Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen review

Reviewed on: PS4

Utawarerumono: Prelude to The Fallen is the remake of its first PC version, from 2002. It has two sequels, Mask of Deception and Mask of Truth, as well as a Musou version (those games where one guy beats up a bunch of people at once) called Utawarerumono: Zan. The series also has two anime, the first telling the story of the original protagonist, and the second telling the story of the other games, with a separate character.

Our protagonist, initially nameless, wakes up badly wounded and with no memory in the middle of a forest right after an immense earthquake. He is rescued by Eruru, an apprentice herbalist with ears (a dog’s? Hard to tell) and a tail.

Here is the first warning for some: although Utawarerumono: Prelude to The Fallen is a Strategy Roleplaying Game – affectionately nicknamed Tactics – it is the other half of the game that weighs most when discussing what you will experience most during play: Visual Novel.

The Visual Novel genre is basically the story being told through panels – almost endless ones – of a story that may or may not captivate you. Let me explain: Utawarerumono: Prelude to The Fallen works much more like a book than a game as such. The story has a purpose in itself and has every ability to hook you, as long as you accept that you will spend a good part of the time reading the conversation and understanding (or not) what is going on. It took me about an hour between the start of the game and the first battle.

Now is as good a time as any to say that the game only has an English option, so for non-speakers of the language there are much more accessible Tactics options, with less dialogue and more combat/customization ( Disgaea and Fire Emblem are the first options that come to mind – although they are in fact much less accessible for beginners).

Not knowing English or not liking reading a lot of dialogue is a pity, because the combat in Utawarerumono: PtTF is very accessible. To the point of being a walk in the park for those who already know the genre, even playing on Hard. For those who don’t, the entry door has a high step precisely because of the dialogue (you have no idea how relevant that is), but almost everything in the game is simplified. Before each confrontation, you know exactly how much damage you will deal to the enemy if you use all the combos (including critical damage, status changes and possible enemy dodges). Your attributes are visually separated only into Attack, Defense, Magic Defense and Speed, the last of which does not appear in any list for you to see, although there are items that improve the attribute itself. After each battle each active member earns BPs, or battle points, which you can invest in one of the first three attributes. Whoever wants to make an OP character (short for overpowered – or too powerful) can spend a few minutes just playing Free Battle – which for some reason gives many more BPs than training missions – and earn points to invest. These points are not tied to level, so you can become tremendously strong right at the start of the game.

Not that you need to. Another curious point of the gameplay is that it keeps adding characters to the battlefield. And it’s not a fixed thing. You start with two characters, then three, and before you know it there are nine on the field. In the last battles there are eleven. The number varies up or down at certain moments of the game, almost randomly.

The soundtrack doesn’t sin, but isn’t very memorable.

The most interesting factor, by far, is the story. Every RPG you play, at some point, makes you want to get to know more about the characters you live with in that digital world. The Visual Novel side lets you do that. There are dozens of hours of exposition of the most complex and most common traits of each of the characters you meet and come to know. Something that can be positive or negative, depending on the frame of reference adopted, is that during the roughly 30-hour journey you don’t make decisions, but enjoy the story without worrying about going back to a save to see what you missed (not that there aren’t some points to enter different events. But all of them are accessible by the end of the game and the game registers when you load a save to see the other event – a “read” option appears on it), and in this case, for this game, I saw it as something positive.

I have to admit I had never tried a Visual Novel game before (a genre which is, by the way, quite common on the PS Vita), but I really liked the experience of reading a book with some moments of combat.

Review done on PS4 Pro