I’m going to be reviewing the Umineko episodes differently from how I typically write reviews. I normally try to avoid in-depth story details when I review games but this is a visual novel through and through. There’s very little in terms of actual gameplay to review, so I’ve just decided to talk about the story up to what I’ve read so far, and share my brief, unorganized thoughts on it. I’ll give my overall thoughts in a more organized fashion when I review the entire game.

I’m not going to lie, I find the extremely exposition heavy writing style to be a little tedious to read at times. Now I fully admit that I’ve got ADHD and that I’m not much of a heavy reader except for when it comes to games, manga or comic books. This is obviously going to play a big role in how I’ll end up feeling about Umineko. I’m still heavily invested in it and it definitely has my attention, but there are times where I’ve ended up skimming through it because it just takes such a long time to get to the point, and I don’t feel like it uses the strength of the medium of a visual novel to the fullest.

Despite this though, I think Umineko definitely shines with its intriguing cast of characters. It’s only been the first episode, but I can tell that these characters have a lot of layers to them and I’m greatly looking forward to exploring them in a more in depth fashion in future episodes. One of the characters that stood out to me the most was Eva. She really does seem like a purely narcissistic, self-serving bitch on the surface. It came as a pretty big shock to see that she genuinely loves her husband and son. Maria also surprised me a lot. I’m not going to lie, the whole “UuU~” thing was really getting on my nerves, but as I learned more about her, her relationship with her mother, and the chuunibyou aspect of her personality, I ended up having a far better opinion of her as a character.

Having any amount of passing knowledge regarding Umineko kind of ruins the first episode. Aside from introducing the extremely extensive cast of characters, the vast majority episode is a very long mystery in regards to whether or not the witch Beatrice actually exists, and well… obviously, she does. If you’ve seen any art or memes of the series posted anywhere online, you know that she exists, and so when the murders take place, it’s quite obvious what’s happening. I was more interested in the “how” it’s happening, and if there were any characters that were in on the deaths, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

I’m glad that I looked up what the Tea Party and “????” are supposed to be because I honestly nearly skipped them thinking they were just some supplementary bonus episodes. I would’ve been very upset if I did end up missing out because they provide some particularly important context to the story. It’s also where we get our first taste of Beatrice in the flesh (sort of). I am tremendously looking forward to seeing where the story goes from here. I assume Umineko is setting up some sort of Groundhog’s Day-esque time loop and the game between Beatrice and Battler is going to revolve around whether or not he can solve the riddle of the Epitaph and find Kinzo’s gold before Beatrice can enact on her murders.

Episode 1 is a pretty slow start. I think that the mystery regarding Beatrice was meant to make up for how slow it can be, but since the mystery is ruined by the legacy of the game, it falls flat. This isn’t Umineko’s fault at all though. Despite everything, by the time the episode ended, I was absolutely hooked. I can’t wait to play through the rest of the episodes. I truly hope that the rest of the story lives up to its reputation of being absolutely crazy.