Lurker > handsomeboy2012

I think there was a video but it's just a bunch of clips with the singers standing around doing nothing, so you aren't missing much.

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Congratulations to azuarc, GotD2 winner

That's a lot of songs ranked this past week
And someone has 5 left still

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Congratulations to azuarc, GotD2 winner

I love Mars and Jupiter. Mercury and Uranus are great too.
The rest just bore me to death. Maybe I just don't like slower and quiet music.

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Congratulations to azuarc, GotD2 winner

Its much better if you understand the lyrics, but whatever. Top half is good for me!

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Congratulations to azuarc, GotD2 winner

Got my first ever Sync (Squall), about damn time

Raidas -
https://youtu.be/4WfnfRbS2lQ

The title translates to In the lasers

This singer was known for more and serious and old-style traditional songs, so it was quite a shock when he came up with something this cheesy, just a lot of fun to listen to

Oh and I only nominated 80s songs because what came after the mid 90s are mostly garbage

Roman Tam - Below the Lion Rock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdXXnSnPcbo&list=RDbkBil0eCMiA&index=2

I also checked for Zhi-Cheng Mai - he was a musical professor, not a singer, and never performed in public, so there really isn't anything from him.

FINAL CHARACTER RANKINGS because I promised to do it.

37. Bernkatsel
36. Kinzo
35. Chiester Sisters
34. Evatrice
33. Erika
32. Genji
31. Amakusa
30. Cornelia and Gertrude
29. Gohda
28. Seven Sisters of Purgatory
27. Maria
26. Zepar and Furfur
25. Sakutarou
24. Nanjo
23. Kumasawa
22. Gaap
21. Kanon
20. Featherine/Hachijo
19. Krauss
18. Shannon
17. Hideyoshi
16. Jessica
15. George
14. Virgilia
13. Ronove
12. Lion
11. Kyrie
10. Rudolf
9. Battler
8. Will
7. Lambdadelta
6. Rosa
5. Ange
4. Dlanor
3. Beatrice
2. Eva
1. Natsuhi

I guess an update is due
After finishing the game I went and looked at some theories, and the manga for more answers - a few chapters on Yasus background that cleared up her motives for instance. Theres quite a lot of interesting stuff outside the VN, but I was both too busy and lazy to post about it here.

Right now Im rather burnt out from Umineko. Ive been at it on and off for almost a year, and I really want to move on to other things. It doesnt help that episode 8 kind of soured my opinion. It was good, but not enough for me to keep thinking about it long after finishing the game like some others.

Soooo this play through is pretty much done. I will reply if anyone still wants to discuss or ask something, but I wont actively keep the topic afloat. Might also chime in at those spoiler topics and other Umineko playthroughs. Thanks to everyone who stuck around for so long.

.

Busy right now will think of something later

Up

I had to retroactively shuffle the episodes around because episode 8 made me view the rest differently.

3>4>>>7>1>>>>6>5>2>>>8

Episode 3 is easily the best. 4 got boring at times but I loved the climax.
I got very invested in Kinzo's and Yasu's story in 7, and I had fun speculating, felt it had just enough hints for me to make some progress. Also liked the use of an alternative world/Fragment.
Looking back, episode 1 did well in setting up the characters, location and atmosphere for rest of the game. Plenty of shock value, would never have thought every would die. The garden shed with six bodies were particularly memorable.
5 and 6 had some annoying characters and was where that truth vs cat box stuff really got going, in retrospect.
2 was meh and I already talked in length why I didn't like 8.

I will get to the manga later, right now I would like to focus on reviewing the VN.

Sceptilesolar posted...

Ultimately Ryukishi wanted to leave elements of the mystery and story not explicitly laid out so there was still room for theories even after he revealed the main strokes.

It felt more like... a mansion rather than a room for theories. There's a difference between leaving some elements out to encourage more discussion, and leaving out so much that I came out sorely unsatisfied.

