What is the best mystery game, and why is it Umineko?

Pretty much any renowned novel from the golden age of detective fiction is better. You must be completely ignorant of the genre of you think Umineko is good example of it.

Not Battler's cousin, Battler's uncle kek.
Imagine your tranny uncle becomes obsessed with you and causes a catastrophe where almost your entire family dies just because you forgot you two kissed that one time when you were little, it's completely retarded.

sucks he tripped over himself so much dodging the guessed ending he hit a few plot holes

ludo kino logic error

Nope. Unlike you I actually read those novels. Most of mysteries and awful and follow the rules even less than Umineko does. Their pacing is also not any better, they're just shorter.

I don't think you've actually read them.

nobody thinks umineko is well paces at over 200 hours

How exactly is the mystery of Umineko better than those?

Pic related is the Judas Window, an acclaimed book by one the golden age's greats. It actually had the strongest set up and pacing I've seen in the genre. It also had the most retarded solution I've ever encountered.

The victim was shot with an arrow through a hole in door, by removing the doorhandle and then putting it back on afterwards. No, this was not properly set up.

What makes Umineko good isn't its mystery (the solution is given in episode 7). What makes Umineko good is how the narrative uses the structure of a mystery to comment on various themes like family, bullying, love, truth, logic, etc., and ties that together with metafictional commentary on the mystery genre itself. Personally, I think this becomes very clear, if I’m not mistaken, in episode 6 or 5, when one of the witches says that without love, you cannot see. Umineko takes everything the golden age detective novels do best and throws it into a blender with anime aesthetics. It’s a love letter to the mystery genre. To me, Umineko is also an epic due to the sheer scope of its themes. Even what I’ve said here doesn’t do justice to the vastness of the vn.

here's your mansion murder mystery
william-rous.itch.io/type-help

I haven’t read this one, but that solution as you describe it does not even come close to the retardation in Umineko.

What makes Umineko good isn't its mystery

Yeah, that’s my point. Umineko, despite being initially presented as a mystery story, has a very poor mystery.

It’s a love letter to the mystery genre.

That’s not how it comes across to me at all. To me, Umineko was written by someone who hates the tropes of the mystery genre and everything related to them. That’s why the game spends so much time railing against the “intellectual rapists” of mystery fiction, who theorize and expect solutions to their stories.

That solution is worse than Umineko's because it's an asspull. All the murders in Umineko were done using common means and had clues beforehand. The most convoluted it got was when it borrowed tricks from Agatha Christie.

And it's all downhill from there. Witches don't exist btw

All the murders in Umineko were done using common means and had clues beforehand

Shannon’s death in EP2 did not have any clues beforehand
How George’s body was moved in EP3 is never explained

You lack LOVE

So how did Joe figure out Shkanontrice

His discord groomer gf told him so he could look smart for an audience of braindead zoomers.

That's the trick was that was borrowed from Agatha Christie.

Has his gf been doxed yet?

Not to make Battler remember a broken promise, that's what Beatrice in the tea room's goal is.

Sayo's goal was to commit ritual suicide in a way that she felt made her karmicly neutral while also outwardly protecting the Ushiromiya's honor. She got to this point because all three of her love interests were spoiled children (though I hope we can all agree, ultimately innocent of the crime of being children).

Episode 2 was the best

Episode 2 almost killed the series.

ok but wheres ciconia

It loves the mystery genre (it hints several times along the way that the 'rules' are bullshit and that puzzles shouldn't obscure the genre as a vehicle for real storytelling), it does bully overly anal fans of multiple flavors.

The only time Umineko cheats is when it plays with definitions. Death being taken figuratively instead of literally is utter bullshit and unforgivable.

Hey, Jessica. I know you were always nice to me, considered me a real friend even though I'm a lowly servant, and supported me with my romance with George.

But you cousin was kind of a dick to me 6 years ago, so you and your whole family have to die

So how did they die?

Y'all lack love.

read agatha christie
start with ten little niggers

I can't fathom how people think 2 is the worst when 4 exists

It literally changes the rules of knox or maybe van dine can't remember, it was never about being a fair mystery.

A BOMB IN THE LASAGNA?!!?!?

small bombs

lol no BIG BOMB
thank you america

Umineko is not about the mystery, it's about the little bombs we ate along the way

It is a (mostly) fair mystery, though. The only cheats are that definition swap and the arbitrary rules regarding Battler's POV reliability.

Yeah I know I just think the few changes to the rules are dumb and pointless
Game was easily solvable by episode 2

(it hints several times along the way that the 'rules' are bullshit and that puzzles shouldn't obscure the genre as a vehicle for real storytelling)

And yet the only solutions the game presents are in the form of obscure puzzles. Umineko wants to have its cake and eat it; it wants to be tribute to golden age detective fiction whilst also being a deconstruction / critique of it. It doesn't work.

She treated Kanon like a prop, forced him into clothes he was uncomfortable in, and demanded he lie to the family.

Jessica didn't deserve to die (most of them didn't), but her treatment of the schizo was part of the tapestry of 'everyone has failed to protect me or value me as a person' that made them go crazy. The murders are like 50% Kinzo's fault, 40% on Genji and the other two, 9% on Natushi, and like 1% on everybody else, Sayo admits that the whole Battler promise thing was just a way for her to mentally justify the gamble, emotionally she was pretty much over it at that point.

Also these new Captcha's are absolute dogshit, what the fuck am I even supposed to be doing.

