by Omar (@siegarettes)

• Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth
  
• Developer- Aquaplus
  
• Publisher- Atlus
  
• PS4, Vita (previously on PC and PSP)
  

Sometimes you take on an assignment that’s probably more than you’re prepared for. In this case, I found myself absently looking for releases to check out, and accepting a code for Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth. I’d heard the name talked about in vague terms for while, enough to check out some of the opening episodes of the anime adaptation, but I’d never seen any of the games themselves despite the series being around since the PS2 era. Mostly because they weren’t in English. So with them finally getting a release I thought it would be a good time to check them out. Well, what I happened to miss was that Mask of Truth was the final part in a trilogy.

This became very obvious from the start of the game, with characters I had barely been introduced to in the anime being in key positions at a turning point of an upcoming war between nations. It didn’t deter me, but it did mean I spent a lot of the first couple hours in the game’s extensive glossary. Thankfully, it only added names as you encountered them, which made it easier to follow events without being overwhelmed. 

In the spirit of taking jobs you’re not prepared for, Utawarerumono leads with the stories of characters drawn into reluctant positions on each side of a brewing civil war. A princess must choose to lead a pre-emptive assault on the weakened state of Yamato, while the protagonist has taken the guise of one of Yamato’s major generals in order to keep up appearances, while investigating a conspiracy against the current royalty. While it doesn’t quite make the most convincing effort to set up these motivations at the start, once it settles in it provides a good central pull for the plot, leaving plenty of angles to explore.

Which is good, because Mask of Truth is loooooooooooooooong. Most of this time is spent reading text and getting to know characters, or exploring side stories. These are punctuated with strategic battles, but it’s clear from both the time they take to introduce these, and the underwhelming production values of it that the visual novel segments were their first priority. The visual novel sections are presented with lavish 2D character art and backgrounds, all fully voiced. It provides a stark contrast to the rudimentary 3D environments of the battles and underdeveloped combat. There’s plenty of systems to mess around with, with elemental affinities, character abilities to control the map, and timing based minigames that make the combat more involved, but it never feels like more than something to break the pace up between long sections of the story. It’s functional, but it was enough to keep me engaged when I began to tire, so overall it does work as intended. 

The story itself mostly gets by on the strong character work. Once it reestablishes the character motivations and sets events in motion it began to draw me in, and I enjoyed reading up on the culture and history of the nations in a way that I’d likely write off in any other game. Still, the events are largely trope-ish and telegraphed, so it’s up to the character writing to do most of the heavy lifting. These still fall cleanly into archetypes, but it was still enjoyable to see the main character struggle to maintain their facade as a general while trying to rally everyone around him. The push between character’s sense of duty and their inner desires provides a stronger motivating factor than the war itself.

Where Mask of Truth stumbles is in its length. Even with the strategy layer breaking things up it never feels as if Mask of Truth earns its length. A lot of this is down to the sheer lack of editing. The prose and localization itself is high quality, but it tends to repeat phrases are revisit a character’s thoughts too many times. There’s a sense that the writers really wanted to drill into you the heaviness of the situation, but instead it comes of as constantly refreshing you on redundant information and not trusting the reader to remember something that happened five minutes ago. The longer I played the more tiresome this became to the point where it felt as if the game would have half the runtime if these scenes were removed.

There’s also definitely some remnants of Utawarerumono’s eroge PC roots left in Mask of Truth. The twin priestesses that serve the main character draw a lot of attention to this, and a lot of the character designs overflow with ridiculous busts pulling tight on their clothing in absurd ways that’s recognizable specifically as a staple of eroge. There’s also a bath scene and other fanservice moments that could probably be written off as tired anime tropes, but carry the specific lasciviousness and lack of connection to the plot that pops up in the genre. It’s a tiring aspect of the genre, especially as it always feels perfunctory rather than adding anything of substance, but if you’re the kind of person who made it to the third chapter of such a niche visual novel series you’re probably already on board. 

I’m not quite sure that my time with Mask of Truth was time well spent. I enjoyed the characters and the sheer production values of the visual novel, and I’m grateful to see more games like this localized, but overall it didn’t earn the sheer amount of commitment it asks for. Admittedly a lot of my problems are ones with the structure and expectations of the genre, but that doesn’t help make the case for Mask of Truth. I don’t regret my time with it, and I’m glad I gave the series a chance, but it’s something that I can only recommend to those who’ve already been taken in by its world.