The members that get focus are incredibly well developed and fleshed out, and you will likely care about them a lot. While some characters sadly get very little focus, the focus on the rest of the characters more than makes up for it. Can you figure out the truth? That's up to your observational skills.Ī murder mystery, however, would be nothing if it's characters weren't compelling, so how does Umineko fare here? Well, fear not, for a majority of the characters are wonderfully written. What makes the story even more difficult to solve is the constant questioning of whether what you're seeing is true or false, and whether or not the murders are truly being done by magic, not helped by the constant seemingly impossible closed room murders. It lays out clues for you and tells you to figure it out yourself, not directly revealing the answer to a majority of its individual mysteries, and, while giving you more hints to its biggest mysteries, never outright stating the answer. But it has gotten to the point that many people either don't try and figure it out, or if they do, their guesses are far more lukewarm, because they know the story will reveal everything at the end of the story and wrap everything up in a nice little bow. Good mystery authors make it possible to figure out the killer long before they are revealed in the story. An author writes a story, gives you hints, and typically tells you all you need to know before the story's conclusion so that you have a fair chance at figuring it out if you're perceptive enough. Mystery stories are, at their core, just one big puzzle. VisualNovel Without love, it cannot be seen: A review for the Umineko: When They Cry visual novel So in conclusion I would say to at least read the first half for a pretty good VN experience, but to approach the second half with caution and tempered expectations. This whole part just comes across as a case of Torch the Franchise and Run, at least, that was the impression I got from reading it. And just to rub salt on the wound, it offers no real conclusion to many of the still hanging plot-threads of the story which can leave the reader feeling cheated.
All this while the story seemingly goes more and more oblivious to it's own hypocrisy. To be bluntly honest, this part almost came across as the author having some sort of hissy fit at the audience and giving them the middle finger and seems to throw out all of the themes previously set up out the window and tries to shoehorn new ones in that doesn't even make sense and that have some questionable implications behind them.
#Umineko when they cry review series
And while the second half isn't quite as good as the first half of the series it still has some interesting segments even if not up to the same standard.
One of the problems that arise from this is that it becomes harder and harder to sympathize with characters when everything becomes more and more vague and hard to trust, which becomes an especially big problem later on in the novel.Īnd while the novel has some slight issues with the pacing and ends up dragging on occasion, it still proves to be quite an interesting read. How successful it is with this however varies a lot from scene to scene with even the author seemingly getting lost in all the back and forth on occasion. One thing that is notable about the novel is it's attempt as a sort of meta narrative regarding the mystery and fantasy genres and presents some interesting ideas with liberal use of the Unreliable Narrator. The villains also provide a nice range of flavors to satisfy those who prefer those kind of characters. Some parts of their personal struggles seriously left me struck dumb. Characters you maybe hated early on become lovable while seemingly spotless ones become more questionable as the story goes on. It provides a nice mix of both sympathetic and deplorable traits with just a dash of just the right kind of crazy thrown in for good measure. Umineko's biggest strength is by far it's main cast sans Battler.
And for the most part, I could see where the praise was coming from. Umineko is one of those VN's you can't miss hearing about if you are even the slightly aware of the medium, so of course I decided to check it out eventually to see what all the fuss was about. VisualNovel Really good Visual Novel that ends up going out in a whimper.
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