(Score is 6.5/10. Rounded up because VNDB rounds up decimal scores and I wanna keep consistency)
The easiest conclusion to come to about Umineko's seemingly universal acclaim is that only the ones who love it are the only ones who will bother sticking around. A visual novel with over a million words and a healthy heaping of "Anime Shit" is a task daunting enough to most that it'll turn away many who are only passively interested, and hate-players probably won't get any further than the first episode.
But I was determined. Ever since playing Echo last year I've tried my best to engage with media that may or may not be for me--if I'm asking my non-furry straight friends to read a gay furry visual novel I better expand my own palette as much as I'm hoping they will. This has taken many such forms; I've watched more movies than I ever have before, I've watched a couple TV shows despite not really being a TV guy, and I've played more games than ever. Just last year alone I clocked in over 100 games, conservatively 70 or so if you cut out anything shorter than an hour or two (which you shouldn't!).
I first played ADVs like Danganronpa and the Zero Escape games years ago, but it wasn't until Echo that I started actually looking deeper into VNs as a medium. Last year I played a lot of classics that I really enjoyed! 428 Shibuya Scramble was great, and while I do have some issues with The House in Fata Morgana, it's home to what is one of my favorite sequences in a VN to date.
But before both of these, I tried Umineko. Back in April of 2022, I think, I played Episode 1, and hated it. I couldn't stand the slice of life stuff, and the mystery being left unsolved at the end left me basically feeling blueballed. I knew I probably wasn't gonna get answers until the Answer arcs, but it was still very disappointing. I liked the last hour or so enough, though, to tell myself “Maybe someday I'll get around to the rest of it."
A couple months later, I finally got around to Episode 2. I liked it! I don’t think it was anything special but I enjoyed my time with it, which is a lot more than I can say about Episode 1. That “Maybe someday” stopped being a question of “if” but a “when”. Hey, if this game keeps getting better at this rate I’ll be at a 10/10 in only an episode or two!
After I played Episode 3, I was hooked. I played that back in December, so only about a month has passed since then. But I would describe the nature of my engagement as closer to a slot machine than a great narrative—generally, I liked each episode but it was a total crapshoot as to how much. Episode 4 was a drag that paid off near the end. Episodes 5 and 7 were great (aside from some pacing problems)! Episode 6 was okay, but I didn’t really get much out of it. But the biggest surprise is how much I hated the ending.
Granted, when you spend a hundred hours playing one single game, you’re probably gonna build up unreasonable expectations to how well the ending will handle things. You go in expecting things to be wrapped up nicely, especially considering the second half of this game is generally referred to as the “Answer Arcs,” but make no mistake, you will not be getting answers handed to you.
I think one of my biggest questions to fans of this game is whether or not Umineko is a puzzle box to be solved. On one hand, if you’re not trying to solve it as you’re going, you’ll miss out on a lot—The game does tell you to reread the first four episodes to try to solve them after episode 5, but, um, no? Sorry, not gonna do that. Would rather not bolster my playtime another 30 hours just for something that might get told to me eventually. But if you do end up doing this, simultaneously the last few episodes can be pretty confusing at points, but also the end of the game basically tells you “it doesn’t matter” for somewhat spoilery reasons I won’t get into here. I get why they did this but I really did not care for the “message” of this game in the end so uhh I don’t care I’m googling “umineko all murder solutions” after this (you can read more of my thoughts about this particularly on my episode 8 review). I think if I had gone and deduced stuff for myself I probably would have hated the ending even more, as it would have felt like tens of my hours had been wasted on solving a puzzle I shouldn’t have even bothered solving in the first place.
This isn’t really my biggest problem with the game, not by a long shot, but “I found the slice of life sections cloying and boring” and “Umineko has pacing problems” aren’t really things that I think are interesting to talk about for longer than a passing mention, lest I turn into an AVGN rip-off pointing at the 5 hours of SoL thrown in haphazardly in the final episode and ask “What were they thinking?”
But overall Umi is a much much more mixed experience than its ratings would have you believe. There are really incredible parts here and there but most of it ranges from mediocre to just okay, and occasionally the quality plummets for a few hours and you just have to deal with it. It’s hard to hear “if you’re not loving it 30 hours in, you probably won’t love it overall, but also to be able to know you have to get 30 hours in first anyways”, but this sentiment definitely applies. I was persistent enough to stick around until that mark and regardless of what came next the cost-sunk fallacy was probably gonna carry me through it anyways.
