FYI: I did "only" play part 1 through 4 here on steam as of now. They are bundled into the so called "Higurashi Question Arcs". And as it stands i will not be buying 5 through 8 here on steam either. The reasons for that will be explained in the following paragraphs, which were written out originally on the vndb site. So without further ado, here goes:

Higurashi - Question Arcs: Is..

all a big clown show and not worth the time it's asking from you! (Which in my case was over 100 hours already, btw!) And it seems to have the premise of shock your audience with every cheap trick you could possibly imagine....

Everyone in this world seems to "just so happen" to be a stupid moron, deviod of any logical thinking skill. Or sometimes crazy, mental and, or insane for that matter. Which is a problem, because when everyone is acting like this, there is a missing anchor point for the player to ground-, immerse themselves or even just buy into what is even happening on screen. Some would even say there can't be a suspesion of your disbelief to the events happening at all, in this case.

The game does nothing to establish why the main protagonist is acting this way too or for that matter why he seems emotionally and mentally deficient .The best you get is "he is supposed to be intellectually gifted". I really do not buy that this could made him lose empathy, or do not have any emotions aside from something akin to stockholm syndrome (which also has no establishment in this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ story either - at that point) after learing his supposed "best friend" is a serial killer. He doesn't even try to deny her involvement in those serial killings! No he just blindly walks into her trap, like the stupidest idiot you could think up. When dealing with someone you want to confess her crimes to the police. .

But i guess the writer just expects you to buy into this type of crap apparently? Laughably bad at times! They go out of their way telling you various times the protag is not from this village. Regardless of this everyone in this game acts this way - especially adults and the police. Let alone the main protagonist himself for the sake of the "plot". As the game goes on it gets worse and you lose all sense of investment into the story or immersion into the game world you ever could have had at the very start, even the often praised "atmosphere" is shattered in this way. It's a recipe for a very crappy story and on that front it fully delivers!


The 1st chapter was even somewhat interesting, it establishes the world and characters - sadly its so drawn out to the absolute maximum. 3/4th of it comes off as just wasting the player's time with "slice of life segments" - which honestly are not even that it's more like "school kindergarten life". It's incredibly stupid, makes the same jokes over and over again and drags on - far, far longer than it has any right to do so! Sadly nearly every one of those chapters is done in that way, just the 4th isn't. That's only half the lenght of the rest anyway. Not that it makes it any better, needlessly focusing on a flashback that seemed completly pointless in the end anyway.

There are even serval times the game tells you something you could do (in form of the character rena) to solve any given problem. Like in chapter 3 - which would've even solved the whole chapter itself, very early on! But no! The all encompassing "plot" needs to happen, so they force the story so far off the rails, you can not even begin to fathom why the hell it's ending up in a place like in chapters 2 and 3. It's all randomly making stuff just happen all the time, really more like an anthology than any coherent narrative.

(And conviniently, it seems like it's even splitting itself in different timelines at the end of chapter 3, so you might as well make an argument for either only playing 3 and 4 or skipping them entirely. Seems the devs really do not care for their fanbase after all.) If that wasn't obvious already by having an extra mode more or less making fun of their playerbase in the damn game.

A narrative is predicated on it being able to immerse the player / reader into its world. This crapshoot is not able to do so after a few hours, anymore. Because everything can or can not happen all the time, with no consistency to any of it, let alone rhyme or reason as to why it happens or doesn't. It just throws out ideas at random all the time - the folks in this village are all nuts, that is basically all you ever going to get in the question arcs. No expalantion as to why a detective form tokyo or others in a city next to the "cursed" sh*thole act this way whatsoever. I guess just don't think about it. Was not just the devs m.o. with this, but they also expect their playerbase to be equally simple minded - in a mystery story!

A genre which should reward the player for figuring something out on their own! If you hoped a tag like "detective work" (on vndb or other sites like it) would let you do this on your own, do not even look at this artrocity. Stay away from it for any enjoyment on the thinking deparment!. Because this is not meant to be thought over - this is terrible writing just for the sake of making the "plot" happen. A shame when the plot is horrible garbage as well, isn't it?!

It's not even able to stay consistent with itself and pulls things out of a hat like a child might make stuff up on a playgound, so he doesn't have to lose. (alternate timelines, godpowers for the protag - finshing off the whole village in a "natural desaster", some multiple personality disorder, twins being the other. And of cause the good old friends canniballism and a "curse" are all in this.. let's be generous and call it "story"). It's not even able to get the events it throws at random out of this hat into any consistency. It's kinda "impressive" how much of a mess it is at times, ngl.

It's all very fitting, considering the original art and even the setting most of the time. It's incredibly childish and doesn't know what its doing, but tries to drown you in (useless) text to the point where you just feel like its deliberately wasting your time, as a player! And it comes off - like a child might sometimes do, as acting like it's far smarter than it actually is. And i really can not wait until the very end when they might pull the "protag was crazy all along!11 It was all in his head! Got ya! "twists". This seems to be exactly the kind of "writing talent" those dudes are having.





It's a farce. "mordern- plot-driven writing" in its worst possible form.
Despite its age! There is no consistincy to the action happening, the characters themselves and how they act or react to things or even the story as a whole.No logical throughline whatsoever. If your opinion of a story is it should follow its own rules, this thing could very well drive you up the wall. This has no rules. It's making them up as it goes. I would not even be surprised to learn the devs had indeed no plan whatsoever as they wrote this, because this is the impression it will leave you with.


I link to a rant i posted on a vn forum shortly after i was done with part 4. It also has a discussion and other examples made against the writing in this horrific time vampire.

Enjoy!
https://vndb.org/w773.5

Review propper:
https://vndb.org/w1357

Rating 4,0 / 10

TLDR: Do yourself a favor and play something diffrerent! Like the muv luv games, which will take a similar time investment, but at the very least they're worth and respect your time!
This utter garbage surely is- and does not!