Technical Information
Developer: 07th Expansion
Distributor: MangaGamer
Release Date: May 15, 2015
The story is about a boy who moves to a small town in rural Japan called Hinamizawa. Actually, it’s more like a village than a city.
Strange deaths have occurred over the years, and some people attribute them to a curse. Then you start investigating, and things get worse, as if people from your social circle don’t want to talk about it, or maybe they don’t want you to find out something…
Higurashi When They Cry Hou is a story told in the sound novel format, divided into eight games. All the events portrayed occur between 1979 and 1983.
This first chapter is only the prologue (!!!).
Final Thoughts – Analyzing the Game as a Whole
Graphics and UI
The game features both original art and a remake.
The art style of the remake is very beautiful, while the original is somewhat weird and creepy, depending on the dialogue.
Unfortunately, the characters do not have many poses or expressions, with most of them changing only slightly, giving the game a very static feel.
There are no interaction scenes between characters or key moments. Your imagination will be your guide at this point, just like in a book.
The scenery consists of photos with a painting effect. It looks very rough.
From a functional standpoint, the menus and text are very clear and easy to understand.
However, the menu aesthetic is quite ugly, with an amateurish feel reminiscent of the early 2000s.
The text is displayed across the entire screen, often overlapping the scenery and characters. This reinforces the feeling that the game is more like a book than a traditional visual novel.
Soundtrack and Sound Effects
Great music that conveys the emotional moments very well.
If only the characters had voices, it would have been even better!
Gameplay
Only play this game if you really love reading.
Unfortunately, this sound novel feels more like a book than a game, as you don’t do anything except read and advance to the next text.
Is the story good? Yes, it is. There’s plenty of suspense and psychological horror. The narrative is very well done, with moments that left me quite anxious and emotionally involved with the characters!
However, there are tons of unnecessary dialogues which, instead of making the game feel more “natural”, make it very long and tiresome. I admit that in many moments I simply advanced through the conversations until reaching something more relevant to the game’s main objective.
The story only starts to get interesting around the second chapter. Be patient, the beginning is very boring.
The game has multiple save slots, allowing you to save and load at any time. I found this rather pointless, as the game is linear and, after completing it, you can choose which chapters you want to replay.
After finishing a chapter, some extra content becomes available. This content focuses on specific details that appeared during the completed chapter.
Reading this content is entirely optional, but it helps complement the story.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this analysis, this game is only the prologue to the full story.
The ending only increased my curiosity about what’s really going on!
Replayability and Game Retention
The game is monotonous in many parts. If you don’t like reading, you’ll definitely abandon it early on.
Curiosity about how it would end was what pushed me to finish the game. I’d say that even for fans of visual novels, this game isn’t for everyone.
