Utawarerumono (う た わ れ る も の AKA “What is sung”) is a visual novel saga particularly popular in Japanese territory. Thanks to the progressive opening of the western market for these specific videogame niches, English-speaking players have increasingly had the opportunity to discover the goodness and oddities of the Japanese domestic market, thanks to the increasingly present translations in English.
Utawarerumono specifically, it is a series that in the West has had little space for videogames, receiving mostly adaptations related to animated products. The brand's video games arrived in Europe with a dropper, without considering epochal delays and all the difficulties of the case. The West had the opportunity to test only the second and third installments of the saga, completely ignoring the narrative and structure of the first, released in 2002 on PC and Playstation 2.
Here it comes Utawarerumono: Prelude To The Fallen, a remake operation carried out by Leaf and published by Nippon Ichi that serves as a perfect entry point into the saga for all gamers willing to immerse themselves in a spurious visual novel, with interesting narrative features and some playful slip.
Let's see together what this story is about and how this is placed towards the player.
Japanese video games.
Utawarerumono: Prelude To The Fallen is a video game where 90% of the time is spent reading, as it should be within the visual novel paradigm. The title is a Japanese video game that cannot be more Japanese, with a lot of static illustrations, beautifully drawn backdrops and dialogues dubbed with the typical verve of anime, between ultra sibilant voices and sentences said with an exaggerated charge compared to the intensity. of the scene.
The title follows the exploits of Hakuoro, a protagonist with amnesia who finds himself seriously injured in a wood never seen before. Two girls arrive to save him, both with feline features, willing to look after him until the moment of final recovery. This allows Hakuoro to take his first steps inside what is a bucolic village, almost immune to the normal flow of time, where simplicity dominates routine and events never leave a definitive trace on people's lives. There is no fear of dying of hunger, nor of dying of starvation.
A sad surprise, however, strikes our protagonist and the routine of the village: the expansionist aims of a greedy emperor put our protagonist in the position of leading a rebellion against him, starting an unstoppable chain of events that make up the unfolding of history in itself and for itself.
Utawarerumono: Prelude To The Fallen balance of fantasy and politics in a melting pot of sure interest, made even more effective by the enormous space left for characterization of the characters. Having on his side the spaces and times of a visual novel, Utawarerumono: Prelude To The Fallen he enjoys exploring the mental recesses of the characters on the screen, not skimping on details and secrets, offering accurate and often effective reconstructions of these fictitious personalities.
The writing is almost always at a good level, being cloying when you push too much on the accelerator of the typically Japanese weird. The title of Leaf is something originally dedicated to the Japanese market and this is found in many narrative choices and in many glimpses of the plot, with cat women and speeches practically impossible to do in a normal social context.
If you appreciate anime writing and are willing to put aside realism at any cost, this title is sure to do it for you. Obviously we feel like advising Utawarerumono: Prelude To The Fallen only to those who chew English with a certain dimesetics, also thanks to the practically infinite quantity of texts that will appear on the screen or not to give color and make sense to the story.
The sense of the remake.
Utawarerumono: Prelude To The Fallen it is the most comfortable way to relive the first piece of the brand's narrative and, compared to its original chapter, it also presents the player with a series of improvements capable of rejuvenating and updating the gameplay.
Because yes, Utawarerumono: Prelude To The Fallen is an updated and improved version of the first chapter of the saga that streamlines the story, updates the interfaces, improves the writing and adds to the alchemy a whole section from SRPG that was introduced at the beginning of the decade and the following chapters of the brand.
Here we see the first major technical problem of the work. It is clear how the efforts made by the company in the realization of the title have concentrated on continuing to wink at the public of the novels. From the graphic point of view, the three-dimensional models used for the SRPG sections are definitely below today's standards and the same can be said for animations or settings.
From a purely playful point of view Utawarerumono: Prelude To The Fallen continues to be a super classic visual novel, without even a route to follow. Occasionally there are these sparse SRPG sections in which the player finds himself facing more or less pitched battles, without even touching the depth of the most important titles of the genre or without having particular technical flashes.
The impact of the player on the events at the end of the day is practically nil and this combination effectively nullifies the replayability for this title. The scarce quantity of the SRPG sections ends up breaking the pace of the game and generating a certain annoyance in abandoning the story to itself, the real strength of the title.
The sum of all this is quite simple: Utawarerumono: Prelude To The Fallen ends up, exactly like the two video games of the brand released before him, to be a visual novel with an incredible narrative that limps due to some thorn in the side, between technical flaws and playful choices that are not always very happy.
The soundtrack recreated for the occasion is of good quality, which does not definitively replace the original one (however selectable from the options) but which accompanies the player with great joy during the thirty (!!!) hours that the adventure lasts.
Utawarerumono: Prelude To The Fallen is a video game dedicated to an audience willing to come to terms with all the problems (and the merits) of a Japanese production for the Japanese. If you are ready to postpone dialogues that are not always brilliant and a quantity of texts that would make an avid reader pale, in Leaf's latest work you will find the perfect door for one of the most important brands in the world of Japanese visual novels. Despite technical problems due to the bill of the game and to the SRPG parts that could give much more, the title of Leaf is a product destined to please the fans with the potential tà also to gain some new fans.
