(OBLIGATORY SPOILER WARNING FOR ALL EPISODES)
Introduction
Higurashi SOTSU is the quickly starting continuation of Higurashi GOU, in which provides an additonal story under the guise of being a "remake". Although the surprise was poorly done and had the potential to ruin a lot of things for new comers, I found it rather enjoyable that I could relive my original Higurashi watching experience and once again begin to create a bunch of theories and attempt to predict what happens next. Within SOTSU, lots of things start to develop including putting a heavy emphasis and added references towards other stories that are also apart of the When They Cry Series (Umineko). However, once you begin to go further into the story as someone who hasn't watched anything else besides Higurashi you start to feel more lost and begin losing the power to predict key plot points which was one of the main aspects of the experience. Furthermore, you also begin to realize the great majority of the "content" in SOTSU just constantly rephrases multiple points or things you already know, instead of giving the audience new perspectives, viewpoints, or straight new information. I have decided to divide the review into parts where Sotsu's extreme weaknesses lie. Naturally, there will be spoilers as that is where the majority of the story's weak points are.

Satoko is made much more smart than she actually is.
Throughout this answers arc you begin to see how the format goes. Satoko injects someone, they go L5 and you follow the story of GOU but through mastermind Satoko's perspective. First off all, they needed to use time much better here. I don't know about you, but having to watch Rika's dance for the 10th time just seemed off putting. I feel like they definitely could have condensed a great majority of the arcs here and only put in the important bits with Satoko. Regardless of that, as in typical answers arc fashion we finally get to see how everything was done. I expect 100% clean details without any form of "glossing over" but you still see that here and there. For instance, in Wataakashi-hen Satoko decides to inject Mion except it was completely skipped over! Satoko had gone outside with Mion as they were getting drinks (that were already inside the vending machine) and Satoko takes out the needle...then the scene ends? Really? The majority of time when someone is injected its when their in a vulnerable state. Someone sleeping, or it was put in their drink. There was literally nothing here showing how Satoko injected Mion here. With such an important detail like this I am highly disappointed that something like this was glossed over. Regardless, a bigger issue presents itself. The story's plot just comes together to protect Satoko and make sure it fits her narrative and goal in a very artificial way. With every single victim that Satoko injects, they naturally go L5. But their delusions and extremities do not involve her 100% of the time. The fact that Satoko manages to perfectly deal with most people in L5 as if she knows what they are going to do is just not realistic. And the person who's L5 has delusions that perfectly protect and back up Satoko's plan for that fragment, as well as the truth that Satoko invokes certain narratives in L5 victims even though this should be impossible. Because of this, Satoko is made to look way too smart for what she actually does.

Picture is Satoko talking to Akasaka, because somehow Satoko knew that if he were to go L5 without a narrative he wouldn't target Rika? But also not to mention they completely cut out the syringe part AGAIN. I also think it's a stretch to assume that JUST because Satoko says a fake story to Akasaka about "parasites" that means his entire delusional is founded upon that 10 second conversation. There just has been no signs of risk at all for Satoko here.

Satoko's narrative planting has so much plot convenience that it works with 100% success rate. There can be many ways for her to make someone go L5 and have that "plan" blow up in her face but it never happens, ever. I think if the story took time and effort to really develop Satoko's plan instead of making her incredibly evil and trying things out for "fun" then she could have been presented way more smart than she actually is. Because this is just plot convenience. It happened during Tatariakashi-hen as well, when Oishi just became Satoko's puppet because his delusion was him trying to solve the curse. And it happened with Wataakashi-hen as Mion's delusions involved being protective over Keiichi, and she managed to hear in on the conversation where Adult Rika and Keiichi were talking, which set her off. There just needed to be more Satoko instead of just her injecting someone and then the ball rolling 100% of the time in her favor.

Umineko forced into the story.
I'm not going to spend this much time on this topic, since it's generally opinionated but I for one do not like having to watch additional side content to receive context for what's going on in this anime. I wouldn't have minded it as much but for Umineko's case it's special because it's quite a difficult one to really get going. You've got the choice of either a very poor anime adaption, a 100+ hour visual novel, or the manga which just spells out the mystery for you. Really poor choices here, and I don't think it's a good idea to make your audience go through this in order to understand what's happening. Luckily for us though, the story didn't incorporate as much Umineko as I thought they would, but of course they still made some references here and there like the theme of witches. It feels like they didn't really know what to decide on, whether or not to make Umineko an actual part of the story or just some short references here and there.

