Our man Hakuowlo bonked his head hard it seems, because he awakens without any memory of who he is or what he was doing. Opening with a fat dose of anime-amnesia, Haku is woken by a worried looking mild-mannered girl by the name of Eruruu who, alongside her family, tends to his injuries. Slow down, we only just met!
“Amnesia? So that really happens?”, jokes moustachioed townsman and axe-wielding friend-figure Teoro. Yes, Teoro, it does thank you very much. It’s a very natural occurrence that every anime hero encounters every once in a while.
Taking reference from medieval-era Japan and specifically old remote Hokkaido culture, Utawarerumono lands protagonist Haku in unfamiliar territory; out in the sticks.
After clearing his confusion, he awakes to the sight of Eruruu’s younger sister. He then, on noticing the fluffy ears and tail, thinks he’s in some sort Sengoku cosplay party and does what comes naturally to any sane person. He pulls the tail. To be fair, he’s not the sharpest tool as it wasn’t until days later, he realised he’s been wearing a mask that cannot be removed the whole time. A true leader.
Deceptive Truth
Game series fans in the West have been treated to previous releases Mask of Deception and Mask of Truth but to date there’s been no localised form of the origin story until now. Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen is the latest entry of Leaf’s long-running visual novel and SRPG series to receive the localisation treatment.
Essentially, we’re presented with a remastered version of the original PC/PS2 2002 game, making use of the modern game’s makeup. For me, personally, the fact that Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen kicks off the story is an absolute blessing because, having now been blown away, I will definitely play the other two games.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. After the initial eyeroll-inducing amnesia plot point, Utawarerumono bounces out of bed and puts on its best pair of socks. You know the pair; they’re the ones you love the most but have a couple of holes in them. And they’re closest. Stick a pair a of shoes on and no one will notice. It’s all about comfort and convenience, something this game thrives on.
Let me justify that clumsy analogy with some actual points.
Sock it to ‘em
The story portions of the game are extremely polished with an understated user interface that sits perfectly alongside the usual visual novel shortcuts and functions, such as the ability to quickly run skip through text you’ve read before or easily leaf through previous conversations. All present and correct so far.
Character artwork has an awesome ‘90s anime look and blends nicely with the detailed painterly-meets-manga backgrounds. Tied together with the strong UI and colour scheme, nothing feels tacked on, leaving a pleasingly consistent feel to visuals outside combat scenarios.
To get Haku ready to rumble and out of his peaceful rhythm, the stakes start low, when some little buggers steal the village’s newly grown crops. Of course, this is perfect time to work some combat in by moving from the artistic portraits and backdrops to a rudimentary 3D setting.
Disgae-it-ain’t
Equipped with a battleground grid display and a turn-based system, Utawarerumono’s combat leans on tried and tested mechanics for its gameplay. Think Disgaea, Fire Emblem or the lesser known Stella Glow (for the 3DS SRPG fans out there, respect), where positioning and considered movement often makes the up the bulk of your tactics. AI is decent, as enemies surround you and won’t hesitate to home in on your healer or weakest link, taking advantage of boosted attacks to the side or behind your units, and while there are elemental affinities, levelling up systems and a nifty timing-based system (where landing a button hit within a ring that gradually reduces in size with precision rewards the player with additional energy), there’s nothing to break the mould. The beauty in its implementation, however, is that it does everything cleanly within that system.
The battle grid is easy to navigate, with the standard control scheme of left analog stick to freely move your cursor and the d-pad snapping to the grid for precision. Not once did I feel at odds with anything that happened on screen. It’s a simple menu-based affair where battles are slow, careful and deliberate but within this structure everything will feel extremely intuitive to fans of SRPG combat, yet easy to pick up for those that aren’t. The complexity of something like Disgaea may be absent but every battle managed a good balance of excitement and occasional tension, but mostly created an easy-going cathartic bliss.
Wind it Back Again
The punishing first fight shows there is need to keep on your toes but off-setting the pressure is a wonderful system that, on defeat, allows you to either restart the battle or, crucially, chose a specific turn to rewind back to. This rewind function can be used at any point within the battle and is easy to ignore if you prefer feeling the consequences of a slip-up or botched strategy.
What’s more, given the experience points are gained during fights, when restarting a failed fight, players are given the choice to carry over the earned experience. And the emphasis must be drawn to the element of choice here. With a hard difficulty setting and the option to completely ignore the gentle helping-hand scheme, Utawarerumono deftly strikes at the heart of good accessibility balance. This incremental approach to difficulty means you can sail through to the story, with a bit of light graft or you can apply as much tactical nuance as you feel. It’s also handy for when I foolishly skipped the odd turn in error or accidentally made my character face the wrong way, leaving them open to a back attack. My fault, not the game’s.
