that the other heroines seem not to matter at all.

Spoiler

Now... if there's one thing I enjoyed and was NOT expecting, it was the Kukuri betrayal scene  She did not even hesitate, fucking amazing. I'm still wondering why she did that tho. I'm also guessing she's the one that revived all of them and kind of reversed everything to normal, "before" the Red Night hmmmmmm 

 

[adamstan]

I just finished Ako's route in Making Lovers. The route wasn't bad, although when it comes to the stepsister routes, Sakuno's route from Mashiroiro Symphony remeains unrivalled in my book. But then, the ending was so lackluster and disappointing... meh, meh and once again meh  

Now there's Karen's route left, which is supposed to be good, or even the best, so I have some expectations here

[adamstan]

Okay, so I finally finished Making * Lovers.

It was really fun - very lighthearted, and making me feeling good and smiling most of the time

While Karen's route was definitely the best (and I'm glad I kept it for last), my personal best girl is Saki (whose route I've read first). Karen would be the second in that ranking, but a close second. And then Mashiro I guess.

Reina gets special prize for the most heartwarming epilogue.

Spoiler

On the contrary, Ako's ending was one of the most unsatisfying things I saw recently - felt almost like a "normal end".

Art looks nice, music and voices sound good, and I liked the translation. If I had to nitpick, then attempted drama in some routes fell flat - it didn't have the emotional impact needed for it to work. But still it was very enjoyable piece of moege. I'd say, a notch better than Fureraba - and I'm really glad they left the dating sim mechanics out this time - so that means 8/10.

Now I think I'm going to read ATRI.

[Seraphim]

Just finished ATRI.

All in all, I had a great time reading it; more so than I expected, even though I'm already a fan of Konno Asta. I'd say this isn't far from becoming one of my all-time favorites, but I have one gripe with it that makes it not reach quite all the way, and that's the true ending, which I have some mixed feelings about. It's not bad; in fact, it's both well written and suits the plot, but at the same time, it was a bit too clear-cut to make it satisfying for me. To clarify, while moving into minor spoiler territory:

Spoiler

I'm usually not a fan of long time skips, where you're just told of major events that took place off-screen while you weren't looking. Much like in Amane's ending in Grisaia no Kajitsu, where you learn that

Spoiler

Yuuji passed away prematurely from cancer,

I would much rather be left with a blank slate so I can theorize on my own about what happens in the future.
To be honest, I usually don't like open endings either, but I feel that would have been preferable in this case. (Unless I could get a purely happy ending, which is what I feel would actually suit this VN the best.)

Now, time to move on to Adabana. (Sorry, Aniplex, you won't be getting any money for this.)

[adamstan]

9 minutes ago, Seraphim88 said:

Now, time to move on to Adabana. (Sorry, Aniplex, you won't be getting any money for this.)

I'm tempted to try Asta's earliest VN - Natsu no Ame next.
(I was lucky to score physical edition from Amazon for a great price.)

(I'm not clicking that ATRI spoiler yet, until I get to the ending too)

Edited June 25, 2020 by adamstan

[Seraphim]

It's not much of a spoiler, but yeah, better safe than sorry!

I'd also love to read Asta's earlier works, but I haven't gotten started on reading VNs in Japanese yet, not even with text-hooking. I guess it's probably about time I do that!

[Seraphim]

After coming from ATRI, Adabana seems to be a major step down in terms of playability. The game engine is glitchy as hell, judging by my first minutes with it.
I can't toggle fullscreen in the options (it's greyed out) and if I do it by using Alt+Enter, the stuff on-screen becomes somewhat blurry (as if you've just taken an image at a low resolution and increased the size by dragging). UI icons are highlighted with an annoyingly long delay, and some of them are highlighted even when you're not targeting them.
There doesn't seem to be any hotkey for switching between English/Japanese either, like you could in ATRI. (At the very least, nothing I've tried has worked and there's no mention of any way to do it in the options.)
It's apparently also one of those VNs where you have to keep the mouse cursor visible on-screen at all times to progress text.

I sure hope the story is good enough to warrant enduring this crapfest.

Edited June 25, 2020 by Seraphim88

[adamstan]

Well, they are from different devs, and run on totally different engines. ATRI runs on KiriKiri, while, according to VNDB, Adabana uses Silky Engine (also used by Nanairo Reincarnation). The only thing they share is publisher.

But it's definitely a bummer. Unresponsive or otherwise crappy UI can ruin any game, VNs included.

Edited June 25, 2020 by adamstan

[Seraphim]

I had no issues whatsoever with Nanairo Reincarnation from what I can remember, so this must be a screw-up from either the developer or the coders in the localization team then. I could accept stuff like this if I was trying to run a VN from the 90's on a modern system, but for one released in 2020, not so much.

[Seraphim]

On a more positive note, the translation seems solid. The phrasing might come off as a bit overly extravagant at times, but it suits the mood of the game.

[adamstan]

57 minutes ago, Seraphim88 said:

suits the mood of the game.

And that's the point

Sounds interesting.