As the title suggests, i came into this blind and never read the novels so this is from the perspective of an anime only. Spoiler free.

Story – 8/10
Very dialog heavy. 90+% of this anime is people talking in a room and often little else. Their is PRETTY good attention to detail, enough for you to reasonably deduce (most of) the mysteries it sets up, and from that perspective its a well put together story if you want to try and solve the mystery with the main character. There was a couple of silly oversights and bending of believability but nothing that ruined it for me. It did feel like it was at once, a little cut down and yet also filled with fluff.

Visuals - 3/10
Despite being mostly dialog, the animators were no slouches and put allot of work into wild backgrounds in surreal visuals to give you something more to look at than lip flaps, but they felt a little too out there or even distracting at times. You could probably listen to this without ever looking at the screen and not miss much of substance. The character designs are a bit of a saving grace, I rather liked them, but they feel a little wasted here.

Audio – 6/10
OST was fitting, but nothing special in my opinion aside from the ED which was impactful and something I would listen to again. The voice acting was overall a little uninteresting as well.

Characters – 3/10
Kunagisa is the only character I cared for, and even she was not that interesting and really didn’t contribute all that much outside of supporting the MC. The main character himself was visually bland and his personality was hinted at being more complex but ultimately the way he outwardly interacted with the story was stiff as a board. The other characters ranged from unlikable to inscrutable which might suit their status as world class geniuses, but hardly lent me to really caring who lived or died. Their irrational motives and behaviors were the closest thing to a contrivance in the plot in my opinion.

Enjoyment – 5.5/10
Personally I found it marginally above average, I had no issues watching It through, but it hardly left me on the edge of my seat despite a well put together plot, and the moments that should have been big were pretty lack luster. I’m left with the feeling they had to cut so much that every character ended up feeling shallow and the conclusions unearned. This lead to the abstract visuals and philosophical talk feeling a little pretentious without the deeper context that I’m sure is In the books.

As I said before, the chain of events is logical, but only because the characters aren't, so I was a little disappointed by the ending despite it being cleverly hinted at. It was further sullied by being almost totally made up of a single long exposition dump with some of the most bizarre and unrelated visuals that frankly made it hard to really pay attention to what they were talking about.

I would honestly recommend against watching this unless you are specifically interested in trying to figure out a mystery and really pick apart all the hints they drop, and don’t really need to be all that invested in the various characters to enjoy that process.