Board 8 > Anyone here played the Utawarerumono games? (possible playthrough topic?)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Bump since I'm working late and might not be updating tonight.

Mask of Truth good, particularly the first hour or so with Kuon.
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"Death is lighter than a feather. Duty, heavier than a mountain."

Anyways yeah I've played a bit but I don't have much concrete to say right now. But, Mask of Truth spoilers below:

Anyways, Kuon is revealed to the princess of Tuskur, to the surprise of literally no one. For unclear reasons she decides to do some princess-like things to her friends back in Yamato, which I'm sure is going to work out as expected with absolutely no unintended consequences.

...and honestly most of the rest of the content so far has just been character development stuff to establish the new status quo after the Mask of Deception ending shook things up. And as I said for the last game that's fine, but talking about what's happened is kind of hard. I guess--Kiwru and Ougi have returned; the princess has been healed and has decided to try to take back the throne; and Oshtor's mom has been introduced as a character?

General thoughts:

--Oh man the first hour or so of the game was rough. Giving me painful flashbacks to a certain other jrpg...

--Also I kind of like how the beginning of this game mirrored the beginning of Mask of Deception (and the original, from what I know), with Kuon waking up in the lap of a woman after a long sleep and having forgotten a reasonable chunk of her past. Part of me thought Kuon was actually going to have amnesia for most of the game, which would have been...something. Didn't end up happening of course.

--Really like the direction this game seems to be going, which is exploring the notion that as the characters fulfill their obligations to society they end up destroying some of themselves in the process. Hard for me to comment on any real specifics but yeah this is looking to be good.

--I liked her from the start anyways, but Nekone has been a fantastic character in this game so far. Rulutieh--who I didn't care about at all in the first game--is also climbing at a reasonable pace up the character rankings.

--Game needs more Kuon. Let her come back dammit.
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Welp, and just after I was saying how there was nothing concrete in the game to talk about...a lotta stuff happened last night

Also RIP my sleep schedule lol
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how long did Deception take you anyway? gonna have to marathon that and Truth sometime this summer.
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Wanglicious posted...

how long did Deception take you anyway?

About 25 hours or so while doing zero postgame content. I think I'm slightly on the faster side as far as reading speed through VN's goes though, so it might take you longer. (or shorter if you are also fast. My friend who's into VN's and recommended these games reads through them in like 1/2 to 2/3 the time it takes me sometimes, so...)

Definitely recommend. It's not quite the 10/10 masterpiece that my friend sold it to me as, but Mask of Deception was very good and Mask of Truth has definitely upped the bar since then. (plus I am only like 1/3 through Truth I think? So still a lot of time for it to get better)
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Mask of Truth spoilers below. After this I'm probably going to stop putting entire updates behind spoiler bars, and I'll only use them when explicitly describing major plot events.

Ok so I'm excited about a lot of stuff going on right now, but most of that pales in comparison to the fact that Kuon is freaking back, so if you don't mind I'm going to skip ahead of entire plot arcs for a minute to talk about that.

Loved the scene where Kuon comes back as the princess of Tuskur so much. Aside from Kuon just being generally great, I really like how Haku started actually bringing out/back the Haku persona in order to motivate Anju and shut down Kuon's selfish actions. It's a bit ironic that Kuon starts lecturing Oshtor/Haku here for not relying on his friends, when that's pretty much exactly what she's not doing here, herself. Though I guess Haku is somewhat deserving of that also since he's trying to shoulder a lot of burden here himself, but that's probably a plot point for another day. Also that moment when Kuon finally realizes what's going on with Oshtor/Haku, and that panicked tone enters her voice and the sad vocal song kicks in. So good.

Anyways enough about that scene. In other news there was also a battle at Ennakamuy before all that happened. Dekopompo and Bokoinante are dead, and I'm sure there is one person who mourned their passing. Maybe. Haku and Mikazuchi also did a thing and Mikazuchi figured out that the "real" Oshtor was dead in the process. That scene was also really good and might have been worthy of a similar paragraph to the one I wrote above if there weren't even more important things to talk about in this update.

Also Kuon is back with the group in earnest and got a ton of slice-of-life esque scenes and I couldn't be happier.

Other comments:
--I joked about it above, but there is honestly a part of me that's going to miss hearing the way Dekopompo's voice actor shouts "Bokoinante!!!!" in that adorably pudgy sounding voice. Definitely the character's most important contribution to this narrative

--One character I am absolutely going to miss is the old Maroro, who seems like he's going to be a somewhat fundamentally changed character when he reappears. I didn't like him at first, but he really grew on me over the course of Mask of Deception. If I'm interpreting the various foreshadowing elements here properly it looks like Raiko has something planned for Maroro at this stage, which makes me very anxious.

--Just wanted to mention that I have officially used the Music Player feature to set Koi Yume as the title screen BGM, because that song is great.

--Kuon is still the best
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bumpo

Probably no update today
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Got a bit of ground to cover here but I'm probably just going to go through it quickly. Unmarked Mask of Truth spoilers below:

At the end of Mask of Deception I complained that some of the side characters didn't get enough development for my liking, but I guess that's just because they were saving it all for this game. First there is a Rulutieh-focused involving securing an alliance with Kujyuri, which was quite good. After that there's a short arc in which Vurai comes back, for reasons I still don't totally understand (AKA to fill out the battle quota on the game lol). It allowed Nekone to get some good scenes though, so whatever, and also Vurai's actual death scene was pretty good. There's also a Nosuri arc involving her/Ougi's homeland of Izuruha. This one was solid but ultimately didn't leave too much of an impression on me, which is somewhat ironic considering Tokifusa--one of the central figures--is the general who's literally introduced as being unremarkable at everything (and then is never mentioned again until this arc).

Anyways so that's that. Next arc looks like it's going to be an Atuy arc which I am pretty excited for. Also, it looks like my earlier hunch was right and that Maroro has...uh...seen better days. Yeah...

Other thoughts:
--As I said above I really liked Rulutieh's arc. In this slice-of-life scenes since the beginning of Mask of Truth which I never bothered to discuss in detail, Rulutieh has been going through a bit of an existential crisis after what happens with Haku at the end of Mask of Deception, which was already shooting her up in the character rankings. It was great here seeing her finally able to sort her thoughts together and decide what she wants. Also Shis was a pretty good character, and I liked how she struggled to deal with letting Rulutieh go. (Her fight was a pain in the ass though.)

--Not a lot to comment about the Izuruha stuff. As I said above it was fine.

--One thing about this game I will say is that it does death scenes really well. Inspired by Vurai's and Tokifusa's death scenes from this update, which were both great, but honestly all character deaths have been good (even Dekopompo lol). What's also impressive about that is that it's been a variety of different types of death scene, if that makes sense, and they've also all managed to be very fitting ends for their particular characters.

--Random comment, but I hope the Tuskur characters still have a role to play in the story and that this isn't just going to be Yamatan politics from here on out. That wouldn't be a disaster by any stretch of course, but I do like a lot of the Tuskur folks.
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