Snappy Game Reviews - Utawarerumusou?
The hard to pronounce and just as difficult to type Utawarerumono series has managed to pique my interest ever since it released on the PS4 because of its gorgeous artwork and also because it looked like a turn-based strategy game like Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics. The thing that kept me from ever picking these games up was the fact thatSnappy Game Reviews - Utawarerumusou?
The hard to pronounce and just as difficult to type Utawarerumono series has managed to pique my interest ever since it released on the PS4 because of its gorgeous artwork and also because it looked like a turn-based strategy game like Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics. The thing that kept me from ever picking these games up was the fact that everyone kept bringing up how these were mostly visual novels with tidbits of gameplay thrown in between. This by itself wouldn't put me off as I've played and enjoyed many visual novels in the past but the theme of feudal japan war drama didn't win me over. However, the idea of beating people up in feudal japan by mashing buttons did seem like something up my alley, which is why I felt excited about Utawarerumono: Zan, a hack-and-slash game that reimagines the events of Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception.
The game starts right away with some exposition about the main character who one day finds himself wandering around a snowy area without any memories of his past or himself. Just as he was about to get killed by a monster he's saved by a girl wielding mysterious powers named Kuon. She names the amnesic man Haku and they set off on a journey together. Right after these two characters are introduced you're thrown into a bug extermination mission with two other fellows only to have another shift of events right after. I knew beforehand that there would be no way someone could pull off an abridged version of sorts of a visual novel that would make any sense for someone unfamiliar to the source material but I had no idea how jarring it would be. The plot kept jumping everywhere and made no sense after the first few chapters, at this point I simply stopped trying to understand what was going on and simply enjoyed the gameplay and the visuals. Zan is clearly targeted to fans of the series but despite this, there's still a lot to appreciate in this hack-and-slash.
As stated before, Zan is an action game where you slice and dice hundreds of enemies at a time in the same vein as Dynasty Warriors and other musou. Most of the time you'll be chaining combos with the square and triangle buttons while avoiding taking damage to build up your chain meter and reap bigger rewards. Said rewards might be standard power-ups, materials or money which can be used in a gacha system to obtain new equipment or randomly improve the one that you already own. By taking down enemies you'll also build a special gauge which allows you to do either a special attack that varies depending on which character you're controlling at that time, for example, Haku has a very helpful healing aura while the righteous warrior Ukon has a super fancy slice attack that inflicts a ton of damage. There's also a finisher technique that every character has after reaching level 25 but by then you'll be nearly done with the main story anyway so you'll only put it to good use if you dabble in the extra modes or decide to play the game a second time on a harder difficulty setting.
While the gameplay was mostly what you'd expect from a game of the genre I was really surprised by the mission variety on offer in Zan. Besides your typical getting from point A to point B and killing a given amount of a certain enemy type there were a couple of different missions that really stood out such as the one where you're running away from a giant bug and another one where you have to destroy vents in order to freeze a lab room. All of this high octane action is presented in a very slick and smooth 3D engine that never faltered during my time with the game. It might not push the hardware to its limits but highly stylized games like Zan don't really need that level of detail to look great.
Beating the main story won't take you too long even if you're not familiar with the genre, we were able to complete all its nearly 20 chapters and see the credits roll in about 5-6 hours. The game was a lot more forgiving than other games in the genre, despite having a bit of a difficulty spike towards the end I'd say I had a harder time keeping up with the plot. Once you're done with the main game mode you might want to max out every character and unlock a couple of extra things such as BGM's in Free Play (which can be played online with up to four people) or go through the story once again in a higher difficulty, other than that there are a few in-game achievements that you might want to look out for and little else.
Utawarerumono: Zan was a surprisingly fun albeit confusing for someone unfamiliar with the series. Aquaplus and Tamsoft really outdid themselves in terms of mission variety and character move-sets making Zan my favourite of their vast repertoire without breaking any new ground and at the cost of feeling somewhat formulaic. Now if you excuse me, I need to get myself ready for when Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen comes out.… Expand
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