Umineko When They Cry is a visual adventure novel broken up into parts. The Japanese company 07th Expansion, known for making Higurashi When They Cry, made the game.
Plot
Most of the game’s events take place on the island of Rokkenjima, which the wealthy Ushiromiya family owns, in 1986. On October 4, the family’s members meet at a house to discuss how to divide the property of the family’s head, who is already dead. They are stuck on the island because a storm has cut it off from the rest of the world. Shortly after that, several people are killed, and there is a lot of evidence that these deaths are related to an old story about a witch named Beatrice.
The story has many episodes, each showing a different version of what happened to start on October 4. All of the secrets of the Ushiromiya family are slowly revealed to the player as they move from one story to the next.
Mechanics: Umineko When They Cry is different from most other visual novels because it only lets you do a few things. Most episodes don’t let you change the way the plot goes, so the story is told in a straight line. The player’s job is to follow it. There are a lot of bonus materials that add to the fun and give us more information that helps us understand what’s going on.
The main story’s last episode, “Twilight of the Golden Witch,” is the only exception. In it, we sometimes have to make choices that lead the story to one of the two possible endings.
How things work
Umineko When They Cry is hard to judge on its quality because it has been re-released so many times, each time with a very different look.
Umineko: When They Cry came out for PC in Japan in 2007. The game’s graphics were simple, with two-dimensional sprites and static backgrounds made from photos that had been retouched. Then, thanks to Alchemist studio, the production came out on PlayStation 3, with all-new graphics created just for this version, including attractive characters and background sprites. Then, this game was made available on PlayStation Portable.
Long ago, Western players who didn’t know Japanese could only play an unofficial fan translation because they didn’t learn the language. Only in 2016 did Umineko: When They Cry come out in English. This version is only for PC and has two different ways to play. The first one is the same as the original one from 2007, and the second lets you change the character sprites to ones that look better. What’s interesting, though, is that these are not the same sprites as the console edition, even though they look similar.
Umineko: When They Cry: Gold Edition was the only way for PC players to get the parts of the PlayStation 3 edition. With this release, we can switch between the original graphics from 2007 and the PS3 version.
