Extremely extremely delightful. I've been savoring these over the last few months, and I finally ran through the epic finale last night. I've been playing thecatamites's games for over a decade, so it's really awesome to see so much of his style synthesized into such a dense hilarious vision.

It's cathartic because I've actually often struggled to connect with his games. thecatamites's work is focused more than anything on strong texture, loved-on spaces, and funny lyrical writing. That's all great -- but I like games with strong emotional arcs, stories that take me on dramatically pointed and specific journeys. thecatamites's games (and his criticism for that matter) don't generally seem interested in drama at all. Anything resembling a dramatic moment in his games tends to feel playful and ironically detached. In many respects our critical lenses are almost exact opposites.

I had a really negative reaction to Magic Wand when it came out for this reason; I kept expecting it to have some kind of real rpg story, and it just doesn't. Space Funeral has a neat little meta theme at the end that really resonated with me, but it's more of a cute final note than a big climax. The games of his I've enjoyed the most with are the short comic ones like Murder Dog IV, where I can focus on enjoying the texture and jokes, and they're over before I can build any lofty narrative expectations in my head.

Anthology of the Killer meets me half-way. The grand joke of these games is that thecatamites is as good as literally anyone on itch at making Eerie Haunting Dream spaces in 3D, at setting up scares, at panicky chase sequences. He speaks the language of "Unity horror game" extremely fluently -- which makes it VERY funny when BB cracks a perfectly timed hilarious joke that sucks all the tension out of the scene. (Drool of the Killer's ending sticks out to me as a particularly great moment.)

The writing is SO funny, constantly, and pairing that sense of humor with the great horror language never stops being delightful. It's also possible he was always this funny, and I was just finally disarmed and willing to fully accept his sense of humor because he fit it into a game with the most perfect cast of blorbos imaginable (I cherish ZZ).

I haven't played all of thecatamites' ouevre, in part because I've sometimes come out of his games frustrated. I feel bad about never getting around to 50 Short Games or 10 Beautiful Postcards in particular; I really want to play those. Part of me wants to end this on something like "Anthology of the Killer is thecatamites at the height of his powers," but that doesn't feel quite right. It's more like, I'm thankful that he channeled his myriad artistic strengths into a package I could personally connect to, even as someone that doesn't share all his values as a creator and player.

God I'm tired... pretty good ending though. I can see how folks got pissed off back when it released, but I was already Very Mad at the end of ep 6 and 7 and pretty checked out. A lot of this ep surprised and delighted me in comparison. Once I'd found my solid ground (a character I like is on the literal precipice of an important choice) I could finally just roll with the story and enjoy it, I found the stakes and could enjoy the magic finally.

It's a good ending to a different visual novel. I think he figured out too late what his story was REALLY about and couldn't go back to edit the earlier eps 'cause they were already released. Umi feels at war with itself on the mystery/truth stuff, I just don't think it's all the way there. But like, I ended eps 6 and 7 really pissed off and thinking this whole thing was a disaster, "not all the way there" is a big upgrade from that.

I thought ep 8 would reveal once and for all that the mystery box was empty, that the story really didn't have a heart; instead it did the opposite. I'm glad I stuck it out and read the last two eps. If you're willing to do a lot of the work yourself (too much IMO) and fill in the gaps I can see being really moved by it.

Ultimately still too little too late for me, sorry. I hate getting jerked around and umi Jerks You Around. And christ alive why is it 120 hours long. "In retrospect that holds together in a pretty neat way" isn't what I want out of an eight book series -- I want to fully enjoy it as I'm actually reading it, like I did with ryukishi's previous series.

It's never gonna be one of my faves but I can understand and appreciate why friends adore it now. If you tell people to skip higurashi and read umineko first then we're Eternal Enemies though.