It starts ff good, but the ending feels totally out of place. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Higurashi to me is meant to be a horror story. That can take many different forms, but this series devolves into some outright shonen battles at the end. The initial setup of strangers meeting in an abandoned village and being cut off from the outside world is classic horror stuff, and the story it tells here is good, and even has some good mystery elements. But this all goes haywire when they start having samurai battles with armed gunmen. To me, if you're in a series thatsdown to earth, you can't have someone with a sword beat like 10 guys, some of whom have guns. It totally kills the tension, and didnt really feel appropriate to this kind of story. But everything up till the ending is the best Higurashi I've read.