Utawarerumono is an old game that started back in 2002 on PC and has now spawned a series within its world. The two new games, Mask of Deception & Mask of Truth are not direct sequels of the original title. However they both have very close lore and character ties to the first game and should you ever be interested in playing these two games, I would highly recommend checking out prior to these two titles. You have a couple options regarding the original game that was never localized. First, you can play the original 18+ PC adult version using a fan translation that exists, but I do not recommend it. Why? It's mainly due to the battle system being extremely basic, boring and grindy as shit. I tried it about ten years ago or so and dropped it because of that combined with the ridiculous amount of sex scenes in it that weren't really my thing. Besides the original PC version, you have a 26 episode anime that aired in 2006 which covers the story pretty well. There may also be a fan translation applied to the port of the game to the PS2 or PSP where it had the battle system redone by the developer, Sting.
I realize that I'm asking a commitment before even touching the two latest games, but the lore is quite expansive and I felt it really enhances the experience. If you haven't realized by now, I'm completely recommending the game to anybody who wants a good fantasy/sci-fi story theme mix. You can of course play them without even touching the first game, but there are a lot of lore you'll be missing out on that will help explain some scenes, particularly in the second game. That isn't to say they aren't explained in this game though. Do not in any circumstance watch the recent Utawarerumono anime that covers Mask of Deception. It covers quite a bit of the slice-of-life element, but completely butchers any story and if you watched that then skipped to Mask of Truth, you'd have very little idea what the
is going on.
The story in Deception & Truth are the big draws for me having played/seen the original and they didn't let me down in this duology. It did well setting things up, piecing things together and keeping information compartmentalized within rationality. Since this is a visual novel first you'll have a lot of text. Much of which will take place with slice-of-life type events. I won't sugarcoat it that you should suck it up and plow through it if you don't like slice-of-life type interactions on a semi-frequent basis. Much of the scenes do well to really help established and further characters and how they interact with each other and various situations. I'd even go as far as saying that the story itself is better told than a Trails game which I rate very highly. However Trails does do some things better than Utawarerumono does despite the praise I give. Mostly this is due to the cues that Trails throws at you while advancing multiple plotlines across its various sub-series. It's kind of hard to compete on that front when you aren't going to have more than 2 games.
Even so, Utawarerumono shows itself with strong writing in both the story and character development. It still has many Japanese traits to it that I'm not particularly fond of, but they handle it in a manner that is significantly far more acceptable to me than damn near every other game I've played in recent memory bar Trails. Particularly the meloncholy parts of the second game which I can't comment on further because it's super easy to spoil as I'm usually very critical of those parts as they often detach me from the game as they're done in an overly dramatic, not very realistic fashion. The story also doesn't really serve some kind of serious dramatic undertone like Persona or Nier either which is refereshing.
Out of the entire game I think I had one real issue with the story. That would be with the part involving the war. I mentioned this after I completed the game originally, but I feel like something was missing that's hard to put my finger on. It fit into the story well, but it wasn't really compelling to me in a way I would've liked. On the other hand if they put it in a more compelling way, I don't think it would have fit with the narrative. I just feel conflicted and I'm not sure there's anything I'll be able to do about that.
Characters on the other hand were also great. You've got a fairly large playable cast since it's also an SRPG on top of being a Visual Novel. As the game progresses you get to really see characters grow over time, which was done really nicely without any real abrupt bipolar changes that some games seem to have without proper subtle buildup. While they can be quite archetype/trope worthy, I didn't feel anybody was particularly too one-dimensional, including the side characters that aren't party members at all. They all played their parts pretty believably, even if some of them were just batshit crazy or stupid.
The translation further helped this being pretty well done. Although I think they overdid it with using larger words a bit too frequently when I didn't think that Japanese voice overs were saying it quite the same. I know I had some issues with the first game, but the second seems better all around in that regard without anything that I can remember being super glaring. I also want to give whoever did the translation for Shinonon a gold star. Their dialogue was pretty golden throughout both games. Most everything is voiced in Japanese, which is pretty crazy considering the huge amount of dialogue this game has.
Now the battle system is actually better than what I originally thought it was in Mask of Deception. It's more that Deception did not properly explain various mechanics and the second game does a better job of that due to the addition of trial maps where you complete objectives in specific ways. I felt it really enhanced my enjoyment of the battles having learned how things properly work. Plus you've got a couple new additions to the system that made it a bit more enjoyable as well. The difficulty was a bit better than Deception as well, but I still feel that normal difficulty wasn't that difficult. So if you're a more seasoned person I'd definitely recommend starting on hard.
