The Anime (and game) revolve around a Highschool student, Yuu Narukami, whose parents both have to travel for work, send him to a town in the countryside, to live with his uncle. As he settles in, a bizarre string of murders begin to occur where bodies are found hanging from television reception antenna.
A huge chunk of the game was made up of Visual Novel elements though, precisely the 'Social Linking' parts, where the players character gets stronger from hanging out and meeting with people around his community, widening his social circle, and whats best about this feature is that the player (for the most part) kind of chooses how to reply/what to say and/or do with the characters, making the dialogue and story really flexible.
Due to Yuus dialogue being completely controlled by the player, that made it quite hard to make fitting dialogue from scratch, even in the game there were only simple choices and the talking was mostly done by the other characters which made him seem to be really silent, which I really didn't care for, considering he was the protagonist.
The remaining cast of characters, on the other hand, were great. They were all different from each other, all having their own issues which the protagonist helps them with, and these issues were all, in one way or another, connected to the main plot, were all very diverse in general, making some of them quite easy to relate to, except Rise Kujikawa, who I found to be quite cliched, but the anime does a great job in developing all of them, the characters were all well done overall, the were different, lovable, and most of all, human.
I found the main plot being quite predictable at times, but that didn't really affect it, as the story was built upon the characters, and made a great ride to see them all progress through the mystery of the murders.
To make up for all the parts in the game where characters developed, they made a few episodes that don't focus on the story much, but rather on character development, these episodes were fun, and really helped the characters grow, and helped the anime live out the theme where "Bonds of friendship make you stronger". And don't worry, it doesn't have any shounen-style friendship asspulls. Here, its all serves for character development.
It's ending got dragged a bit too much, making it a bit anti-climactic, and it really lacked in the side characters who were only in "Social linking" part of the game, and it didn't do well to explain parts like the 'Velvet Room' as untranslated game mechanics. They were interesting but never explained. Which really wasnt cool.
It's good as an anime, but not as an adaptation. I don't think you would get the same depth as you would in the game, but as an anime, it definitley stands great on its own.
Not too special, but worth a watch.
