FULL SPOILERS AHEAD YOU SHOULD TOTALLY READ/WATCH THE GAME. Cool playthrough [HERE]

If you want a more in depth analysis of the chapter I think you should read this one [HERE]

This review will be written as if I haven’t read any of the further arcs, which I have. So certain known facts will be treated as if I don’t know if they’re revealed later. One exception will be made if you can infer a thing that happened (EX: Rena’s backstory with the boys).

Higurashi was one of my first visual novels, along with Chaos; Head, Hadaka, Full Metal Daemon. All of those are still my all time favorites in the genre. I mean they kinda formed my taste in Vns. Horror, Sci-Fi, really weird sex. Higurashi is split into 8 main arcs with 5 additional arcs. I’m playing this through Higurashi Hou, which is a remake with additional content. That content and Hou arc will be reviewed together in a separate thing.

The first arc is called Onikakushi. This is probably one of my favorites arcs of the whole game, the ending to it is just so perfect. If you don’t have any previous knowledge of this being a horror Vn you can totally be tricked into thinking it's a wholesome slice of life thing. Even if you did know I remember the first time playing it I kinda forgot it was horror because of how long the opening is with the wholesome daily life parts, which is good!

The setup for the story really pulls you in. It starts as a really normal Vn about a dude named Keiichi moving to a small town called Himarisawa hanging out with his friends at school. The other Mcs being Rena, a girl Keiichi’s age kinda an airhead. Mion, a girl a year older than Keiichi, self described as ‘an perverted old man’. And two girls named Satoko, a little shit and Rika, a really quiet type. It pretty much follows their everyday shenanigans and such in the beginning. But eventually things start going weird little by little. The morbid killing at the dam, the so-called curse of Oyashiro-sama, the main cast being intertwined with it. Keiichi dives deeper into the mysteries of Himarisawa until the story climaxes at the end of arc one.

The mystery being the curse of Himarisawa. The curse is really called Oyashiro-sama's curse, the deity that protects the town. The curse started with the dam project. The Japanese government wanted to build a dam near Himarisawa but if they did it would end up flooding the town. The citizens of Himarisawa fought back against it. Somebody does end up dying due to it, the manager of Dam Project is killed by 5 workers after an altercation. They each agree to take a part of his body and bury it. The next day one of them snitches and everyone is arrested except one, the man that suggested to cut up the body. Eventually after this incident the Japanese government cancelled the project and let it be. Now every year after the murder, a new person dies and another disappears.

This is all revealed to you through a local photographer named Tomitake. You meet him while you're trying to help Rena pull a Colonel Sanders Statue from the Dam site. He comments about the incident that happened at the dam. Keiichi is really confused because up to this point his entire friend group hasn’t mentioned a single thing about the dam to him. Apparently it was a major event in town so it’s even more odd. Keiichi ends up interrogating everyone after researching more but nobody tells him jackshit other than the basics. This causes a rift between him and the group. It causes a huge domino effect of worse and worse shit happening to all of them.

The mystery really draws you in and puts you into the shoes of Keiichi while trying to figure it out. You are very limited to the knowledge of the curse as he is and have to solve(and fail) alongside him. His anxiety, morbid curiosity about the curse, and him slowly losing trust in his friends after so many strange things. You feel all of it. Ryukishi does this aspect of the writing really really well. You genuinely don’t know what's really happening or what's not because we are viewing this from Keiichi’s perspective. Did Rena and Mion actually try to drug him? Were there really demons trying to kill and eat him?

Scenes like the one where he senses the presence behind him and then beats the shoe holder with the bat or the one where he somehow comes to the conclusion that Rena was watching him buy the ramen at the store could go either way. It could actually be the supernatural at work due to Oyashiro-sama’s curse or it could be a paranoia stress induced hallucination. I feel like this is the main mystery of Onikakushi, beside the Oyashiro-sama stuff.

I’m often surprised to hear that when people first play the game they dislike the school life portions of Onikakushi. I feel like you end up caring for the characters even more because Ryukishi decides to do this. In a horror story like this it gives you more emotion than if he immediately hopped into the thick of it. While it’s not first time players fault, the stuff that happens in the school life tends to have very important small details and clues that hint towards the larger mystery. When replaying you tend to notice smaller behaviors in the characters and things in the dialogue that make you go “Oh shit they literally mentioned that here” or “Wow her doing this here makes sense because of that one thing”.

Onikakushi is the scariest arc for me. The creepy music that plays as you read the TIPS on murders happening in the town. The tension that you feel when Keiichi is snooping around in places he shouldn’t. The genuine fear when Rena tries to force her way into Keiichi’s house, literally jamming her fingers into the door and profusely apologizing to him. I was literally playing this shit late at night in my room with pizza bites scared. Maybe not super scared but still!

Ryukishi is very good at being subtle with setting the mood in scenes. A way he does it is in the music choice. Certain tracks will lead you into a false sense of security, but you’re kinda aware that it’s false? Like with the scene with Rena mask slipping the first time when it switches from the creepy track to the normal upbeat one like it never happened. It’s another he makes you second guess yourself if it actually occurs with how jarring the tone shift is.

There’s also songs that kinda serve as a warning to the player if you notice, like What is Wished. I didn’t really notice it until this playthrough but the song usually plays right before something big happens. It’s also a bit of a melancholic calm before the storm piece.

I do wonder how exactly he chose what songs to use, I know it was mostly royalty free tracks. I couldn’t find any interviews where he talks much about the ost so I’m curious.

The ost on its own is great! As I mentioned before they’re great mood setters and used as hints towards the player well. Minus the creepy tracks, they’re good to listen to while walking or on a bus. Idk if you could tell with how much I mentioned it, but What is Wished is my favorite track. The best replacement track that Mangagamer did.

On the topic of things that Mangamer changed with the remaster, I prefer the original sprites and backgrounds to the remaster. The remaster sprites are objectively better drawn that Ryukishi’s but one I think the originals are more charming and two they portray Ryukishi’s expression better than the new ones. The new ones feel cleaner and lifeless I guess.

Same with the backgrounds. I’ve always liked seeing real photos used in Vns, especially more than drawn ones usually. I pretty much put the settings all to the original, NVL format too. I think it’s easier to read long stretches of text and isn’t really confusing to who’s talking.

A praise I can give Mangagamer with Hou is the amount of options they give you. I know a lot of people don’t like it much, but I think it’s a completely serviceable way to play the game. Especially that the translation is wayyy better and easier to come by than the old fan translation. Price wise it’s pretty cheap and I bought all of the arcs for 15 dollars on a sale at GOG. You can alway sail the seven seas if you don’t want to pay too.

I think Onikakushi is an amazing start to Higurashi and sets a high standard for the future arcs. It draws the player in well and keeps their attention the entire time. If you are just getting into Vns it will serve you well to start with this. I love higurashi and higurashi loves me.