1. The ghost kids killed that one girl who we kinda liked, yet later on we're meant to sympathize with them.
_This is a big thing in Japanese culture I've found: the dead needing to be appeased, even if they are dicks.
Now, finding out who their killer is and why they've been forced to wander an eternity as shambling, mute corpses would have made us sympathetic already and we'd want to help them. Making it seem like they were the villains when in reality they never were and it was only Sachinko killing, then we'd have a good ol' fashion mystery red herring!
Yet, they killed that girl we kinda liked. We went out of our way to appease them, got fucked over because of a lack of evidence they always had but never gave, and they just kill her.
Writing tip! The formula goes thus: Readers get attached to main character + main character is murdered = Reader wanting murderer to die.
At no point do they want retribution for the killer! No, it doesn't matter if "the closed spaces made them evil" or whatever. That doesn't matter in the scheme of tone development. The tone of "revenge the killed MC and escape" now changes to "help the killer of the innocent girl and free them from the curse...to escape".
As someone who's studied multiple literary genres for over 12yrs, primarily the fictions, I can tell you as sure as the sun will rise that I'm not the only one who felt pissed at this turn of events.
2. Ghost girl is real girl?! ...Kinda?!
Sachinko went nuts and started killing kids to keep her mother company. Okay~
...Why did she never keep her mother company herself? Why did she show up as a real/human girl when killing the kids and at the end? Was she ever able to affect the physical world outside of the closed spaces?
Well, yes, because we see her killing those kids (which was a good switch, but a confusing one as you can see). If that's the case, then why didn't she try to just get retribution against the principal by showing the world what he'd done?
Which leads us to the next part...
3. Why the blazing blue fuck is the principal and his son allowed to work at the school after going batshit? No, I don't care what Japanese social politics are. At no point does anyone get to keep their job when they throw up talismans all over their walls and cower in the corner of their office. No One
Not to mention that, especially looking at Japanese social politics, there's no way that teacher would be allowed to do a damn thing near the school. He'd be shoved off to wherever they'd send him, far away from the kids.
4. The murder didn't happen before forensics as far as I can tell, so how did the principal never get caught? What, did he expertly clean the corpse of his prints before whisking Sachinko off to do who-knows-what before killing her?
Maybe he had friends in high places? Still doesn't explain 3, though.
5. This one's a bit silly, but did you SEE the SIZE of those STATUES?! How the FUCK did he carry those around in his pockets?! HOW?!
...Told you it was silly.
Lasty, 6. This game was made by Sierra's ghost.
I know Sierra isn't dead (I think?), but this game was about as obtuse and annoying at times as a King's Quest title. I needed the walkthrough just to know where the hell I was supposed to go half the time.
And that near-final section with the pool? Fuck that.
And the final section with the chimes? FUCK that.
And the ending of this game? FUCK THAT.
7. I know I said "Lastly", well I lied, much like this game lied the entire time. There was no ultimate goal. It was just meandering until we get a shitty ending that makes no sense.
Sachinko and the kids she killed that day made the closed spaces. She was in control. They were her pillars. Once helped, they could pass on and her pillars would be gone, thus making all the parallel spaces merge as they did. However, since there's so many dead, the closed spaces start looking for a "new Sachinko"?
...The FUCK is this bullshit?! Are you saying we just did absolutely fucking nothing but escape? Really? ...REALLY?!
Think about it: The killer gets to pass on while the other dead, who should be appeased and pass on as well since the "head of the dead" as I call her has flown the coup with her mommy(?), are STUCK in that HELL.
...How is this proper resolution again?
Oh, and we never made Sachinko confess to her crimes. She just got all "Mommy don't leave me" and screamed and got to pass on (to hell most likely, though the story won't say). So, maybe that's why the other dead are stuck: the protagonists didn't know what the fuck they were supposed to do in the first place!
They meandered around like the plot, arguing at the end about "just leaving" or "putting an end to this". Turns out there is no end anyway, either because the writers wanted to make sequels or because they didn't know how to write a satisfying ending consistent to the themes involved (namely mystery, horror, guilt and absolution).
And fuck Soup-Eye! She's mysterious for no reason other than to deliberately keep information from spilling out too soon. The idiot should have done more.
# Etc.
-That teacher had plenty of time to get pulled up! If she can hold on for THAT long with one arm and monologue about dumb bullshit then she could've also tried pulling herself up with Ayumi(?)'s help.
-What the fuck is with the Sachinko Charm?! I know it was fake and just a means to make it into the closed spaces, but why did it work in the end?! You mean to tell me that they could've just wished for shit and it would've come true? WHY?! Sachinko wasn't a genie! She's just some dead kid. And if they could wish for shit, why didn't they just wish for, I don't know, Sachinko's mom never having been killed?!
-Why pentagrams?! ...Seriously, what does that have to do with anything?
Biggest Fuck Off of All: No one remembers the dead who die in the closed spaces? Then why did Ayumi or whoever admired that bitch paranormal journalist chick FUCKING REMEMBER HER?!!
Also, there was no need for a sad ending after all that. With no real precedent in the story to set it up, it felt forced and cheap.