For the most part though, the battle system is your standard strategy rpg. Characters with longer weapons, such as a spear, will be able to attack multiple tiles ahead and even pierce through enemies. However unlike typical SRPGs, you have several attacks to choose from that will grow into longer combos as you level up. I'll use Atuy/Atui as an example as she has two primary combos. The first one is you can hit anything 2 or 3 tiles away that are adjacent to her character. That attack pierces and can hit enemies behind the original target further along the combo chain. For the most part, these attacks will all produce Zeal for the character, but the last combo move will move the character up a space, putting them next to who you're attacking. This can be a problem if you enter a character with a zone of control (ZOC). What that means is that when their next turn arrives, you won't be able to move the character out of the ZOC unless they have an ability that allows them to do that. So they're stuck there either doing nothing or performing a different combo. In Atuy's case, she has a second combo that will hit an enemy directly next to her and allow her to jump back a space so she's out of the enemies ZOC. Then if since she hasn't moved yet, she can then move somewhere else before ending her turn.
Besides that, you have the ability to 'rewind' turns all the way back to the beginning of battle. While some people will feel this makes things too easy, I'd say that the game is set more for telling a story than having difficult combat. It's a welcome addition that is nice because SRPG battles tend to take longer and if you do happen to fail, you flub the entire time you spent which can be rather hefty. I don't mind losing, but I don't like losing a whole lot of time/progress that I've already made. The other thing I want to mention is that the battles are pretty active for the player. Every combo hit requires precise quick-time events on hitting X or holding X then letting go. If you hit the time right, you get a critical hit. This produces extra zeal for every critical you hit as well as extra damage or healing. If you completely flub the combo hit, you can end your combo then and there. You'd have to really screw up to end the combo right there though.
For the final bit of the battle system, they don't really tell you outside of trials. That would be hidden criticals. Anytime a character hits an enemy outside of the normal quick-time button pushes or holding, you can hit X to produce a hidden critical if you're timing is right. This only produces a minor increase in damage, but the important part is that it produces even more extra zeal for your character. I've been mentioning zeal for a while, so I should probably explain. Zeal is basically your bar (0-100) until you go overzeal (think adrenaline rush). The moment you go overzeal, you get a turn on that character. This means if you get overzeal by critically defending an enemy, you can suddenly get a turn. Most of the time though, it will happen after you've finished an attack against an enemy. During overzeal you're slightly buffed and can perform finishing moves, co-op combos and co-op finsihing moves which will enhance the amount of damage you can deal. However simply attacking with your best move isn't always the best way to get into overzeal. Some attacks in a combo or move will consume zeal instead. The nice thing about that is you can turn off everything after a certain combo before you attack so that you only get the first 1 or 2 attacks of a combo in. Alternatively some zeal loss can be negated by hitting a critical with the attack, but some just consume too much.
It gives you a fair amount to think about in battle as you progress through the game and gain more options. Outside of battle you don't really have any equipment you need to purchase. The only thing you can equip on characters are scrolls and codecs. Codecs are permanent passives such as immunity to a status effect, more move/jump stat or even ignoring enemy ZOCs. Scrolls on the other hand are more active combat abilities. Most of which have to do with defense. Examples of those would be a 'Scroll of Physical Defense I' where you have a 60% chance to be able to defend an attack 2 times in a battle. They renew after every battle and there are some with infinite activations, but the activation chance on those is much lower (10-30%). These items are gained by completing battles through the story as well as importing all the ones you gained in Mask of Deception. So if you do the extra battle content in the first game and then transfer, you will gain more items to be able to equip your characters with. I did not do any of the extra battles from the first game, so I only received what I gained through the story.
In closing, I really enjoyed the game and is one of the better games I've played in the last decade or so at the very least. With it being pretty heavy on the Visual Novel side, I can see many people not really getting into it as you do not get a ton battles throughout the story like a typical SRPG would. I think the first game only had 16 or so prior to the post-game battles. The second one felt like a little more, but not that much more. Mostly what made it feel like more were battles where you'd complete the objective, but then new enemies would spawn in and the objective would change suddenly while your characters are left in the same place they were when they completed the original objective. Besides that, you'll have a lot of slice-of-life parts, particularly in Mask of Deception where you feel like the story isn't advancing at the pace you want. So long as you can deal with those, this is a game I highly recommend trying out at some point. Just be prepared to put in a lot of time if you let the dialogue auto-advance and don't read-skip through it.