Satoko's Impossible Redemption
Oh my gosh this is a big one. This is one of the most main issues definitely. Throughout the story and these answers arcs I have formed the opinion that no matter what, Satoko is irredeemable. Of course this is an opinion, but if the story wants to redeem Satoko smoothly they need to do it in a way that's valid and makes me feel bad for her. But with how everything was presented already, that task is actually impossible. Aside from the odd "Evil Satoko" thing they tried to pull, I hope you realize that the "real" Satoko still killed Rika with the chandelier because this was the first time she was granted the powers from Eua and that was before all of the tragedies started up again. The real Satoko still had a MAJOR part in the killings regardless of what you think about her as of now. Also, if the story wanted to put the blame on this "Alter Satoko" they should have done a better job in showing that off instead of the red eyes which could have meant anything. I mean, even in the scene where Satoko was about to kill Teppei she was fighting herself until the alter Satoko "won" but from the final episode that came out today you can clearly see that the "real" Satoko never died from her in the first place. So now, let's talk about some major issues with Satoko's goal in general and why this makes it almost impossible to redeem her anyways:

Satoko's goal is ultimately impossible for Rika to realize. Satoko wants Rika to give up her dream and live in Hinamizawa with her forever but then you'll begin to notice how do these tragedies give any nod to what Satoko wants? The only way that Satoko actively tries to say anything is with her weird monologues that she uses to "guide" Rika by saying that her "nightmares" are the way they are for a reason. It's still pointlessly ambiguous and that is still not enough to make Rika realize what she wants. And the funny part about this is that her speaking and acting like this is just highly suspicious in general. If Rika had realized that Satoko was more or less blaming her own thoughts that haven't happened yet Rika would have caught onto Satoko much faster.

The only thing I can get out of this situation is that she wants Rika to give up. EXCEPT, that whole entire concept is flawed because if Rika notices the tragedies are going to stop, she's just going to fast forward and go towards her dream again. It's a whole back and forth process without any meaning. The whole entire foundation just doesn't add up. How can you equate mass murders to the message of trying to stay in Hinamizawa? Also the funny part about this is the tragedies are the whole reason why Rika wants to leave the town in the first place. She's sick of the town, I mean come on that's a naturally feeling after staying forever in a death loop in it for years and years. Don't you think doing these tragedies again will just make her hate the town even more? She's been going through repeated loops for a very long time anyways what makes Satoko think she's going to give up so willingly?

Reused Footage
What an absolute trainwreck in regards to the usage of time. SOTSU had so many instances of reused footage I don't even know when to begin. Quite frankly, I was thinking the gun confrontation scene would be in the SINGLE digits in terms of episode count but oh boy I could have never been more wrong. We had to suffer through a ridiculous amount of Rika dances and terrible usage of time in each individual answers arc. And then once when we finally get to the fantastic "plot" we've been waiting for in Episode 13 what happens? Eua makes Hanyu suffer the same thing we the audience have been suffering. More reused footage. On Episode 13... YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS UP. Like, I would complain about the horrible time record and lack of unique scenes in the early episodes of SOTSU but this completely overshadows that issue.

Category of Miscellaneous Annoyances
This section is just here for annoying and weird plot holes that happened through the story that I found out of place or extremely odd. I'll just list them off since there's not really any other good place for them:

1. Satoko's Weird Dodging Skills she acquired out of nowhere
2. Satoko and Eua knowing that Rika could remember her loops - I'll just elaborate on this further and just rant about how this harmed the story's growth. There was an argument to be made that Satoko probably had pulled out the gun prematurely under the pretense that she could just "restart" the loop like nothing happened due to the fact that she thought she got caught. (Even though there was such lack of evidence at the time). But realistically speaking, this means that Satoko NEVER had to have pulled out the gun in the first place, and could have denied the indirect accusation outright. I'm just putting this here because it was really frustrating to see the one wildcard that Rika had just be thrown away immediately. There was no reason why Satoko and Eua should have been able to know about Rika retaining her memories but they did it just to give even more power to Satoko because that's been the entire theme of the story. Putting Satoko on a pedestal. I just think that would have been a cool dynamic to see in the story. Satoko overtime in each loop has progressively gotten more blatant and cocky and it would have just been nice to see it blow up in her face in a way that made logical sense. But I guess they wanted to close off that possibility entirely and just focus on Rika having an "anime moment" and suddenly remembering parts of the Ooishi loop.
3. Satoko leaving blatant evidence behind (the syringe, MULTIPLE times)
4. Characters act stupid to make Satoko look smart
5. Because Rika remembers her loops now, Satoko would now have to perform 4 flawless executions on getting the syringe without being spotted or messing up.
6. During the unnamed loop with Keiichi going L5 in Angel Mort, Satoko is able to shoot herself and have a tiny little monologue next to Rika's body with a gun before any of the police notice that she's alive.
7. Important details are told to the audience last minute instead of in the moment when it matters or in a smooth way, which worsens the impact of everything. Example: Rika's memories of the Ooshi loop for example
8. Weird and out of place Dragon Ball-esque fight scene that is just completely out of theme for Higurashi.
9. Rika manages to somehow guess what she did in St. Lucia even though she has no memories in it:

