Utawarerumono Thoughts

So, I finished Mask of Truth last night and wanted to give some thoughts. No spoilers in the first part.

What a fantastic experience. I thoroughly enjoyed the vast majority of my time with these games. The first was the weakest by a large margin for me but I still had a good time with it. Mask of Deception + Truth however was absolutely brilliant. For about the last 15 hours of Mask of Deception and all of Mask of Truth I could not put them down. It's been quite a while since I've gotten that hooked on a story. Really only matched by some of my favourite games and series that I've played. Looking at my steam account, it took me 22 days to beat Mask of Deception in 26 hours, and then 8 days for Mask of Truth in 48 (LOL). If you at all enjoy world-building and long form fiction these are a great experience. I highly recommend them unless you absolutely hate tactics battles. Even then it's probably around 75-80% novel, plus you can rewind at will in battles so it shouldn't be too much of an obstacle.
Not sure how exactly I'd rank this overall, but the longer it sits with me the more it settles in among my favourite stories that I've experienced.

Some other elements:
-Combat was fun and definitely got much better with each game. Not my favourite tactics I've played, but it did its job.
-Music was phenomenal
-The 3D visuals are obviously nothing special, but the 2D art is very nice. I thought they did a really good job setting the scene and the backgrounds had a lot of depth.
-Pacing was extremely solid in the latter two games, so so in the first.
-World-building was great which I'm very much a sucker for. Having different characters and places be important is a big plus.
-Endings of all 3 games were excellent





*SPOILER THOUGHTS BELOW*









*SPOILER THOUGHTS BELOW*


Prelude to the Fallen

 Prelude to the Fallen was an enjoyable game, but it didn't truly hook me until the last third or so. I was never having a bad time or anything like that, but I think this game's pacing is probably its weakest point. I know that some of this is probably due to cut content, but this game has a weird way of just drifting from scene to scene without much continuity. The most memorable one for me is when Teoro shows up and warns of attack. He seems fine, and you tell him to stay inside and away from the battle, but then immediately after the battle it just cuts to him being dead and the whole village also having been killed. Holy fuck did that ever give me whiplash lmao. Overall there was just a tad more filler than I think was needed. Whole sections of the war probably could have been cut without losing all that much honestly. Going into the game I was expecting around an 80:20 ratio of VN to combat, but it felt like much more combat than that in this one. In fact I think there actually ended up being a bit more combat than was necessary, and the gameplay in this one was pretty simple so it did start to feel a little bloated.
 Aside from those gripes though, I had a lot of fun with the game. I liked pretty much every character, and I really really liked the direction the story took by the end. I found the whole plot line about humanity and Hakuowlo's origin very cool. I wasn't expecting any amount of sci-fi going into it and it was neat to realize where things were heading once you go down into the ruins. Everything related to Hakuowlo being Uitsalnemetia and the demi-humans was brilliant. Having to fight the protagonist as the final boss was very unique and effective. The ending hit home for me very well. This game was definitely my least favourite of the bunch but still a very memorable experience that I enjoyed.


Mask of Deception

 This game is fantastic. I think they really nailed the pacing which was nice coming off of the first. While this game does kind of start off slow again it never forgets that it's a sequel and there was always a lot of seeds being planted. It had a very steady ramp up and the last 40% or so was captivating. Gameplay was much improved, music was great, characters were great, it was all excellent. The ending is obviously the most noteworthy part of the game. I pretty much knew Oshtor was going to die way in advance because I read one line of Mask of Truth's steam page, but even still the ending hit me so much harder than I thought it would. Despite seeing most of it coming I did not at all expect Haku to assume Oshtor's identity. The whole ending sequence is just so good. The final shot with the opening playing, Kuon's scene, god DAMN. One of the better hooks I've seen. The only thought I had after beating the game for 5 minutes was just, "Damn". This game was really just so well put together. A very tight and well constructed plot. I like this game almost nearly as much as Truth, but probably not quite as much.


Mask of Truth

 Where do I even start. Wow wow wow. That was fucking incredible. Really the only thing I was disappointed with about this game at all was that there wasn't a little more Tuskur/Yamato crossover. I think there could have been a good opportunity to have interesting battle situations with the Tuskur units involved. I would have liked to control some of them again. Aside from that though, I really have no complaints about this game. The gameplay was the best of the series easily. The music, I mean, fuck. The music was unbelievably good. Scene after scene just hit like a truck with the music. The story was A+ pretty much all around. A couple battles here and there that probably could have been cut or restructured if needed (Itak's country and that segment kind of just was a method to destroy the bridge. I really didn't care much about him beyond that), but 90-95% was just all great. The entire dynamic surrounding Haku as Oshtor was extremely interesting and brought out a lot of cool themes and interactions. His relationship with Nekone in particular was one of my favourite parts of the game. This idea of family and friendship going beyond what is technically true or logical was so well done. Watching them come to think of each other as siblings in a true sense was heartwarming. Oshtor's mom was another hard hitting element of that. Almost every character moment was outstanding, and the story really managed to give me closure on just about every plot element that I wanted it to. The last 6 hours of the game are a fucking masterpiece. That entire segment from the Woshis fight onwards was masterful. The music at every point, Haku's entire role, The details in the last couple fights (voice lines, final strike changes etc) were all so impeccable. I thought it was so fucking cool having him come in at level 1 and gain abilities that way. All the while an arrange of the first game's opening is playing, *chef's kiss*. I was slightly spoiled going into the game in that I knew Haku was almost certainly going to die. I scrolled 2 inches down and saw a bit of the community content on the game's page in my library, and saw the picture of Haku smiling while fading away. Thankfully it didn't end up being too consequential of a spoiler since the game makes it pretty clear the fate he's heading towards as early as when the mask fuses to him. I wasn't spoiled at all for anything that came afterwards or anything else in the game so it worked out. I had a feeling that Kuon was going to lose her shit, and I remember having a thought early on that it could end up as Haku vs Kuon, but I wasn't exactly expecting it either.
 All in all I was extremely impressed with this game. I think they did about as good a job as could be expected. This game was interesting in that it felt like it never ended but never really felt like it dragged either. There were kind of multiple complete arcs in the same game which was cool. It was about as pretty of a bow as it could have been. Hakuowlo and Eruruu getting a happy ending of sorts was a perfect way to wrap it up.

 This was definitely one of my favourite gaming experiences that I've had. No idea how high I would rank it, but the longer it sits with me the more I know I loved it.