Mr Poltroon

Umineko's anime you just can't even compare. It doesn't do it justice in the least, furthermore, it's not complete. Even if it was brilliant, without episodes 5-8 you still wouldn't understand bugger all.

Er... Not really, you'll just be missing content, that's all. Each heroine's route is independent from the others, although... Some delve slightly (and not so slightly) into Yuuji's backstory and background. If afterwards you intend to play the sequel, I believe it starts as if you had completed every heroine route, but not actually fell in love with any of them. Therefore, I'd recomend playing every heroine. Also, Yuuji isn't as much of a bastard, as he really is clueless about certain common sense and things about the 'real' world... which could potentialy have him be insensible to the other girls. But fret not, he somehow pulls through being uterly dense in the end.

Right... yeah, I agree that going into the last few episodes the plot starts to become a tangled mess and you'll probably have a hard time understanding it. I myself never really did, which is why I intend to play it all again, until I can understand everything that's going on. Now regarding the character personalities, I need to once again say that the personalities they have in the first episode does not necessarily mean they will keep them for the whole game. Similarly to how slightly different worlds have slightly different plots in Higurashi, the characters may or may not have their personalities change.

Might you give me a link on where you're checking these things? I'm fairly sure that the translation isn't finished. Furthermore, I feel your pain. Grisaia no Kajitsu is my favourite visual novel thus far, so I'd really like to get the sequals... ;-;

I'll be honest here, I loved Battler when it comes to witches because that was exactly what I would've done. I can't explain how the crimes happened but I still would've refused to believe something such as witches without proof. And that's 'proper' proof, not ilusions or halucinations.

I believe you might have been misinformed, or simply misread something. The one you're looking for is currently being translated, but has yet to be released.

Yeah... not quite. Alike Higurashi, Umineko has two parts, the first 4 episodes and episodes 4-8. It is impossible to judge Umineko by only having read the first part, or just 2 episodes for that matter. But I can guarantee that every character will change, (be it like you expect or not) over the course of the game. And Umineko is a great game, you shouldn't quit because of the first episodes, that once again, are rather similar to Higurashi in the aspect that they differ from the episodes 4-8. Regarding the mysteries... you'll get more than enough you can solve on your own, but episodes 1-4 kind of focus more on other things... Battler, Eva, Rosa, Maria, Kanon - They'll get character development, fret not. (At least, as long as you believe they will...) I'm not quite sure Gohda is actually ever useful over the course of the game... He's a proper arse kisser alright. Anyways, this is my view on the matter, but I am by no means a professional regarding stories and good visual novels

Let's see... my first Visual Novel was Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. I had heard about it, somewhere, and got curious, which led me to try it out. I loved it, so I quickly finished the whole series (at the time, Ace Attorney, Justice for All, Trials and Tribulations and Apollo Justice). I then tried to find a series simular to these, and I found Professor Layton. I played the original and didn't enjoy it too much (mostly do to my lack of puzzle solving skills) so I changed games. The next game I played was 999, found a walktrough of it and got interested. I thought it was brilliant, it was also the first time I saw the visual novel tendency to use time travel, alternate dimensions and all of the "prisioner dilema" "shrodniger's cat" which I found again in loads of other Visual Novels. Following 999 was the sequal, Virtue's Last Reward. Finaly, the first more "traditional" visual novel I played was Ever 17, which I thought was absolutely brilliant, and led me to play Never 7 and Remember 11. Henceforth pretty much all visual novels I've played had no gameplay.