Ah, what a nightmare this series is. See, Higurashi has been rotting in my steam wishlist for almost a decade at this point because buying it is a fucking menace. What's Higurashi Hou? What's Higurashi Rei? Rei+? Isn't there a single game I can buy with everything in it? Nope! And some chapters never got translated at all so you gotta mod them in, and some chapters aren't even in the mod! It was a lot, but after seeing Umineko getting more and more popular I bit the bullet and bought the full collection. I think this is the proper thing to review for the first 4 chapters but the fourth chapter is kinda a side story and not considered part of the real question arcs-whatever! God!
Anyway, Higurashi! One of the most beloved VNs ever made and one of the hardest to get into because it's very very wordy. Took me about 22 hours to finish the question arcs and I'm a very fast reader. Normally fluff doesn't bother me too much in vns but this game's pace at the start of the first three chapters is absolutely glacial. Probably doesn't help that the game repeats the same joke (male character is horny in extravagant way) in every comedy section a whole lot. I really didn't care much for the slice of life sections by the end, but they only really exist to set up the horror part. I'd be a lot less generous to it if it wasn't in service of rebuilding a sense of normalcy.
And man, once that normalcy breaks, each chapter is uniquely captivating. It's soooo good. The suspense is fantastic, and the overarching mystery knows exactly where to poke and prod to make you throw out all your theories again and again. I don't know if the answers arcs will be satisfying, but if the writing is of the same quality I can't imagine they're going to be anything less than fantastic.