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Mastress Alita
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Utawareru Mono Full Review (with game summaries)
« Thread Started on Mar 7, 2006, 2:19am »

Utawareru Mono Full Review

*NOTE! Links do not contain any 18+ content*
Getchu | Official Site
Playguide and Full Capture Save File

With my recent discovery of Anime Game Text Hooker, I have decided to play Utawareru Mono again, as this is hands down one of my favorite Japanese games I've ever played, and I feel it'll be well worth it to learn a little bit more about the story.

Since I feel it is that deserving, I'm going to do a more in-depth review of the game to help spark a little interest in it. I will also be providing game story summaries from information gathered from the AGTH+Atlas translation, which will be linked below.

Recently a new torrent for the game was put on DaTorrents (posted 4/6/06): http://www.datorrents.com/torrents-details.asp?id=8530. I don't know how long the torrent will continue to be seeded, but if you are interested in the game, grab it now.

Specs

Company: Leaf
Release Date: 12/12/2003
Price: 8,800 yen
Platform: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM (Also an upcoming PS2 version from Aquaplus)
Genre: Strategy RPG / ADV
Rating: 18+ (PC version)
Voice: No voice
Art: Amuzuyu Tatsuki
Scenerio: Sugamune Mitsu

Minimum System Requirements (DVD-ROM version):
CPU: Pentium III 500MHz
RAM: 64MB (128MB for Win 2000/XP)
HDD: 1.4GB free space
Video: 640x480 resolution or higher, full color
Sound: PCM audio and DirectSound
Other: Requires DVD-ROM and Direct X 8.1

Minimum System Requirements (CD-ROM version):
CPU: Pentium II 300MHz
RAM: 64MB
HDD: 1GB free space
Video: 640x480 resolution or higher, full color
Sound: CD-DA and DirectSound
Other: Requires CD-ROM and Direct X 8.1

Story

A man wakes up wounded in a small village of animal-people, where he is being nursed back to health by a girl, Eruruu, and her family. However, he cannot remember anything of his past: how he came to be wounded in the forest, his own name, or why or how a mysterious mask came to be attached to his face, unable to be removed. Eruruu's grandmother gives him a name -- Hakuoro -- and he is invited to stay at the village.

In debt to these people, and with nowhere else to go having no memories, Hakuoro stays with the village and helps the people, bringing harvest to their barren fields. However, the land is being brought into war, and the feudal lord hears of these rumors and starts collecting their food as a tax. Hakuoro then finds himself intwined with these people and the uprising of a revolt army, all while wondering just who he really is...

Characters

Hakuoro - Hakuoro is discovered wounded in the forest near a small village, where he is found by the woman Eruruu and nursed back to help by her family. However, he has lost all memory of his past. He also finds upon awakening that his face is locked behind a mysterious mask that cannot be removed, and trying to do so causes him insufferable pain. Now indebted to these people, Hakuoro becomes one of their village and helps them in their current struggles, while struggling with his own questions of his identity.

Eruruu - Eruruu is a young woman who finds Hakuoro wounded in the forest and helps nurse him back to health. She is a very bright, energetic, kind, and gentle person, who lives with her grandmother and helps take care of her younger sister, Aruruu. She is good with housework and also works as a healer with her grandmother.

Aruruu - Aruruu is Eruruu's younger sister. She is extremely shy of strangers, and is small on words. Like most children, she does a good job of causing trouble. She can be a bit unpredictable, sometimes acting in very unexpected ways. When she warms up to someone, she is very caring, like her older sister.

Tusukuru - Tusukuru is Eruruu and Aruruu's grandmother, who helped heal Hakuoro, and is the one who gave him the name "Hakuoro." She is the village healer, and very talented at what she does. Though she has her strict side and can get a little scary when angry, she is a very gentle person who cares for others. She is considered the leader figure of their village, Yamayura.

Teoro - Teoro is a member of Tamayura and husband of Sopoku. Behind his tough appearance, he is actually a very friendly and caring person, and called "father" by many of the villagers. He accepts Hakuoro into their village and calls him "brother", and works hard with him to better his people.

Sopoku - Sopoku is Teoro's wife, a large-hearted woman who helps keep her husband in line and cares just as deeply as he for their people. Though she and Eruruu are not related by blood, she considered Eruruu like a younger sister, and Eruruu affectionately calls her "sister."

Oboro - Oboro, though young, he is the head of a family of great hunters, and also known to have done thieving. He is straight-forward, hot-tempered, and violent, but dedicated to the survival of his tribe. He is Yuzuha's older brother and he is extremely concerned about her well-being.

