holy peak

copying from my status but game genuniely made me feel uncomfortable, like when keiichi kills "teppei" and when he attempts to dig him up with ooishi and the others around. honestly change of ooishi personality from the other chapters really told me something is unusual and unnerving here, along with that satoko head pat scene where she has a breakdown. and the exploration of keiichi's psyche through to killing teppei to him acknowledging the curse he can put on others was pretty great as well. my favourite chapter so far honestly.

...of course, the SoL is still abominally paced but i thought it was fine until the baseball part and irie's initial introduction. irie was plausible but i just feel some other ways about his character. the scene with him and keiichi at satoko's house was alright writing for him.

also like how in the afterparty they say meakashi is coming up next and then himatsubushi happens.

(minor spoilers kind of not really)
7.8/10

easily the best climax of the 3 so far, and honestly the ending was pretty good too. i think it's finally starting to delve into meta timelines/loops, so im pretty excited to see where it finally goes, unless im looking into it too much and they never realize there's a loop lol. anyway, i still enjoyed onikakushi's scenario the most, but this one i still think is better for the climax/falling action. which i think its odd i think that, because i think it has the worst lead up to "the good part" and it was dragged out too much, but seeing the murder plan was great and it hooked me as soon as it started. man, how is it i was the most bored in the semi-good part but still enjoyed it the most? ill have to sit on that.

as of now, onikakushi has the best scenario. watanagashi has the best ending, and this has the best climax/falling action. my only wish is for it to delve into meta timeloops in the later episodes. time for episode 4. this might be the last game of 2021 lmao

Pretty good! Ch2 was an improvement over 1 I thought in that the slice-of-life first half is still driven by an actual plot (what's the deal w Shion?), but this taking it even further with Satoko worked really well.

If there's one complaint I have, it's that I felt like the plot kind've peaks with the night of the Festival, and then... keeps going for a good while. And it has a lot of good, exciting/sad/intriguing moments still. But I think since I'm used to the time loop format now, I basically checked out after Keiichi kills Satoko's uncle thinking 'OK, and then Keiichi's gonna die horribly any moment now'. I'm not sure the tension and horror particularly works for me when I know it's happening for the third time. (It also doesn't help that the volcano gas thing feels like a ridiculous escalation - and yes, it's an interesting mystery, but it feels like such a wild ass pull I really need to put my faith in future installments for this to feel satisfying).

With that said, the glimpses of Satoko's sheer terror triggered by random innocuous actions was really effective, enough that it doesn't really matter her uncle is barely a character despite being crucial to the chapter. That one TIP with the sad picture of Satoko in the background over stats on child abuse w a scare chord playing sounds like a shitpost but it was genuinely so chilling too.