"Must've" here implies that Rika doesn't actually remember what happened in St.Lucia but she's assuming that she reached out to help Satoko. Satoko reaffirms this by saying "you did" which she wouldn't need to say if Rika actually did remember what happened in St.Lucia. Again "I bet" is her making a guess that Satoko just straight up didn't like her friends. I really hope it's not a translation thing because they are really making it apparently that Rika doesn't remember what happened at St.Lucia. But back to the main point: Rika flawlessly guessed one of the reasons why Satoko was angry, without even having the memories.

Satoko vs Rika
We get two episodes of this extremely underwhelming final confrontation. All of the seriousness from before has been stripped away due to that weird Dragon Ball fight scene and for some reason the characters are focusing on the most pointless things instead of addressing the main concerns that the audience is wondering. While Rika and Sakoto fight and punch each other nonsensically over "studying", the audience is dying to have them address ANYTHING regarding the loops or the tragedies. Why did you make everyone murders? Because you suck at studying? Nope, not a single thought is given to address any of that. AND SOMEHOW RIKA FORGIVES SATOKO for no reason. She said she was going to "force" her to study, which already implied from the beginning that she had forgiven her. Funny how they say that, and yet here they're having this weird death battle which isn't truly representative of what they are saying. How can Satoko justify her looping and atrocities so easily? Why isn't Rika doing ANYTHING to counter Satoko's ridiculous mental gymnastics? Who knows, not even the story does. The thing with Satoko is that she's parasitically co-dependent on someone. So she's overly dependent on Rika and of course if anything happens Satoko can easily blame Rika for "abandonment" to avoid any responsibility. How convenient. It reminds me of the dynamic with Satoshi in a way, but this one is far more malicious. But anyways, these tragedies starting up again and her being thrown back into them should have been an absolute GIANT wound for Rika that should have really made her emotional. She should have absolutely hated Satoko, or at least have killed her with Onigari-no-ryuuou. But instead, she prefers to still stay friends or "contacts" with someone who had dissected their intestines slowly and painfully. And once again, Satoko has no justification for this. Rika had offered help and Satoko had denied it and thus she fell behind in her studies. It was her own fault that she lacked the initiative. But whenever someone asks why Satoko did what she did you should just say "Because she really hates studying, that's it" because that is literally the truth and what a sad thing it is.

Moving forward, the ending was surprisingly dull. I figured it would be way worse than what it could have been, but this ending didn't really attempt to do anything special. Nothing fundamentally changed with this ending. Rika still went to her dream school, and Satoko actually managed to grow up and be away from Rika for a little while. I said a little while because Satoko couldn't even last an entire day before she wanted to go ahead and find Rika again. How absolutely insane is it that just having these two characters talk makes them reach this odd middle ground which doesn't even complete Satoko's true objective. It's the definition of pointless.

And lastly, evil Satoko randomly leaves Satoko's body without any context and gets away scot-free. Don't ask me what that means because I have no clue either. Now that all of that is addressed, let me summarize this whole confrontation for you in a neat little nutshell:

Rika: I will make you study
Satoko: I don't want to study
Rika: Yes you will
Satoko: no
Rika: ok bye lol

Conclusion
And that wraps up the review. I really wish I could have said more positive things about SOTSU, but unfortunately it just dropped the ball on so many different things that it's hard to really avoid it. Same thing with the fact that this is an answers arc, so naturally it lacks the substance and deep discussions that you could have with Higurashi GOU. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed my review and that it made you learn something new.