Higurashi When They Cry Hou - Ch.1 Onikakushi Reviews

I watched the anime for Higurashi a long time ago and read the manga some time after, but just never got round to the VNs until now. This is definitely the best way to experience the story of Higurashi, from the beefier dialogues and the addition of the TIPs that give some extra context for things that you wouldn't have got from the other adaptations, you get way more content to go through. Not only that, you also get way more foreshadowing that I can already see will be relevant to the next chapters (since I've seen the adaptations I'm not really going in blind but there is still things in this version that I would not have seen before). It was good to see the steady progression of things as time went on and the [spoiler] ever deteriorating mental state of Keiichi. The whole unreliable narrator really makes you think if the things that the other characters are saying are actually taken in the way they were supposed to or if it's a tone that is assigned by Keiichi himself, making it seem like his friends are out to kill him. [/spoiler] Even certain things he sees in the later half of the story are brought into question [spoiler] as the way the inner thoughts are worded don't fully confirm what he's seeing. Like the needle in the mochi for example, it's only ever something that resembles a needle in his mind, rather than a definite needle. Plus it's stated at the end that a needle was never found. Confirming it probably was never there. [/spoiler] For anyone that has already either seen the anime or read the manga and enjoyed it, this is something that you need to experience as there is so much to find while reading through the VNs. Plus, as a bonus, the first one is free and the others are not too expensive considering how long they are.