Seraphim

I've actually already read Ever17. It was a bit slow, but the story was definitely interesting and I'm intending to read the others in a not too distant future.

Finished up Raging Loop a couple of days ago and now I'm done with chapter 6 of Higurashi. Raging Loop Like I mentioned in a previous post, I'm not that into werewolves, which initially put me off when I considered reading this VN, but I'm glad I actually decided to pick it up. The pacing of the story felt just right and the story itself turned out to be a more exciting read than I expected, with quite a few twists and turns right up until the end. I did see through some of them long before the reveals, but everything leading up to that point was so well executed that it felt satisfying nevertheless. I really appreciated how you, after clearing the game, unlock a toggle in the options, with which you can activate a ton of internal monologues mixed in with the normal dialogue and narration to get a better understanding of everything that's going on and why certain people act in certain ways. It's a function I'd love to see in Higurashi, to be honest. And so, while we're on the subject... Higurashi, chapter 6 First off, I agree with @Dreamysyu that this is the best chapter (so far, at least). Anyway, onward to spoiler territory. This turned out to be one of my longest posts here so far, but maybe that's not so strange considering the extent to which Higurashi puts the mind at work.

I wonder if they're still working on Hyourin, which they announced at the end of 2018. Haven't heard anything about it since, so maybe it's been abandoned by now. I'm all for a VN store with a dedicated client where all localization companies could come together and distribute their games, and while I don't know if Hyourin was supposed to offer such an extensive service, the initial announcement definitely caught my interest.

There are some references to what happens in Chaos;Head, but other than that, it's an original story that stands on its own.

Nothing quite screams "gem" like the first coming of the titty spider.

That actually sounds preferable! Some of the stuff in Higurashi feels a bit repetitive because they talk about it over and over again in each chapter. It's not too much of a bother, but I think there's some room for improvement/streamlining.

Oh, right, I ran into a weird glitch in Higurashi. All of a sudden, a second Keiichi popped up. Made it kinda hard to take the scene seriously!

I think that's pretty much a side effect from a lack of confidence combined with him putting Miyuki on a pedestal. Even if he'd start actively improving himself, he'd probably still feel like he can't reach her level, and that in turn makes him feel like he's more useless than he actually is.

Yup, that's the plan! I've been putting it off for years just because people recommended playing Higurashi first due to there supposedly being some shared elements or something. I don't really know any details, but I guess I'll find out soon enough. I've seen a spoiler about Umineko containing but I'm hoping that's something that's present from early on, like in Higurashi, rather than some game-changing reveal towards the end of the story. Other than that, I've managed to dodge any information about Umineko, so it's basically a blank slate for me. I've also started reading Raging Loop whenever I'm not reading Higurashi. I'm not usually a very big fan of werewolves, but it works well in this case and the story is pretty intense and engrossing right off the bat. My main concern is that my brain might overheat from the Higurashi + Raging Loop Mystery Combo Attack, so maybe I should start considering something like this:

Chapter 5 of Higurashi = done. I'm hoping for some jaw-dropping reveals in the upcoming chapters! Three more to go.

I haven't seen it either, but yeah, I've also heard that's the case. She supposedly says something about

Same here! The over-abundant sex jokes got kinda tiresome, but other than that, it was a great game. Hoping for some kind of sequel at some point!

Yeah, no kidding! There's a ton of information to take into account, some of which contradict each other, so if someone actually manages to figure out the entire mystery simply by playing the question arcs, I'd say they deserve something like this:

I've had a pretty productive weekend, finishing up 428: Shibuya Scramble as well as reading both chapter 3 and 4 of Higurashi. I originally intended to just read one chapter a week, but chapter 4 is much shorter than the rest so I figured I might as well read that too so I can get started on the answer arcs next weekend. 428: Shibuya Scramble The story isn't all that interesting on paper, but the way it's presented, combined with the great soundtrack and an interesting and quirky cast of characters, make for a memorable whole. Although I do have to say that, for a completionist such as myself, it was quite a pain to get all endings and jump back and forth in the timeline to find all the hidden content. My favorite part of the game was after the Mean Clean bonus scenario, when you got to view behind the scenes footage from the recording sessions. After seeing static images with silent dialogue for 40-or-so hours, it made a surprisingly big impression on me to get to see the actors actually play out some of the scenes those images were taken from, along with hearing them speak for the first time. On that note, I actually managed to find a documentary with interviews with the cast, which I will definitely check out when my Japanese has improved some more. Higurashi, chapter 3 As I mentioned in a previous post, chapter 3 is called "The Shortest Scenario", but in actuality, it's basically as long as chapter 1 and 2 so I don't really know why they chose to use that tagline. The chapter itself was... hard to get a grasp on. It was equal parts exciting and confusing, with a lot of new questions raised, like Higurashi, chapter 4 By far the shortest chapter of the question arcs, but I imagine that is because it apparently wasn't originally planned as part of the main series. In chapter 3, they refer to chapter 5 as the actual continuation of the story, so chapter 4 is really more of a filler episode. It was still a good read with some well executed and intense scenes, but it falls behind the previous chapters in terms of quality, in large parts due to the fact that there aren't any truly significant developments in the story that we didn't already know about. I also find Ooishi annoying, so him having such a large role in this chapter affected my overall impression. (My opinion of him improved somewhat, though.) The thing that stood out the most to me in this chapter was when I'm looking forward to finding out what's up with that. I've been getting exponentially more confused as the story in Higurashi has moved along, so it's going to be very interesting finding out what the hell is really going on.

I'm still waiting for the Steam improvement patch from Committee of Zero. At this point, I'm starting to doubt it'll ever be released, so maybe I should just go ahead and play the game without it.

This was a bit of an issue for me. I like all the girls and the fact that they're fairly normal (compared to over the top tsunderes and whatnot that you find in a lot of other visual novels), but I feel like they really rushed the romance here. The end result would definitely have been better and more believable if they had put some more effort into building the relationships before moving on to the next phase.

Well, to be fair, this particular guess wasn't exactly specific or far-fetched in any way. With people travelling more than ever, it's only natural that any contagious diseases would spread globally at a faster rate than before.

Decided to pick up 428: Shibuya Scramble again, which I put on hold a couple of months ago for whatever reason. Almost immediately, I was met with this: I think it's safe to say those researchers were right.

The intro screen for chapter 3 actually has "The Shortest Scenario" as a tagline and says that the difficulty is "the worst", so I imagine I'm going to be somewhat confused!

If I were to theorize a bit, I'd say I'm highly suspicious of It's going to interesting moving forward and see if I'm right on the money with any of this.

Done with chapter 2 of Higurashi! I was a bit disappointed by Other than that, I'd say this chapter was better and more exciting than the first one, and I'm looking forward to reading chapter 3 next weekend!

Took 10-or-so hours for me to finish. And yeah, avoid using a walkthrough. There's a high chance you'll end up spoiling yourself, and this is definitely a VN where you don't want to do that.

This would have felt a lot less ominous if this wasn't Higurashi:

There's actually a "Gamer Heroine" tag on VNDb. I don't know how devoted they must be to pass the qualifications for that tag, though. EDIT: Linking the "Gamer" trait is probably a better idea.

I've never had any trouble like this before, though. I've been able to run Moon, One and a bunch of other supposedly problematic games just fine on Windows 10, but if nothing else works, I'll give a virtual machine a go. I don't have any experience using one, but I guess it can't be that hard to set up. Nope, haven't tried that, so I will do so now and keep my fingers crossed I won't run into any further issues!