Was it worth it? Ehhhh… Maybe?
The easiest conclusion to come to about Umineko's seemingly universal acclaim is that only the ones who love it are the only ones who will bother sticking around. A visual novel with over a million words and a healthy heaping of "Anime Shit" is a task daunting enough to most that it'll turn away many who are only passively interested, and hate-players probably won't get any further than the first episode.
But I was determined. Ever since playing Echo last year I've tried my best to engage with media that may or may not be for me--if I'm asking my non-furry straight friends to read a gay furry visual novel I better expand my own palette as much as I'm hoping they will. This has taken many such forms; I've watched more movies than I ever have before, I've watched a couple TV shows despite not really being a TV guy, and I've played more games than ever. Just last year alone I clocked in over 100 games, conservatively 70 or so if you cut out anything shorter than an hour or two (which you shouldn't!).
I first played ADVs like Danganronpa and the Zero Escape games years ago, but it wasn't until Echo that I started actually looking deeper into VNs as a medium. Last year I played a lot of classics that I really enjoyed! 428 Shibuya Scramble was great, and while I do have some issues with The House in Fata Morgana, it's home to what is one of my favorite sequences in a VN to date.
But before both of these, I tried Umineko. Back in April of 2022, I think, I played Episode 1, and hated it. I couldn't stand the slice of life stuff, and the mystery being left unsolved at the end left me basically feeling blueballed. I knew I probably wasn't gonna get answers until the Answer arcs, but it was still very disappointing. I liked the last hour or so enough, though, to tell myself “Maybe someday I'll get around to the rest of it."
A couple months later, I finally got around to Episode 2. I liked it! I don’t think it was anything special but I enjoyed my time with it, which is a lot more than I can say about Episode 1. That “Maybe someday” stopped being a question of “if” but a “when”. Hey, if this game keeps getting better at this rate I’ll be at a 10/10 in only an episode or two!
After I played Episode 3, I was hooked. I played that back in December, so only about a month has passed since then. But I would describe the nature of my engagement as closer to a slot machine than a great narrative—generally, I liked each episode but it was a total crapshoot as to how much. Episode 4 was a drag that paid off near the end. Episodes 5 and 7 were great (aside from some pacing problems)! Episode 6 was okay, but I didn’t really get much out of it. But the biggest surprise is how much I hated the ending.
Granted, when you spend a hundred hours playing one single game, you’re probably gonna build up unreasonable expectations to how well the ending will handle things. You go in expecting things to be wrapped up nicely, especially considering the second half of this game is generally referred to as the “Answer Arcs,” but make no mistake, you will not be getting answers handed to you.
I think one of my biggest questions to fans of this game is whether or not Umineko is a puzzle box to be solved. On one hand, if you’re not trying to solve it as you’re going, you’ll miss out on a lot—The game does tell you to reread the first four episodes to try to solve them after episode 5, but, um, no? Sorry, not gonna do that. Would rather not bolster my playtime another 30 hours just for something that might get told to me eventually. But if you do end up doing this, simultaneously the last few episodes can be pretty confusing at points, but also the end of the game basically tells you “it doesn’t matter” for somewhat spoilery reasons I won’t get into here. I get why they did this but I really did not care for the “message” of this game in the end so uhh I don’t care I’m googling “umineko all murder solutions” after this (you can read more of my thoughts about this particularly on my episode 8 review). I think if I had gone and deduced stuff for myself I probably would have hated the ending even more, as it would have felt like tens of my hours had been wasted on solving a puzzle I shouldn’t have even bothered solving in the first place.
This isn’t really my biggest problem with the game, not by a long shot, but “I found the slice of life sections cloying and boring” and “Umineko has pacing problems” aren’t really things that I think are interesting to talk about for longer than a passing mention, lest I turn into an AVGN rip-off pointing at the 5 hours of SoL thrown in haphazardly in the final episode and ask “What were they thinking?”
But overall Umi is a much much more mixed experience than its ratings would have you believe. There are really incredible parts here and there but most of it ranges from mediocre to just okay, and occasionally the quality plummets for a few hours and you just have to deal with it. It’s hard to hear “if you’re not loving it 30 hours in, you probably won’t love it overall, but also to be able to know you have to get 30 hours in first anyways”, but this sentiment definitely applies. I was persistent enough to stick around until that mark and regardless of what came next the cost-sunk fallacy was probably gonna carry me through it anyways.
Was it worth it? Ehhhh… Maybe?
Meiya
6 months ago