In the beginning, say from episodes 1 - 3 or perhaps 4, it very much does look a mystery, albeit unconventional, so I have built up an expectation that most of it will be answered (doesn't help that Chiru is named 'Answer Arcs'). Episodes 5 and 6 didn't really help, but episode 7 did give me lots of useful clues and a feeling that it's finally heading in that direction after all. Then episode 8 happened and... yeah.

I wouldn't say Ryukishi misled me or anything, I get that this is what he wanted to do. But it's not just for me. This is not to say I didn't enjoy the other parts of the VN.

I don't have much against the epilogue by itself, it was ok. Other than that line about Ange getting cancer, I don't know how that was even necessary other than wanting it to be as tragic as possible.

Overall, though, episode 8 was a big disappointment for me. I already talked a lot about how I disagreed with a lot of the themes presented here, and I wouldn't mind that much it was only a difference in opinion, I wasn't too mad about not knowing what was in Eva's diary in particular. But the author had the subtlety of a brick, and was very insistent on repeating his ideas again and again. Worse of all (and I might be reading too much into this) he felt he had to apply it not only to the story in game but to the experience of the players as well, such as:

-Not confirming that Shannon/Kanon/Beatrice is the culprit, I don't even know if they are one and the same
-Not giving a concrete motive
-Games 1-4 haven't been solved, nor are games 5-6
-Other stuff I can't remember

Sure there are hints, but it made it worse because they allowed me to speculate and the result is a whole lot of nothing. Oh, you want to more fully understand the story? Too bad. All those lingering questions... don't matter at all.

I took much longer than normal because I'm doing this topic at the same time, I had 400 hours combined on steam but in reality it's more like 200?

At long last it is all done.
I need some time to gather my thoughts. Don't even know where to start, any ideas?

No I wouldn't call that dying, Battler's memories aren't completely lost after all.
This is all Hachijo Ikuko's fault, yeah, if only she didn't give him a new identity and keep him in her house and not, I don't know, go to a hospital earlier?
It's the end of the game. And the siblings reunite for god knows how long. Let's make them suffer even more, so much that they don't actually reunite.

Hmm. I think Battler might not be the the only one that went to the submarine base. Shannon/Beatrice was with him, only for her to attempt suicide, and Battler went into the water to save her. Even she might not be dead.

Just how does Hachijo Ikuko look and sound exactly the same after several decades. More like they don't want to make a new sprite for her.

It's foreshadowed so I'm not surprised that Battler is alive. A nice reunion, but he did say he was dead on the game board/in the Golden Land, is it imagined? Towards the end I'm still not sure what those games represent exactly.

After decades
It's a book award ceremony. Winner is 'Sakutarou's Great Adventure', which has 8 volumes and... is totally not a reference to 'Umineko no naku koro ni'.

And the author is Kotobuki Yukari, who has to be Ange. And she has cancer. This sucks, they can't resist killing her off after all.

This Tea Party sure is quick. Will finish the rest tomorrow.

It's a conclusion for everyone. Even the bad guys are getting happy endings.
Will made it big, and Lion is with him... hold on, that's not a proper end for Lion at all. Searching for a miracle, living on with the family for the sake of Beatrice and all that... nah, let's do real estate.

Now that Kyrie murdering everyone isn't necessarily true, the circumstances of her death in her world is kind of BS (the family suddenly taking issue with the succession, Kinzo folding and giving the epitaph, and them solving it instantly).

'One must put away the pen at some point, then leave it to the spectators'
'The tale must be put inside a cat box at the appropriate time'
A.k.a. we're gonna leave some stuff unresolved, go make your own conclusions

From the achievements I got ending B. Well time to see what ending A is all about.

Simply put, Ange found out about the plan to kill her, killed Amakusa and the Captain in retaliation, and got all buddy-buddy with Erika. Nothing important here then. I'll pretend that this never happened and that B is canon.

