I must say that Umineko is the only story that I have ever read that manages to annoy and entertain me at the same time.
To copy the guys above, an overall impression of EP2 for me would be:
Spoiler:
Jessica's tsurupettan lol
That "light blade" effect is way overused, I loled when Kanon had to materalize it like 5 times before actually fighting
George's nice guy-ness is getting on my nerves.
Shotgun Rosa pissed me off, give me Shotgun Natsuhi back!
Maria annoyed me less this time around, probably because I dislike Rosa even more than Maria.
Kouda is actually my favorite for this episode
What a great guy
The constant "timeout session" between Battler and Beatrice kinda broke the flow of the story for me. At least in Higurashi, the coherency of the story is maintained through logical developments. But Umineko seems to have already given up on telling a reasonable tale. Instead, you get a mess of a story development with little logic, and a bunch of "outside commentators" separate from the actual game ennvironment who seems to be able to control how the story proceeds based on their argument. Even though in Higurashi we eventually learned of the real trick behind each chapter, the chapters are still fully enjoyable on their own. Of course, there's no telling if Umineko will have just as big of a twist in the end (it probably will), but right now, I feel as if I'm reading Watanagashi-hen with Matsuribayashi-hen characters interrupting the game periodically to give me unwanted commentaries.
Even Kanon and Shannon's, er, supposedly impressive performance against Beatrice didn't really wow me for some reason. Although I will admit that all of the servants in this episode were far more likable than the Ushiromiya family members.
I think the story didn't really pick up for me until the very end, where Rosa and Maria's escape made me feel that same thrilling excitement from Matsuribayashi-hen. Or maybe it's just because the atmosphere of EP2 had been absolutely stagnant up until that final breakout.
The tea party was interesting, as usual. If it weren't for the fact that they kept interrupting the story, I actually really enjoy watching Battler and Beatrice bicker.
For some reason, I was wondering what Keiichi and the gang would do if they found out that a little loli was responsible for all their pain. I have a feeling Keiichi would go KOOL, and then Rena will hau~ omochikaeri~ her.
Bernkastel's nipa~ was the single most moe moment in this episode.
Anyway, to think about this using Higurashi's logic that "not everything shown is true", then we can always include "hallucination" as an option when attempting to explain certain phenomenons. Maybe there's a "Rokkenjima Syndrome" here that's caused by a certain agent? Maybe the golden butterflies are actually some kind of airborne hallucinogen that, if inhaled, would cause people to see and do weird things?