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If your only concern is the mystery, I suppose you an tap out now. Episode 8 will basically give no more answers than you already have, at least when it comes to the who, how and why of the culprit. The tragedy of Rokkenjima is told. If your only concerns are the facts, then Episode 8 has nothing for you.
What Episode 8 is, is what comes after. In essence, it is the story of the survivors, primarily Ange. If you are invested in the cast emotionally and want to give them a proper send off, then yes, Episode 8 is vital. "You have the facts. What now?" is, I think, essentially what the story is. Fact is singular. Truth is complicated. And if you care about Umineko beyond the mystery puzzles, then I think you owe it to yourself to see it through.
I will take a guess that you do not feel rewarded because you are told in red that it will not have a happy ending. If you want to know whether there is a point to continuing if it's all going to end in tragedy, and don't mind spoilers, then I think the tone is less bleak than the witches imply. It's about finding strength and meaning after an undeniable tragedy, and though the facts of the events are unmistakably tragic and the story does not fix it all in a puff of magic, it does give the characters a proper send off they deserve in my opinion.
If you want to skim it, there's also the manga of Episode 8, which added many scenes to the story that I think elaborate on a lot of things while improving the narrative significantly.
About the reason why I'm not feeling rewarded, I think this is a personal thing, but I didn't like Yasu's plot. I don't know how to properly explain it, but i think I was expecting more intricated ployes or something like that. It was at EP 5 the first time that I thought about this kind of plot and hoped that it will not be it, so after discovering the truth... :/
But after your answer I decided to continue, so I didn't read your spoiler tag.
(Spoilers about EP 7 ahead)
1 - Who is Battler's true mother?
2 - How Shannon and George started to date?
3 - What was that Maria's obsession about that dying rose in the garden?
4 - Is that scene (EP 7's tea party) about Rudolf and Kyrie killing everyone true?
2. Not really I think? I think it's not that complicated. George just comes to the island now and then and started talking to her. Feelings grow.
3. I don't think it was all that special. The rose was just something the kids decided would be Maria's rose I think, and Maria grows attached to minor things like that.
4. It's more or less answered in Episode 8, yes. Like it's not stated explicitly but it might as well have been. If there is any lingering doubt, the manga version of the same scene basically says it again, but visually.
Nah, I already read it and it is the perfect conclusion to the story. Besides the first and only gameplay in the series[/.spoiler]
Quick: Why was it important that they stop the conventioneers from reading Eva's diary? This was the conflict driving the last million hours of the story, so clearly it must be really important and central, and anyone who understands the game totally can explain how it ties in to everything, right?
It reduces the people involved in the tragedy to a single, worst moment of their life, and not for justice or history but for the entertainment of bystanders who want a good show at the expense of those who are still processing the trauma of losing their family. Hand it over to the police if you really care about justice.
Whose motivation is this, Ange? I've got to assume Ange, since the whole chapter is very strongly presented as her journey. So then what the hell does any of this have to do with where Ange is at and what she wants? Her whole deal has been about how she... shhhoouuuulllldn't find out the truth, I think?... because then she can keep "believing in magic" and hoping her family will come home. They set this whole thing up to be about her trauma, then make the entire last conflict about something totally different!
Also the game has made clear the family's reputation has already been demolished. The diary contains info exonerating every single person involved except Eva, Kyrie, and Rudolph... who have already all been tarred for years! They spend all their time saying the conventioneers are unsavory people, and then conclude that therefore the truth shouldn't be public. But that doesn't follow! (and besides, I know enough people interested in the true crime genre to know "wanting justice for victims" and "being into the gory details" almost always coexist in the same person.)
Also why does so much real estate get taken up by this conflict only for it to get dropped completely? I have no idea if the convention ever even existed, much less if they read the diary there. Why didn't they write the scene where Ange storms in and says "This is my property and you can't use it" or whatever?
I don't think anyone involved want exoneration. Ange spoke to the relatives in Episode 4. They just want to process what happened in peace and be left alone. Some of them have come to peace with their losses and simply find all these people grabbing popcorns and making a sport out of it highly distasteful. I mean you can agree or disagree with this position but I don't think it's anywhere near unreasonable enough to derail anything.
I'm not 100% clear on what's going on there, but Ikuko Hachijo (I think that's her name) is ludicrously wealthy and is known to be a complete eccentric weirdo, so I can believe that either she just changed her mind at the last minute or baited the people who came to this convention to display their real desperation to get into businesses that aren't there for entertainment, thus shaming "witch hunters" into keeping their "true crime" interest private. Considering she's working with Tohya the entire time I do find it unlikely that she ever intended to do anything as distasteful as that to his dead family.
Yeaaaahhhh but trauma has nothing to do with whether or not the conventioneers see the diary. In fact, if Ange isn't going to let the red truths dictate her whole life, then she shouldn't care either way: she's moving on.
In other words, if someone has processed their trauma, then whether or not these totally unrelated people know what happened or not shouldn't really be in a position to threaten anything.
(Also.... just, if this game is seriously going to argue "this woman shouldn't let the fact her family were rapist murderers color her perception of her family," then... jesus, what SHOULD color her perception of her family? That sounds like important color to me!
I do mention this in the other thread but it's very important: The game mushes together "come to terms with the truth but have hope anyway" with "completely deny the truth and leave everything unknown, because that lets you believe whatever you want to be true," and wow those are not the same thing.)
But it's not remotely close to anything that could be perceived as distasteful to almost all of them? If everyone knows the truth, then that SPARES Rosa, Maria, Hideyoshi, Battler, George etc etc etc etc (everyone but Kyrie, Rudolf and Eva) from having dark rumors spread about them! But they're sitting there in the golden land, threatened by the goats, too.
(also this has nothing the hell to do with Ange)
(also Ikuko exploited the events on the island for profit more than anyone else in the world, so what on earth is her motivation? Isn't she Bernkastel's master, the real big bad of the 8th game?)
The more I think about it, the more I can pinpoint the issues with the 8th game mostly to the fact that they really want to keep Battler important (and, christ, to have him survive, which is the stupidest thing), even though this isn't Battler's story anymore. Battler is a phantom that represents Ange's desire for a real family; he's not someone she actually knew. This is about ANGE, and keeping it centered on Ange (and the person most important in her life, Eva) would really, really help keep things more coherent.
You keep going back to the Kinzo thing. That's not in the diary. Eva almost certainly know nothing about that. The only ones who know are Battler and Ikuko, probably.
More broadly though, the intent is not that she should never learn about these things. Battler believes that she hears about these things every day of her life since the incident from tabloids and spectators already. The intent here is to show another side to them and not have their worst side be the only side she has in her mind. Battler does not think her view of them should be based solely on that night, but she should remember her other memories of them too, because that's no less a part of them than the horrible stuffs.
It's revealing a dead woman's most private thoughts, filled with her own biases and pain, to a public who just wants a good story. It's not a police report. It's a diary.
Yeah Ikuko is kind of a bastard I won't argue that. There's a case to be made about whether profit is the primary objective or not though.
I'm not going to touch on Featherine though that's another thing entirely.
It's not an invalid critique about Battler. I wouldn't go as far as she never knew him though but that's about it.