The 20th anniversary of Utawarerumono saga was 2022, Aquaplus as its developer and to commemorate it brings Monochrome Mobious Rights and Wrongs Forgotten, localized in Europe and America by NIS AMERICA.
Utawarerumono is a veteran video game saga, a visual novel genre, which is a story focused on a lot of material to read, excellent character designs and captivating art. Monochrome Mobious is placed between the Prelude to the Fallen and the Mask of Deception entries, giving explanation to how the Yamato Empire is created by the god incarnated, the Mikado.
Highlights for Monochrome Mobious
Story
As any visual novel, the story must be very interesting to the public; that being said, the argument for Monochrome Mobious doesn’t change the fact that it has a very solid plot, despite dropping the name of the main saga.
The story is told as any other visual novel with a lot of reading from time to time. When we get control of the party, be sure to do all the pending stuff, as long as you keep progressing is sure that you are going to have a lot of reading again.
Oshtor the main protagonist, lives in his town Ennankamuy with his mother and little sister Nekone. Peaceful times are interrupted by a young girl named Shunya, a lass who claims to be from another place not known by anyone, she explains that she needs to help her father Pashpakur. Coincidentally it’s Oshtor´s father’s name also.
Battle System
Utawarerumono saga originally focused on reading pages, fine art and wonderful art to tell a story, with some combats in a strategy mode; however Monochrome Mobious, its Aquaplus first attempt to change the formula. Swapping the traditional game strategy, for a battle system by turns.
The party members have access to dozens of skills, as long as you level up, your character learns new abilities. Classic RPG games, when you level up you replace some old skills for new ones or automatically replace them, but that isn’t happening here; at high levels it’s a little overwhelming. Be sure to browse your skills menu to select the desired ability.
After 70+ hours and beating the game, it’s worth mentioning that the number of skills you learn is a bit overwhelming. Overall, after grinding levels, and getting strong equipment, I noticed that you don’t really need a lot of different skills, actually I barely used 5 or 6 with each character to finish the game.
Battle Ring
A new feature in the battle system is the battle ring, it determines the order to act in battle. Party members and enemies will appear spread out around the ring in different layers; the closer to the middle the faster you act.
There are certain skills that depend on the ring positioning to work properly, for example, if the user wants to haste or buff physical attack the user and target must be in the same layer effect, otherwise only the target will get the buff even being a multitarget skill.
To escalate or fall down from the layers in the Battle Ring, you have to hit staggered enemies or use the Overzeal buff; this goes for party members as for adversaries too. Adversaries can act before you and get extra turns if they keep climbing in the ring; the mechanic sounds a little complex but isn’t that bad once you get it. Dominating this is going to be key for boss encounters or Notorious monsters that you can find in the maps (not relevant for trivial mobs).
Graphics
The different landscapes that you appreciate in the game are green plains and the desert that looks well-polished, the detailed vegetation and plants in the woods are very eye-catching. Towns and big cities have an oriental like style as the whole environment, any veteran in the series is familiarized with that.
Character designs are very interesting, the girls have a cute but sexy appeal, and gives you the idea of a “smile you must protect”. On the other side, we have male variety, classic big muscles, with beards, bulky anatomy, normal trained bodies and also thin common characters.
Something that is worth mentioning is the problem with the non-playable characters (NPC), which look bland and poorly worked on. These (NPC’s) have polygonal shapes, not even close to looking like a person. This is the main issue in the graphics matter.
Sound
The soundtrack has been top tier throughout the whole series of Utawarerumono. You can certainly hear the big effort and quality in the sound which helps you create the atmosphere needed to picture the dialogue you’re reading. The moment that someone opens the door, or even hearing a glass of wine being poured; you can feel the breeze in the nocturnal scenes. Everything falls in perfect sync.
Performance
Tested on Steam Deck, locked to 30 FPS and HD resolution to 720p, by default configuration.
The game looks steady most of the time, no falls on frames at least while you explore, talk during cutscenes, however, when you are in a battle in cramped areas you will see some peaks in the framerate falling between 23 and 26 for some seconds, mostly when performing multitarget skills. Prior to the first update, some players reported a lot of errors, some phrases not translated, text outside of the dialogue box, you could fall from the map when you jump, or the battle menu disappearing, Steam achievements were not popping, etc.
The present review was made after the patch which fixed all the bugs before mentioned, as long as I played the game, I didn’t have the issues other players had previously. Just one instance when the dialogue was out of box in one sentence.
Conclusions
- An RPG with outstanding storyline even for its genre, starts to feel slow due to the change in gameplay and low pace in certain moments.
- It’s Aquaplus first attempt to offer a new experience with their games in the saga, with pros and cons the game offers improvement opportunities in specific points such as, battle menus, graphic quality in the NPCs, side quests and extra content.
- The Battle Ring idea isn’t well used, feels like it could be better or improved to make it relevant.
