After my first dive into the series being a bit like jumping into a movie halfway through, I felt I needed to give it another go by playing from the beginning. With a remake of the first game coming out, it seemed like an obvious choice. I’m all for giving chances to things that deserve it, and with the traditional gameplay style included here, I figured I could get a better feel for what the series has to offer.
Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen turns out to be much more comprehensive than ZAN, as I’m not expected to know who everyone is already. There’s no big event reveals that have no impact on me because I didn’t play previous games. However, to say that it held my attention would be a lie. I’m no stranger to the visual novel genre, having played through quite a few of them, even getting the platinum in at least one of them. But this seems to be such a generic/trope heavy game (and likely series based on my experience) that if you’ve been watching anime for a while, it probably won’t do much for you. I honestly can’t even say that I’ve watched much compared to most people, but this falls in line with the stuff that I wouldn’t normally watch – maybe if I was younger and inexperienced in what was available.
While playing the game I kept thinking that it had a Teen rating, so I was always confused with how sexual and vulgar it’d get. Not to say this is a game that is for adults only, as this is Aquaplus and not Leaf, but there’s plenty of dialogue that made me roll my eyes and turn on auto-play while I would look at my phone or walk away to do something else. You can’t skip through the dialogue unless you’ve already seen it, so jumping through the visual novel portion to play through the battles is not an option. I actually found that playing this on my phone through remote play was the best way to experience it, as I didn’t feel like I was wasting my real free time that I have so little of on a daily basis (which I’m using to currently write this). That’s not to say I missed all of the dialogue, but whenever I came back in I knew exactly what was going on since I swear I’ve experienced this story beat for beat before.
Unlike my last outing with the series, the gameplay in this goes the route of SRPG. Just don’t expect too much of it at any given time. In fact, I feel like the Free Battle system the game implements (replay previous battles) is available between events specifically to keep you from getting too bored. It’s necessary for building your characters anyway, so it’s helpful to keep things from becoming dull. That’s not to say there are always long periods of time between battles – some are back to back, and seeing the 3D models during these progressions did a lot more for me in terms of story telling than the visual novel aspect of it, which makes me wish more of the game was presented this way. There are some neat chain attacks you can utilize, and the whole use of the systems feels much more polished than the action gameplay from ZAN. However, the enemy placement and battlefields become trite without much innovation quickly. The addition of different classes as you progress definitely makes it more lively, and I started feeling somewhat invested come the fourth battle, but getting to that point was a slog. The funny thing is, this is where the game does its intro sequence; if you’ve made it this far, congratulations, you’re now playing the game. Admittedly if you’ve read my reviews, I’m hard to please when it comes to this type of gameplay. The pinnacle of the genre does nothing for me, but I am always looking for something new to grab me, so I go in with an open mind. It’s serviceable for sure, but don’t expect anything too deep or challenging, even on hard mode. For those that struggle with the genre, this has a rewind feature that allows you to go back and change what you did should you make a mistake in battle.
Outside of the sometimes creepy dialogue and themes, even the character portraits themselves feel overly generic. I love when games utilize anime openings, and I’ll always sit through them to see the characters and events they will partake in, but this feels budget. PS1’s Wild Arms 2 had a stellar opening, disc 1 showing off the beginning of a journey and the characters, disc 2 showing how badass the characters are, with the visuals being timed with the music. Compare those to the first third of this video, and you can only feel a bit let down. I’m not trying to say that this is a make or break thing for me, but when the opening cinematic feels cheap (some of those camera pans almost feel like it was made in Flash), it’s not a great look for the rest of the game.
I’ll say that this game did come to me at a bad time. I just finished playing Final Fantasy VII Remake, which was a masterclass in terms of story, gameplay, and nostalgia overload. Honestly, it reinvigorated my love for the medium, so when I spent more than thirty minutes looking at maybe 10 different portrait images and a handful of background images before having any sort of agency in the game, I wasn’t in the best mood. The fact that I saw the main character struggling to not grab the tails (literal tails – the village you are in is made up of cat people) of some young girls before I could even make a choice in the game didn’t sit all that well with me. Mind you, I have no problem with long intro sequences without gameplay – Persona 3 and 4 both make you read quite a bit (maybe an hour?) before getting to jump into the actual game. But those are interesting, they grab you and take you on a ride, whereas this has the typical amnesiac with a seemingly dark past that must help those that took him in story-line to start, and doesn’t become much more enticing as it goes. Does the game get better later on? Yes, but much like Final Fantasy XIII, you shouldn’t have to say the game is good once you’ve invested 20-40 hours. Time is a huge investment, and as I’ve learned more and more as I get older, it’s okay to put games down if you don’t like them early on – you don’t need to prove anything to anyone by beating something you don’t like.
For those looking to get into this series, Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen is the best place to start. It’s got plenty of content and each game will last you quite a while based on my experience with them, but the first entry’s remake will likely be the last for me. Between the uninspired battlegrounds, generic story and characters, as well as overly trite dialogue, I’ve realize that Utawarerumono was not made with me in mind. It no doubt will have an audience, but I am not part of it, and that’s okay.
4 out of 10
Pros
- Rewind in Combat
- SRPG/Visual Novel for Beginners
- Voice Acting
Cons
- Very Generic/Trope Heavy
- Limited Portraits/Settings
- Mostly Boring Battles
Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen was developed by Aquaplus and published by NIS America. It is available on PS4 and PS Vita as of May 26th, 2020. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen, check out the official site.
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