You should feel vindicated, man. I'm explicitly playing this game because you told me too
Yeah, the protagonist might actually be my favorite character in the story. I like him for pretty much the same reason I liked Phoenix Wright in his series. They're totally different characters, but they're both competent adults, and their games treat them as such. Fusaishi is essentially an anti-horror-movie character, in that he confronts problems, even potentially supernatural problems, rationally, and attempts to resolve them logically. Not that he never gets emotional or makes mistakes, but when he does so it makes sense due to what you know about his character (or because the player is controlling him and makes a stupid choice). It makes sense why people (especially women) would be drawn to him because he's very smart, but also very emotionally intelligent. He actually makes an effort to understand people, albeit often for selfish reasons. Like you said, he's not just the the typical bland player stand-in that they stick in these games, who achieves victory and gets everything he wants despite exhibiting no useful skills or strength of character. Next to him, I think my other favorites so far are Rikako Uematsu, because I feel like she hits that sweet spot between being complicated and just being an outright weirdo, and Yudai Hashimoto, again because he comes across as a thoughtful, competent adult. But like I said, they're all pretty solid and serve an important role in the narrative.
As for where I am in the game, I'm in the early stages of the "Darkness" chapter, and I'll be honest, I'm not really liking it, for what I suspect are obvious reasons. However, I think I understand why the story had to take this turn, and I'm optimistic I'm not gonna have to spend too much time in this particular arch. I'm also guessing this is where Haru gets a lot of her arc, as that seems to be the direction the narrative is going.
Other than that, the only other thing that's been a little bit off is how a lot of the alternate routes in the game seem very, very short, but they force you to take them before you take the "correct" route. Some of the alternate routes have a decent amount of content in them, and it makes sense that when you "looped" you'd make a new decision that you wouldn't have made before because you have new information. But a lot of them just seem like pointless dead-ends that you can't avoid. It's far from game-breaking, but it does feel like it lacks some of the narrative tightness of something like a 999.
But overall, great game that I'm very much enjoying.
I haven't played Higurashi before. Is that a PC game, or is it available on consoles/handhelds too?