It's actually insane how obvious episode 2 makes things

Game was easily solvable by episode 2

No it wasn't. The motive did not exist until episode 3.

She treated Kanon like a prop, forced him into clothes he was uncomfortable in, and demanded he lie to the family.

She didn't do any of this. Wtf are you talking about?

lol you dumb fuck it existed in episode 1

The game doesn't give you answers to the puzzles at all really, Battler only ever gets like, 2 answers completely and totally right, Episode 7 is just there for people who want to do the ground work, the actual solution to the first two episodes, the only ones that exist at all in the real world, are self confessed fakes where the writer is allowed just assumptively force them to all work out like a pure riddle.

The real solution (the real events, the things that are actually impacting Ange and the epilogue) are pretty much brazenly explained and hidden behind a basic-bitch riddle for fifth graders, there's nothing obscure about that. You're essentially complaining about having to find solutions that are fundamentally Easter Eggs that the game *tells you* you probably shouldn't be trying to find.

You're essentially complaining about having to find solutions that are fundamentally Easter Eggs that the game *tells you* you probably shouldn't be trying to find.

Mystery fiction in which the solutions to the mysteries don't actually matter is poor mystery fiction.

Okay, explain to me why everyone dies when Battler comes back (instead of say, the year before) using only ep 1 information.

umineko

mystery

game

come on now

tranny forgot to turn off the big bomb

muh information

kinzo was drunk and also dead

I wouldn't necessarily call this a plot hole, but how did Erika, possessing an objective detective's POV and her 1337 deductive skills, never notice that Shannon and Kanon were never in the same room at the same time.

I'm only on episode 5, who the fuck is Sayu? Battler has a cousin? I didn't read the rest of the post so I didn't get spoiled on everything, but how the fuck are you supposed to figure out anything if the story just throws a new character at you like 80% of the way through. How can she be Shannon and Kanon, there have been scenes where Battler is sitting in a room talking to both of them at the same time. I'm gonna fucking hate the rest of this story, aren't I? I'm gonna leave the thread but I swear to fucking god if Ryukishi dumping a new character as a major player in the entire plot the final hour ISN'T the shittiest plot twist in practice I'm gonna conduct a blood ritual to get back the 40 hours I've spent reading this shit.

"Everyone" being there at the start of ep 5 was something stated by the meta characters, not her. She assumed Shannon/Kanon was always somewhere else.

she was busy having sex with me

there have been scenes where Battler is sitting in a room talking to both of them at the same time.

Unreliable narration. The answer to everything in the Answers’ arc is unreliable narration

The answer arcs were worth it purely for Erika. I want a Umineko Gou which features Erika. Whenever Erika is not on screen, everybody should be asking "where's Erika?"

Rosa would 100% call niglet a nigger

The first half of Steins;Gate has more interesting intrigue than Umineko and it's not even a mystery story.

It’s an extremely long mystery novel presented as a slide show

I would like to remind you all that Lion / Sayo / Yasu IS a woman and you will never be one

Implying Steins;Gate has interesting anything, it doesn't.

Not that anon, but you're out of your mind if you think Umineko has more interesting ideas than Steins Gate

Both are shit on account of being VNs (which will never be real literature)

It's not really a game but I do like it a lot. And it has my wife in it.

It is indeed a mystery... at how it is the gayest game of all time.

I really think it does. What interesting ideas does Steins;Gate even have? Attractor Fields? Literally an asspull plot device.

Why is there always a Steins;gate fag in every Umineko thread?

well, which ones? I'm genuinely looking for some good ones, and I'm not sure I've read the ones you're thinking about

What? That's the first thing that comes to your mind? The microwave time machine that can only send texts to the past because of the CRT TV downstairs, the way the series takes time theories, or conspiracy theories and uses them, and even the way the story resolves. Umineko is might be a good story, but what it does is nowhere as interesting or unique.

Woah woah woah agatha christie what the fuck!? You can't name your book like THAT!

It's the only other popular VN with an active fanbase.

Not active enough to have their own threads apparently.

In my defense, after dropping Umineko after chapter 4, I started s;g and it's pretty good so far.
I am more entertained by the theme of time travel with schizo conspiracies than by the witch's love story.

There's more than one. But yes it's not great, I don't particularly like steins;gate itself much too.

The maids if they were americreatures

you gotta remember the episodes were being released and translated between a period of 1 to 2 years periodically, almost like those Harry Potter books, so people today have the luxury of being able to marathon the entire series, but back then people had to wait.

that said
yeah it's silly but given how insane some of the logic used in this story has been it's not farfetched and even commonplace to imagine someone taking on more than one personality or identity and that kind of cops out and solves most of the story's mysteries.

I thought Higurashi was a much more fun mystery game altogether. Umineko kind of lost me after Beatrice wasn't playing anymore and the pacing felt just awful in the second half.

after Beatrice wasn't playing anymore

The part where she stops being as mean also lost me completely.
It was so incredibly akward for the story. Like, on one hand, Battler telling Beato to not go full psycho because that hurt his feelings, and it fucking WORKED, how? And on the other hand, the whole situation implies that the other things that she did and was planning on doing were somehow alright, as in, she didn't go as far with those ones? The whole thing was a life or death fucked up shit fest with high stakes that actually made you feel bad for Battler until that part, then, the situation made it so that the audience really didn't feel that bad for the whole ordeal anymore... Fuck, I just remembered how Beatrice was also trying to cheer Battler up and pouting about how he wouldn't forgive her. Unbelievably stupid.