Battles can be suspended and, with the wealth of options to pause; rewind; and resume when convenient, there’s a level of control that reflects a team completely aware of the modern RPG landscape. Everything is comfortable and convenient.
The problem in combat mechanics emerges in that, even with the bells and whistles of the surrounding accessibility features, the actual skills and movesets are nothing more than elementary. Put another way, seasoned players will struggle to find much of a challenge once the best methods of positioning are understood.
Zeal, effectively a stamina gauge, can be built up through good timing of the single press button-prompt and through taking damage. Your Zeal quickly diminishes when used for combination attacks and takes a painful amount of time to build back up, often resigning most characters to nothing but their single standard attack. This improves during the mid-late game but doesn’t open much more in terms of options. There’s a button mapped to auto-triggering combos and ‘final strike’ moves to remove unnecessary repetition but there’s very little else to do. It didn’t stop me enjoying each and every battle personally, but it’s worth bearing in mind.
The 3D battle environments, models, textures and animations aren’t up to modern standards by any stretch, but the level of polish, lack of loading times and fantastically satisfying music, be it underscoring tragedy or getting you pumped for a revolt, more than makes up for it.
Tired Old Haku
With the combat and story sections pulling their weight, the narrative has some work to do, too.
Hakuowlo’s pretty strait-laced, happy to stand up for others and slides well into the natural-leader role. He’s not the most enigmatic but cares enough that you’ll care about his fate. But here in lies the rub. This personally of each feel almost copy and pasted on to every other character.
Take the strong-minded village head honcho Tuskur, who plays a pivotal role early on in the story. A seemingly powerfully willed granny with a penchant for leadership, a demand for respect and immense skill in healing. Then put them next to the hot-headed ninja, Obero, the one that lets emotions run high then acts with little thought, or even the ‘will they/won’t they’-centred love interest Eruruu.
They have their own roles and sound wildly different on paper, but really ‘doing the right thing’ and treating people with initial suspicion, followed by acceptance, then on to reverence feels bit of a running theme with pretty much everyone in their treatment of Haku. Everyone feels like they have a different level of pragmatism but ultimately fall short of feeling particularly unique or charismatic, with the exception of the odd few, such as Eruruu’s younger sister Aruruu who at least has a sense of humour.
On the other hand, no one’s offensively boring and the voice cast is phenomenal, bringing duller moments to life. Those the game is entirely dubbed, it’s limited to Japanese only, though arguably suits this better.
The story itself drives forwards at a truly satisfying pace, letting you relax and get comfortable for just the right amount of time before strapping the rocket boots on and crashing you unexpectedly into the darker moments.
Somebody Stop Me
Plot progression is interlaced with shorter events, where players are given the opportunity to choose a location to visit, enabling some minor branching paths of sorts and additional character building, though there are no dialogue choices involved. It’s strictly a more classic visual novel in that regard both a number of choices impact the ability to unlock other events and an alternative ending.
It’s not all serious either. In an early event, dopey royal-spawn Nuwangi wants to play big boss in town and woo Eeruru with the promise of riches, he confronts Haku, taking an immediate dislike to his family-like relationship with Eeruru, before proceeding to break his hand on Haku’s face (mask). Lighter moments of levity such of this are sprinkled sparingly across the rest of the adventure, even as Haku slowly elevates his standing and drives his objection to the oppressive dictatorship and inequality underpinning the world’s struggles. Equally, there are genuinely heartstring pulling moments of tragedy and strife, carried well within the plot but, again, without the individual character-to-character charisma to stand above the crowd.
NISA’s writing is fantastic here but at one point, I swear the localisation team decided to play tricks on me. There’s a pleasant conversation between a friendly blind person and Haku where he causally drops an f-bomb randomly, going against the entire tone of speech. Clearly this wasn’t a direct translation nor a carefully considered interpretive choice and completely caught me off-guard in what is otherwise a decent job of what feels like the appropriate feel and tone the Japanese original was going for before making it overseas.
Everything Small is just a Smaller Version of Something Big
Given the slick pacing of the story, fun battles that I genuinely looked forward to, and Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen’s overall level of quality, the game comes fully recommended to anyone with a passing interest. It’s not without flaws, certainly the 3D battle graphics and animations are of a by-gone era and character personalities, while likeable, are thoroughly predictable and largely static. The plot itself, however, expands nicely as Hakuowlo builds his legacy.
Sure, I played through the PS4 version but did you also know this game also received a recent Vita release? The Vita lives! Maybe that should have been the headline.