Yuzuha - Yuzuha was born ill, expected not to even live more than three days. From the care and support of others, she has managed to survive, but has remained terribly ill her whole life. Because of her health, she's been enclosed her whole life and doesn't know of the many of the things others take for granted in life, having a very pure mind. She is Oboro's younger sister, and he is extremely over-protective of her.

Dorii and Guraa - Dorii and Guraa are twin archers who serve Oboro. They are very close, never separating and growing up joined as if one person. The pattern of their activities and their way of thinking are also the same.

Nuwangi - Nuwangi is the son of Sasante, the feudal lord who rules over the region of Tousukuru's village. He is convinced that he's a genious and is extremely egotistical. He talks down to everyone and constantly demands respect or for others to follow his orders. He knew Eruruu from childhood times, and now wants her to be his wife.

Sasante - Nuwangi's father and the feudal lord residing over Tousukuru's village, who has a hand in the war.

Inkara - Sasante's brother and Nuwangi's uncle, who is Emperor of Kenashirukouru, the country residing Yamayura village, and who heavily enforces the war.

Benaui - Benaui is the Emperor's Retainer and General of the army. He has a very calm and quiet demeaner, the type that doesn't easily lose his temper and keeps his head straight. He is very skilled on the battle field and tactical warfare.

Kurou - Kurou is the sub-commander in the army and Benaui's right-hand man. His is rough and reliable in battle.

Urutorii - Urutorii is the princess of Onkamiyamukai. She is a tidy, quiet, calm, and gentle-hearted toward others. She is considered the "perfect princess" due to these qualities. She is Kamyu's older sister.

Kamyu - Kamyu is Urutorii's younger sister, and also a princess of Onkamiyamukai, though she is like the opposite of her sister: loud, energetic, and troublesome. She's very friendly with others.

Munto - Munto is the High Priest to Urutorii's kingdom. He is in charge of Kamyu's studies, and often ends up on the receiving end of her antics. He often gets exhausted from worry.

Karura - Karura is the survivor of a slave ship wreck, and is a strong person who considers herself bound to nobody. She is a Nakuan, a fierce swordsman, but off the battlefield is a very bouyant person who makes fun of people who are too serious and enjoys drinking.

Touka - Touka is a mysterious roaming soldier, working as a traveling mercenary. She is a strong person with a quick-temper.

There are a multitude of other characters in Utawareru Mono. Only a small few are listed here, the ones that are featured on Leaf's website.

Playability

Utawareru Mono is a combination of visual novel and strategy RPG. The game is extremely story-heavy, and follows a linear story: in other words, there are no options that have to be selected or lead to other outcomes. The story is played out, and then there are parts in the story where strategy RPG battles take place, as the story is following a world in the midst of war.

In the CD-ROM version of the game, there is only one difficulty level for the game. IN the DVD-ROM version, there are multiple difficulty levels: "Standard" (which is the same as the CD-ROM version), and then several harder modes past that. Some of the features in the advanced modes are a movement order list, time limits, and more advanced engines for controlling the movements and strategies of the enemies.

The layout of the strategy RPG mode is not complex: you can move, attack, or take no action on each character's turn. Each character has a fixed amount of movement and attack range. Characters only have one weapon and attack, but when striking a character if a circle appears around the enemy at the time of the strike, the mouse can be clicked to do a combo attack, and a high enough combo can lead to special attacks. Characters gain levels from fighting during battles, and the points they gain with each level can be distributed as you choose to boost their attack, defense, special attack power, ect. There is no "leveling up": you cannot replay battles multiple times to gain more levels before the next fight. The simple design of the RPG battles makes strategy an emphasis, which may be a good or bad thing depending on your tastes.

I found the game fairly challenging, but not in a frusterating way. There were some battles that weren't too bad, and others that took several tries and some work. The first time I played, I did not go through the "battle training mode" that is available on the title screen (I didn't even know it was there), and didn't even know about things such as the combo attacks or how to cast magic with Urutori, yet somehow beat the game (yup, it's possible to do only knowing how to move and single attack, just takes some cunning and patience). I do highly recommend going through that training mode though to make things easier.

As far as the ero element of the game, it is not an emphasis. There are only six ero scenes in the game, one for each of the girls. As is the art style for Amuzuyu Tatsuki, who also did Comic Party and ToHeart 2, the male anatomy (and in some cases Hakuoro completely) is omitted from the picture. The scenes don't even show up until well after halfway through the game. If you are /extremely/ prude, then you probably won't want to play, but even if you aren't a fan of ero, you can easily hit your Ctrl key over six scenes and enjoy the great characters, drama, and gameplay of this game.

