Ciconia when they cry has an interesting story with themes and ideas that makes it more interesting but still we didn’t see the full potential of the story, I’m excited to see what will he do with the story.

This phase was focused on the characters especially the children, I mean it was obvious by the title “ For You, the Replaceable Ones” and the children were well written, not that excellent but still good.

in conclusion it was a fascinating ride but lacks so many things, especially the cliff hanger I wished it was more exciting.

It can be a slog at times, but every R07 work is like that to be honest. Ciconia in particular is the one of the longest things he ever wrote, so it can be noticeably slow - mainly in the first half.

Ciconia introduces its entire cast simultaneously really early on, and uses the first half to give everyone at least some surface level development. For what its worth I think every character ended up being pretty likeable by the end of it, but I'd hope that the next parts of Ciconia don't introduce too many new characters. Umineko took that route and a lot of them ended up lacking anything substantial. The second half helps to flesh out some characters a little more, but its mostly concentrated in the beginning.

The second half of Ciconia is a lot more action, and I liked it significantly more. It has a large focus on geopolitics and the global situation breaking down due to tensions and "natural" disasters. If you can make it through the slow beginning, this absolutely makes it worth it.

Probably my favorite part of Ciconia was just trying to piece together the lore and history of the globe, since only some scattered hints and pieces are given throughout it. I made a map in MS paint of the various alliances while I read to try to comprehend it a little better, and it honestly made the first half a lot more enjoyable for me.

Ciconia is also home to some of the best written scenes in the entire WTC series. Ciconia's ending is legitimately the best thing he has ever written and its not even close. It has the perfect combination of aesthetics, music, contrast, etc that it's impossible to put into words how great it is. There's a bunch of other fantastic scenes as well, such as the meat factory and restoring the planet's dignity, but the ending definitely takes the cake. I would argue Ciconia is worth reading for these scenes alone. The ending is a cliffhanger too, adding a lot more to its mysteries and opening up a ton more questions.

Upon finishing Ciconia, a bunch of bonus scenes are unlocked that are essentially slice of life scenes for the primary 6 characters. It's small but it honestly does a lot to make me like the main cast. Definitely worth reading, as it genuinely contains the most fun scenes in Ciconia.

Overall I think Ciconia set a great precedent despite it's slow start. I'd love to read the next chapter of it when he decides to finish it in a million years.

Before I begin my review, I need to mention that not only did this visual novel take me over half a year (maybe even close to a year) to finish, some parts I unfortunately did skim through, and I couldn't drive myself to read the tips at the end of the game. In my defense, one of them is called "Stinky Food Showdown!" and I think it was at that moment that I subconsciously decided that I couldn't handle any more. If there is some grand revelation that happens once all the tips are read through, I apologize for not taking it into consideration for this review. However, I have a strong feeling that my thoughts would have remained the same either way.

I think the greatest aspect about this visual novel is the presentation. While I don't think the songs are on the same level as Higurashi or Umineko, the colors are fantastic. The backgrounds are almost ethereal which I think adds a lot to the atmosphere and works well with the overall setting, and the character designs has gone from something of a meme from the last two entries to something well done within the art style.

As for the story itself, I think there are many issues. Firstly, I believe there is too much trying to be done in this first phase. This is a story with over 30 characters with some having their own character arc, and different powers at play with a unique world that is an advanced version of our own. However, I don't think any of these are given the attention it deserves. First off, many of the characters are very bland and can really be merged into one entity in the grand scheme of things. Their overall purpose in the plot are the same. As for the characters arcs, none of them not only get any conclusions (which is fine, this is only the first part of the story after all), the development gets pushed aside for an incredible amount of world building and explanations of ideas. I don't think this is inherently bad, but the way the world building and description of societal issues are told is done poorly.

The mantra of "show, don't tell" can only be found near the beginning of the story (iirc). Afterwords, world building only exists as a topic to be discussed when the plot requires it. Something will happen, and there will be an info dump to you fill in on what exactly everything is. The exploration of global conflict and relationships between human beings and large powers is something that I was initially excited for. At first, this (along with the world building) was very interesting to read through. However, once a point has been made, I feel as if I read it over and over again, rather than moving on to the next scene (This is where the "Walls of Peace" meme stems from). If it was streamlined, then I think the story could've tackled everything it wanted to, but because it remains so bloated, so many elements of the story are lacking.

Like Higurashi, I believe that Ciconia has a truly great story somewhere inside of it with so many interesting ideas and so much potential, but the process of translating that story to the reader is unfortunately very flawed.

Ok. All i have to say is: The world building is the best one so far in wtc, the characters weren't very interesting at first, but they become very interesting and likeable after. The mystery may be the most interesting so far(if we're talking about large scale, since, while in Higurashi it was about Hinamizawa, and Umineko about Rokkenjima, Ciconia may be about the entire world xD), and the ending were peak as almost every end Ryukishi does with his games(man, that christmas will never be forgotten).

Now, about the problems, i would say music variety,(the ones there are good, but there was probably a time when i was 2h hearing 3 looping osts) the political part were not much entertaining as well, the slice of life were good, but I didn't like some parts when the gauntlet knights were talking about how to protect the walls of peace(here i'm talking about a specific part, even though they talk about it the entire game xD), but overall it was a good experience i will definetly look foward for phase 2, in other words see ya at 2063.