Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen is the first game in the series, itself a remake of the original on PC. This is a visual novel SRPG, with more emphasis on the visual novel part. You’ll be spending most of your time reading the story, with some SRPG battles sprinkled throughout. Therefore, the game’s mostly presented in an anime style, but being a game originally from 2002, the aesthetics are from that time. While the SRPG battles have chibi 3D character models.
The controls are as you would expect in the visual novel sections. You’re able to fast forward, as well as rewind. Although rewinding doesn’t allow you to jump back to that section, only being able to look at past dialogue. Thankfully, you’re able to save at any time by pulling up the system menu. There are points in the story where you can “pick” an area to go, but this is mostly a false choice since you can only go to areas where there is a story scene. It’s just there to mainly allow you to take a break or do some random battles.
The SRPG element has all the basics as well, but nothing too much extra. It plays on a grid-based system. On each character’s turn, they can move around, use an item or attack. There is a poor tutorial so you’ll have to mostly figure out the controls on your own. Depending on the character, they’ll have a different attack range, and there are tools to allow you to check out each character’s or an opponent’s attack range and abilities. As is expected, battles can be slow if you watch all the animations but you can speed those up.
Each character and enemy has something called Zeal, which is a bar that fills by attacking, taking damage, and a simple timing-based minigame during attacks. Zeal allows you to perform special attacks such as Final Strikes, and combinations attacks with other characters. Items need to be equipped to characters for them to use it in battle, and with only two item slots, you need to decide what takes priority. Later levels will start to use the terrain against you with choke points slowing your advances or will have enemies overwhelming you with numbers. Enemies will inflict status effect or have long ranged attacks, thus you need to change strategy accordingly.
Characters gain experience points from their attacks, and they get it immediately after their turn so they can instantly level up during a battle. Before and after battles, you’re also able to spend the points that they had earned from completing a battle to increase one of three stats: attack, defence and magic defence. The game is not hard, if you lose, it’s probably because you were unaware of the enemy’s abilities and used the wrong strategy. In the event that you do lose, you can either rewind to a previous turn (you’re able to do this during the battle as well), or you can retry but retain all the experience and level ups you gained during that battle, so you’ll always retry with a stronger character.
There are restrictions on the number of characters you can take into battle, and perhaps one of the more surprising things is that characters come and go. You might have your favorite characters that you prefer to use repeatedly, but there will be points where you may not be able to use them and other characters will be underleveled. To help alleviate that, the game has a Free Battle mode where you can reply levels that you’ve already cleared with any available characters. While Training provides ten new battles. Early on, the game tends to lean towards a slightly more defensive strategy. If you go fully offensive, especially during boss battles, you might become overwhelmed. Yet if you play a little bit more cautiously by letting the enemies come to you instead, it becomes much easier. Once you get to a certain point in the game, the difficulty becomes trivial as you can grind a specific stage so quickly to gain points to max out your stats.
The story follows a man who had woken up in a village with no memories at all. He is given the name Hakuowlo by the village that has taken him in. The village chief’s daughters, Eruruu and Aruruu, both become dear to him as he helps out with village. Despite having no memories, he demonstrates his intellect and vast knowledge in a lot of areas. Eventually though, a series of events happens and he ends up becoming the leader of a rebellion and fights against the corrupt emperor. The story has a slow start, but it uses its time wisely to develop the characters and endear them to the player.
The visual novel scenes can take up to 30 to 40 mins before a battle takes place. The first arc doesn’t take too long. It was had a personal stake to it, and it is after that that the story becomes plenty interesting. It’s on a bigger scope, with Hakuowlo becoming ever more important and we get plenty of worldbuilding and backstory. The rate of new characters was fast in the beginning, but slows down by this point, but still being introduced at a consistent rate. The story mixes the serious scenes with plenty of lighthearted humorous ones in between.
The story ends up being one where Hakuowlo will conquer or assist other countries, whether it is by his choice, or whether he is forced to. Throughout the whole time, his missing memory remains a source of intrigue. The arcs are quite short though so it can feel like it is rushing through things. Yet the long stretches of pure text focuses on day-to-day life with the characters, making the pacing feel slow. It’s a weird combination but focusing on the character is probably a good decision.
The game’s setting and story takes an expected turn towards the end, seemingly with no warning. The truth of Hakuowlo’s past was weird and jarring. It feels out of place, considering how the whole game thus far felt like an alternate past version of Japan, with some added fantasy elements. The story takes around 20 to 30 hours to finish, depending on how fast you read. The ending is sad, even if the direction ended up being strange and the premise being ultimately undercooked.
Overall, Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen is a good game. It has a solid story with a serviceable SRPG combat system. Its fast pacing and tendency to move on from arc to arc very quickly makes it lose some of its impact. On the flipside, having those scenes that focuses more on the mundane slice-of-life aspects of the characters makes the ending more powerful, as you’re more attached to the characters as a result. The final part of the game, once it reveals the reasons behind the mysteries, can feel out of place.
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The physical Origins Edition came with a few extras, including a CD soundtrack selection and a mini softcover artbook, some samples of which are below.
