Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception is a sequel to an older game (but one which has a remake released a few years later). It is a strategy RPG and is designed for newcomers to easily enjoy as it is the start of a duology. To be clear, this is predominantly a visual novel first and foremost, with some SRPG elements. The story is supposed to be the main draw and it takes up the bulk of the gameplay. There are portions of the game where the story scenes are easily over an hour long with no other gameplay in sight, which can definitely put off some people.
The SRPG mechanics are solid. As expected, they take place on a grid system where characters can move and attack once an enemy is in range. You then time your attacks with onscreen prompts. You don’t have to do this perfectly but if you do, the character will score a critical hit so it’s worthwhile to attempt. Characters will eventually learn several different types of attacks and abilities and you can mould their stats to a degree, since you spend points to increase a specific stat of theirs. The biggest negative of the game is that it has a poor tutorial, in that it doesn’t have one. By default it is skipped and you need to go through the in-game glossy in order to find the different mechanics that intertwine and interact with each other during battles.
The system can be deep with a lot of elements within it, it just does a terrible job of introducing those gameplay mechanics. The fact that you don’t get much practice doesn’t help. The story battles are mostly easy, although the game has a tendency to throw bosses at you that can hit really hard. This means the player often employs a strategy of swarming the enemy quickly in order to whittle down their HP before too many of their own characters gets knocked out. There are some nice quality of life elements with the best one being that you are able to rewind. If you made a mistake then you can go back several turns and redo.
The story starts off slow and if you haven't played the first game, then it is a bit weird. It’s still weird and mysterious even if you have played the first game but basically, a man awakens in the middle of a forest and is aided by a girl with furry ears and a tail. She’s Kuon and given that the man has no memories, she names him Haku. Haku by comparison is physically weak but there is promise in his intellect, especially his strategic abilities. With nowhere else to go, Haku follows Kuon and the pair meets up with several characters where they end up forming a ragtag team, somewhat akin to mercenaries, albeit of a more nobler variety.
The game is very slow going, as the story takes a long time to get the ball rolling. Even midway through the game, it still feels like a chilled slice of life event as Haku slowly gets surrounded with more and more allies (mainly of the female type), without revealing what the plot actually is. What makes matters worse is that the little gameplay it has in its SRPG battle system comes up haphazardly. Sometimes there will be literal hours of story cutscenes before your next battle, while other times it’s within a few minutes. This makes it much harder to get invested into. The story itself contains some good humor, especially when Haku is punished by the other characters.
It takes a while, but the story finally gets into its pace in what is probably the last third of the game. There’s an event that pretty much spells out Haku’s backstory, which was confusing to say the least with the way it was hinted. Granted, if you had played the first game, then it wouldn’t be as confusing but for newcomers, it’s a weird twist. The nicer thing that comes out of this is that after the event, there are a lot of reappearances of past characters. We finally get to see in perspective where and when this game takes place in comparison to Prelude to the Fallen.
The story’s tone becomes darker and more political towards the end, so that it is much more akin to the first game. It can be too little too late as it rushes things, and it is obvious that it’s setting up for the sequel instead. Thus this is a big time investment that doesn’t quite pay off. The final boss is the hardest part of the game, which may shock you at first given the rest of the game was so easy that you never had needed much thought on the intricacies of the battle system. It’s still not too hard as long as you play smarter rather than just blindly attacking. The ending though was disappointing in that it had events that were supposed to be sad and hopeful but was done in a way that makes some of the characters very annoying.
For a combination visual novel SRPG, both genres of which are known for their long length, this isn’t a long game at all. While it depends on your reading speed, it can takes as short as 15 to 20 hours to complete the story. There isn’t too much to do after the game, a set of harder battles become accessible, and these are the ones that finally make you think and plan. You can also repeat any of the story battles at any time, grind your characters to level up and in general, just mess around.
Overall, Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception is an average game. While the first game was too fast paced to the point of feeling rushed, this game was too slow and dwelled too much on the slice of life aspect. Granted, this was used to world build but considering that the plot only starts to get set up right at the very end of the game meant that there wasn’t much time to build it up and flesh it out. As a result, it very much feels like the first half of a story and that you need to play the sequel to get the full experience. Unfortunately, there will be players that will be put off and not get this far.
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