And that's it. End of main episode 8. (that normal - Tea Party - ??? split never made sense except for episode 1)
There's hardly any content left and a lot is still unanswered. Man, this doesn't look good.

Ok I understand what Ange is up to now. I'm just glad she didn't die, it was implied Amakusa got rid of her in some older episodes, and something about 'died in 1998'

Speaking of which, the timeline is a whole mess. All the things she did after she jumped off the building didn't happen. But she has memory of it. So... all of that happened in her head?

The third day
They are leaving the island/Golden Land. Now Battler says they are going to live. Even though they're dead. ????
I'm have no idea what happened next. They're really dead, I suppose.

After all that about being a Ushiromiya, Ange immediately gives up the Ushiromiya fortune upon returning to the real world. I... don't know how this move is related to her realization.

And Hachijo decides to not go public with the diary after all. Apparently, showing interest in the Rokkenjima mystery is equivalent to desecrating the dead. Spreading rumors is one thing, but it's like I'm such a bad person for wanting to know what happened. Excuse me game, I can't help getting interested if you keep throwing mysteries at the reader and not give a answer.

Beatrice has one final puzzle and I get to choose.
The correct answer has to be Magic right? I am tempted to choose Trick to see what happens, but that would ruin all the build up and I don't want to do that now.

Wow they didn't even kill Bernkatsel. Or cut off her limbs. Or turn her into mincemeat. 0/10. No one ever dies for real.

This is anticlimatic for a final final battle.
First Bern crushed Battler. Ange realizes something. Everyone revives and crushed Bern. The end.

Compare that to Battler vs Beatrice at the end of episode 4. It's a proper fight between two even sides, and you win by solving mysteries (and getting the other side to accept it).
This one... had mysteries, but it wasn't shown to the reader. And it is won by having Ange keeping everyone alive in her head. That doesn't seem much of a big deal, and kind of cheating? You have your facts and evidence - I have my BELIEF! YEAH!

Nothing against the decision to keep believing in spite of the evidence
(even Eva's diary can be unreliable. It's not like Eva witnessed everyone's moment of death or their bodies)

But I would rather accept someone's death and move on. That's not a bad thing by itself

Hope for family coming back
Lost that hope and searched for the truth
Found the truth and lost that hope even more

In the end Ange chose to hold on to that hope anyway, right back to her she was in the very beginning.
Well, not exactly the same. But this is a lot of effort for her to understand.

I swear half the lines Ange says in this episode is her screaming and crying and losing her temper, not to mention all those stupid stuff she did.

Thanks to his Game Master privileges, Battler can't be hurt by outsiders...
Shit. Lambda died for nothing then

Haha yes
I can't express how satisfied I am seeing a CG of Bern getting punched and bleeding

Why is this first time she felt pain in a hundred years though, vomiting candies and colours from the last fight isn't painful for her?

This is the first time I have ever seen a character being killed by writing.

Well Lambda, you probably won't be top 5 but I think you'll be in a pretty good spot when I eventually do a final character ranking.

Ange is supposed to get the key and get through a door in the Golden Land. But at this rate there won't be a Golden Land left

Not liking Lambda's chances against Bern, these stories always have the big bad fight the main character in the end, and I bet it's going to be Battler against Bern

While I'm in the middle of reading this battle I would like to mention how annoying these laughs and how ridiculously violent this game can get. Because every character is fighting now it has finally become prevalent enough for me to post it here

Ah shit, she did find out. Damn you Gohda, don't speak a thing if you are bad at acting.

Even Lambda and Evatrice are helping them out. We're heading towards a final battle.

It's nice that they made up. But I still think that Eva had to bear most of the responsibility of she and Ange falling out. Ange is a kid, Eva is an adult, a kid throwing tantrums and hating on you is no excuse to mistreat her.

Very much doubt that Beatrice's act is working here, Erika is a detective after all. All she had to do is to walk closer to see through it.