by Amr (@siegarettes)
- Utawarerumno: Prelude to the Fallen
- Developer: Leaf
- Publisher: Aquaplus, NIS America
- PS4
Starting with Mask of the Betrayer and then moving onto Utwarerumono ZAN, I’ve somehow ended up experiencing the story backwards through the process of reviewing it. So it’s a bit strange to be “finishing” the story by playing the first entry in the series. To be fair, this might also be a lot of people’s first experience with the original Utawarerumono, having only previously been available through a fan translation of the 2002 game, and an anime adaptation. Knowing that, Prelude to the Fallen sets out to remake the original PC game, bringing it in line with the aesthetics and presentation of the recent games. It mostly succeeds in that goal, but its close adherence to the source material sometimes draws attention to the underlying disparity between the two styles.
There’s a very recognizable early 2000’s anime vibe to the original Utawarerumono, from the story setup, to the character designs themselves. They aren’t too far from the aesthetics of the modern series, especially with the newly remastered artwork, but there’s something to the way characters emote, what scenes are chosen to be fully rendered and the overall pace of the game that feels quaint now. The modern games are still slowly unfolding tapestries, but they have a snappier pace and work harder to set up immediate hooks and political tensions. Prelude to the Fallen instead starts you off with hours of socializing with the locals, farming and dealing with petty squabbles and village management, with its most intense scenes not even being rendered outside of the battle scenes.
Oh, yeah, those battle scenes are still here. The remake returns with its modern take on tactical, turn-based combat and it feels as extraneous as it ever did. The cheap 3D art and environments definitely don’t have the charm of the original’s sprites either. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of little things to dig into and optimize, and I even enjoyed combat a little more this time around. But they’re ultimately distractions from the story that serve to break up the routine, but appear infrequently enough that I continually forgot about them. They serve their purpose of injecting drama and tension when needed, but aren’t particularly notable outside of that. It neither adds nor detracts from the package as a whole.
The soundtrack on the other hand, does come in as more of a mixed bag. The remake has several rearranged versions of the original soundtrack, done in the style of the modern games, with the option to add tracks from later titles in order to avoid reusing the same small set of tracks. For the most part these new arrangements get across the same feelings, especially with the upbeat everyday tracks, which at times feel indistinguishable from every visual novel track from the era. The battle themes don’t make it through quite as well, coming across as a bit flatter and backgrounding a lot of the percussion that drives their melodies. There’s just not the same simple energy to the compositions, even if they have higher fidelity.
Prelude to the Fallen carries that same conflicted energy throughout. While it grows into something larger in scale and scope, there’s a simple initial appeal to its beginnings that rely on simple interactions and small moments to get you through. The remake can bring its aesthetics in line with modern expectations, but it doesn’t do much to change the fact that this is a story that is ultimately created with a different audience than the newer games were created for. It asks a lot more patience than later entries before it begins paying it off, and the remake sands down some of the edges and simpler appeal that the original game had in the process of bringing it in line with the rest of the series. It’s worthwhile, if only to have modern and easily accessible way to play the origins of the series in English, but it doesn’t make a great case otherwise for those who’ve played the original or watched the anime.