Umineko When They Cry Saku: Nekobako to Musou no Koukyoukyoku (NSP, XCI) ROM + v1.0.3 Update + English Patch

Umineko When They Cry Saku: Nekobako to Musou no Koukyoukyoku is a remaster of Umineko no Naku Koro ni Saku for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 by Entergram. It was announced on November 18, 2019. The remaster follows Rondo of the Witch and Reasoning and Nocturne of Truth and Illusions in adding a new sprite set with additional poses and expressions, as well as CGs, additional visual effects, voice acting, and a new opening video. The song for the new opening video is Kasaneawase no Nekobako (Catbox of Superposition). It is composed by Chiyomaru Sakura and performed by Sasaki Rico. Umineko no Naku Koro ni unfolds in 1986 on Rokkenjima, a secluded island. Within October 4 and October 5, Kinzō Ushiromiya, the wealthy family’s patriarch residing on the island, nears the end of his life. Eleven family members convene on the island to discuss the division of Kinzō’s assets upon his demise. Accompanying them are Kinzō’s five servants and personal physician. As a typhoon engulfs the island, trapping everyone, a series of mysterious murders begin to occur.

GAMEPLAY

Umineko When They Cry is a murder mystery visual novel, and as such conveys its story primarily through text-based narration and dialogue supplemented by visual and audio elements such as character sprites, background music, and sound effects. It is described as a “sound novel” by 07th Expansion, due to the game’s greater focus on creating atmosphere through audio elements rather than visual aspects. The original releases contain no voice acting for the characters. Umineko is almost entirely linear and contains no interactive gameplay elements, except small portions of its final entry, Twilight of the Golden Witch.

Besides advancing text, players may also access the Tips Mode, allowing them to read various supplementary information regarding the characters and story. Each episode also contains two epilogues which are successively unlocked, which are continuations of the main story that often contain important plot points. Despite the lack of interactive gameplay elements, Umineko is framed as a game between the author and the reader, with difficulty ratings given in the descriptions for each episode. This refers to the difficulty of the mysteries in each episode, which the reader is intended to actively try to solve. Several story elements are introduced through the course of the story to aid readers in solving the mystery along with the story’s protagonist.

PLOT

The story begins on October 4, 1986, at Rokkenjima (六軒島), a private island where the wealthy Ushiromiya family has gathered to discuss the division of assets belonging to the ailing family head, Kinzo. Returning after a six-year absence, Kinzo’s grandson Battler becomes reacquainted with the legend of the “Golden Witch” Beatrice, who supposedly gave Kinzo ten tons of gold to restore his financially crippled family in the past. Beside her portrait is a riddle-like epitaph, which is believed to grant the rumored gold and the succession of the headship to the solver. A typhoon traps the eighteen people on the island, and occult-like murders occur per the epitaph, often in ways that seem impossible for a human. At the end of the first game, the witch Beatrice seemingly kills and revives everyone.  Refusing to acknowledge the existence of magic, Battler is seemingly sent to the parallel dimension of Purgatorio, from which events on Rokkenjima can be seen.

He faces Beatrice in games of logic in subsequent episodes, with the murders repeating themselves in different ways each time, and is tasked to explain them all with human tricks. Throughout the story, Battler comes to understand magic as an adornment of reality with fantasy, used by several individuals as a coping mechanism for their harsh life situations, and how this is related to Beatrice. In the original visual novel, the solution is never made completely clear, with the need for the reader to solve it personally and the importance of the truth being contained within the cat box maintained by the narrative. However, in the manga adaption of the final two episodes, the true identity of Beatrice is revealed as Kinzo’s illegitimate child Sayo Yasuda, who plays the role of two of the family’s servants, Shannon and Kanon. Having begun work for the Ushiromiya family at age nine, Sayo was ostracized by the older servants and found comfort in the creation of imaginary friends through “magic”.

Sayo also experienced severe gender dysphoria due to their failure to develop standard female sexual characteristics during puberty. Sayo developed a close friendship and childhood crush on Battler but suppressed their feelings for him during his absence and eventually entered a relationship with his cousin George as Shannon. Another cousin, Jessica, also developed a crush on Kanon, which Sayo partially wanted to reciprocate. With the aid of Genji, the head servant, Sayo solves the epitaph and gains possession of the legendary gold and a massive number of explosives under the island, both remnants of an old World War II military base that made contact with the Italians. They also discover their relation to Kinzo, leading Sayo to realize that a relationship with any of the cousins would be incest.

Driven to despair and disgusted by the Ushiromiya family’s sins, Sayo begins planning a mass murder-suicide using the resources at their disposal. Several possible scenarios are thrown into the sea as message bottles with the hope that someone in the future would come to understand the truth, which forms the basis of the first two games. Sayo’s plans conclude with the detonation of the explosives, which would destroy all evidence and leave only their fictitious tales standing. At the same time, Sayo is unable to fully accept this course of action and makes it possible for another person, ideally Battler, to solve the epitaph and stop them.

In the actual family conference of 1986, the epitaph is solved by the adults of the family, and as such, Sayo’s plan does not take place. However, an argument breaks out over the possession of the gold, and Battler’s parents, Rudolf and Kyrie, carry out a massacre of the family. Battler’s aunt Eva survives after killing Rudolf and Kyrie in self-defense; Sayo and Battler also survive, but Sayo commits suicide by drowning at sea. Battler, who attempts to rescue Sayo, suffers brain damage and loses his identity as Battler, but retains his fragmented memories. He takes on a new identity named Toya Hachijo, and his attempts to piece together the truth of the incident lead him to pen the tales of subsequent games, represented by his battles with Beatrice in Purgatorio.