Troubleshooting

I run the DVD version of the game, and have no problems with Windows XP with the default for non-unicode programs properly set to Japanese. I do have one small quirk where I can't select anything from the title screen until I click off of the window and then click back onto it (I've had this issue with other games too after playing an opening movie, and believe it has something to do with my system. You probably won't have that problem.) It does however take up a bit of resources during battle mode, so be prepared for that.

As far as running it with Anime Game Text Hooker, you will need to add the /kf command to the Target: line of the shortcut (please check my thread about running AGTH). This will keep it from repeating lines.

There are a few quirks with AGTH that should be noted: When a character's position on the screen changes, it will capture the previous speaker's name and add it to the current speaker (example: HakuoroEruruu: "Dialogue"), and during battle screens it sometimes grabs the speaker's name after their line of dialogue (example: "Dialogue" :Hakuoro). This isn't really a big deal, since you still know who is speaking. There is one other oddity where it may capture the speaker's name but not their line: If you look in the AGTH window, it does indeed extract the line, but somehow only the name is getting sent to Atlas. In those rare cases, you can highlight and copy the dialogue line from the AGTH window to send it to Atlas.

Downloads

I've decided to share my collection of Utawareru Mono multimedia.

The following are available for download:

-NoCD and NoDVD patches
-Both opening movies from the game
-The official anime trailer
-The Utawareru Mono game soundtrack
-Full CG Save File for the DVD version of the game
-Full CG Set for the DVD version of the game
-CG Set of 9 CGs in 1600x1200 resolution
-New PS2 CGs + PS2 article from G's Magazine
-Special Attacks Pics (missing Teoro, Derihourai, and Genjimaru)
-Scans of the game manual
-Leaf Official Fanclub Disk 5 UtaMono Pics
-Misc. Official Art
-Wallpaper in 1024x768
-G's Magazine manga
-Doujinshi "Aruruu no Minasan no Okagedeshita" (non-adult)
-Doujinshi "EroEro4" (includes other games as well) (adult)
-Doujinshi "Here in my Heart" (adult)
-Doujinshi "Natsu Tori Fuugetsu 2" (non-adult)
-Doujinshi "Survive" (English Translated) (non-adult)
-Doujinshi "Utawarete Andalucia" (non-adult)
-Doujinshi "Wind That Blown Toward Me Talked" (adult, yuri)

However, please be kind to my server, or I'll stop sharing them. Download only one file at a time, please.

Utawareru Mono Downloads

A capture guide and full-capture save file can be found here. There are actually no options in the game, the "capture guide" is a guide to information about the battles and strategies to beat them. I only used it to find out the "Battle Objective" of each battle (pretty important in a strategy RPG, when you can't read it displayed before the fight). Another good page for information about the character's stat (including nice diagrams of their movement and attack grids) and be found here.

I did a post typing up the stats of all the characters from the above site. You can view it here: Character Stats

Review

I'm going to keep this pretty short and sweet, since it is fairly obvious what I think of Utawareru Mono: I love this game. I love it so much that I'm playing it again! Therefore, I'll just hit the high and low points of the game:

High points: This game has an /awesome/ story and cast of characters. I was intrigued the first time I played, even though I only understood a fraction of what was going on. With the availability now of "Engrish" in-game translation with AGTH, I'm now playing again, and making summaries as I go: they may not be the most accurate, but I will be making them available here as I go along. It also has good playability, deviating a bit from the standard click-and-choose ADVs and instead incorperating strategy RPG battles into the story, which is great for fans of strat-RPGs. The game also is top-notch in both artwork and soundtrack.

Low points: If you don't like long games, don't play Utawareru Mono, cause it's /long/. It's only 29 battles, but in a strategy RPG layout, these can take quite some time, especially if you have to try multiple times to pass a battle, and there are long stretches of detailed story in-between. The good side, however, is that you collect all the CGs in one go: you don't have to replay it several times to collect different images and endings, and with something this long, trust me, that would drive you crazy. Also, if you are only interested in ero games that are high in the 18+ content, you wouldn't like the game: there are only six scenes, the emphasis on the game instead elsewhere. The main downpoint, in my opinion, is that the game isn't voiced; voices would add so much to the great cast and make the story a bit easier to follow. (I anticipate the upcoming anime so I can finally hear voices put to the characters!)

« Last Edit: Sept 5, 2009, 3:13am by Mastress Alita »