My biggest question about this jump scare game- is why does it not advertise more that it is Christmas themed? This one confines you mostly to a single house location and does it best to startle you, but for me it was just irritating and lame. At one point I got very stuck trying to figure out what object they wanted me to click on to progress (it turned out to be a candy cane on a tree). Ultimately a very forgettable one- it becomes clear quickly how similar jump scare games become if you play too many of them.

This game is hard to fuck with. It's charming, intimate, funny, but a little confused and empty.

The enemies feel overtuned, frequently throwing insta-kill grabs and combos where even the weakest enemies can thrash you. The spaces you trace are strangely open, seemingly in some sort of compromise between open world sensibilities and the responsibility to design levels. Sometimes it all comes together and you're scuttling the seabed, the fights are good, and there's a joke you know some young adults had a blast putting together, but by the time I reach another poison swamp it feels like it's collapsed under its own weight, and the fun is over. Like I'm in a big empty area with some crabs littered around it. Is it underdeveloped? Too big to support itself?

When it stopped being fun, I tried turning the difficulty down, but the effects were marginal. I figured even if I turned it down to the easiest settings, I wasn't going to see much more than the first few hours. When the magic is gone like that, it's hard to come back.

historia de un padre que perdió a su hija en su propia casa y contrata a un detective para encontrarla





acaba mal

Gonna write about each little story individually I think anyway,

Akiyama: As a character he is awesome, love his dynamic with Kido and Hana and his overall demeanour and vibe. His only flaw is that he doesnt realise he shoulda been lovin a fat bitch instead of a girl he met yesterday.
Saejima: The scene is really bad. Like worse than just the clip people cite it goes on to have it known that Kiriyu saw the whole thing, was cool with it and left Haruka alone with him. Its a stupid way to illustrate that his ass was in prison for a long time from any way you choose to read it and should have not been in the goddamn game.
The worst thing is that hes actually really compelling and his part of the game is pretty great aside from the 'stealth' stuff near the end. His sub stories are what brought me around on him along with the latter half of his story.
Tanimura : overall the most interesting and the most complete feeling story. Ma-chan is awesome even with all the cop bs idgaf about. They present a mystery and solve it, its cool. I really dont have a lot to say , solid and good story.
Kiriyu: Hes characterized kinda weird and kind of like an asshole which is cool tbh. Im glad they acknowledged that him thrusting his job onto some punk ass 30 year old because he didnt feel like doing it was kind of a dick move. He's kind of a character who wants to have his cake and eat it too, like he wants to leave his yakuza life behind yet keeps in touch with all this people and says stupid bullshit that amounts to "the yakuza are kind of awesome and the good guys actually" while running a fucking orphanage.

I dont know....I dont think I would be as positive as I am on this game if the franchise didn't have its claws into me. Theres plenty of stuff about the main plot i just plain dont like (or gaf about) and even though I played it straight after 3 it made me nostalgic for it. Maybe in a week I'll start to miss it but its safe to say I need a break after playing 4 games in a row.
Saejimas dumb fucking sister and Hana becoming skinny annoy the shit out of me , I really wish the writers saw women as people.

When I was getting to the end, I found myself wondering to myself, "Well... this has completely recontextualized how I felt about things in Watanagashi, particularly the stuff that made me cry a lot. I wonder how those scenes will go this time."

Reader, I still cried a lot. That's Higurashi, baby!

First off, on the production end of things, there's been a pretty sharp uptick in sound and visuals. Well, mostly sound. The new songs are excellent by virtue of a new composer coming on, but I also do think there's a kind of an interesting dimension if you play with Ryukishi's goofy-ass original sprites in that you can actually see how his art improved via the new character portraits. It's still a little janky, but at the same time, there's something about getting to see a creator's skill being refined as you go through a series that makes me happy.

As I intimated before, I really enjoyed the story. As much as it was fun to see things from Akasaka's perspective in chapter 4, it was really cool to get to see things from the perspective of a character we already knew. Shion truly is the queen of Women’s Wrongs and I support her. There were definitely a lot of surprises, I think--somehow I missed learning about what Satoshi's actual character was like after osmosing a lot of information about these games, so I was really surprised to find out that Satoshi... was actually very different in personality from Keiichi. Between everyone drawing comparisons between the two and the fact that he's Satoko's brother, I thought he'd be a total gremlin, but no.

Speaking of things I had preconceptions about, there's a specific character death that I remember from the anime involving a knife that I liked at the time, but man. The VN really just blows that out of the water, huh? I really like Ryukishi's prose in that moment, and I don't think that would be able to shine as much if the localization team didn't do such a great job making it as evocative as it should feel. It was great.

I think my biggest complaint would be that we didn't get a cast party this time, even if I really did enjoy reading Ryukishi's actual message. I wanted to see Keiichi lord his character portrait over everyone. Ah well, perhaps in a future chapter...?