Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception
Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception is a VN/J-RPG about an amnesiac man named Haku and a woman named Kuon that go on a journey together with various characters.
Story and Characters
I’m not going to talk about every single thing that happened in the story, nor will I recant it. I’m just going to say what I think made the story great.
The game begins with Haku waking up in a strange tent with no memories (he even forgets his name), with a woman who has been tending to him while he slept. I usually dislike amnesia stories - I find many of them annoying, because usually something stupid happens, like the amnesiac character hits their head on a brick and gets all of their lost memories back. Or they see and/or hear something they had heard/seen before they lost their memories, and that somehow causes them to regain all of the memories they lost. But that doesn’t happen in this story. Haku’s amnesia is used as a tool for us, the player, to experience the strange world around him anew, which allows us to gain exposition we otherwise wouldn’t have if, say, Haku didn’t lose his memories and already had experience with that world.
– Real player with 83.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best RPG Anime Games.
So Utawarerumono, if you think this review is unbiased go somwehere else.
In this review im going to talk not only about mask of deception but also mask of truth and prelude to the fallen, why you may ask? If you start with mask of deception you most likely don’t know wbout utawarerumono or it’s modern name prelude to the fallen, but there is no need to write review for mask of truth because entire existance of mask of truth is very big spoiler, dont look at steam page dont google anything because it’s based out of quite big spoiler from mask of deception.
– Real player with 78.3 hrs in game
Aselia the Eternal -The Spirit of Eternity Sword-
The story is a big focus in a game like this. Everyone and their mom has written something about it, so if you’re interested in that, check out someone else’s review. What I’m going to focus on is the actual gameplay.
I’m about halfway done throwing a guide together for the missions and mechanics of the game as of writing this review, so I won’t go too much into what strategies are optimal or anything like that, here.
I would reckon that if you’re not familiar with permadeath strategy games a-la X-com and fire emblem, you WILL have trouble. The game will make you pay for every mistake you make, and there’s very little foreshadowing on what you need to have and when. There will be times where the game spits an enemy at you with a spell too high for you to counter without you having any ability to see it coming. Your whole squad will eat ass and you’ll get very familiar with the game over screen by the end of your first playthrough.
– Real player with 519.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best RPG Casual Games.
(Note: The only route I finished was Aselia’s route. I dropped the game on my second playthrough, so I don’t have much to say about the other routes and New Game+ material. Although given that Aselia’s route is often regarded as the best, I don’t think I missed much.)
Story: Starts off somewhat promising for the first hours with a fairly interesting premise, decent characterization and a rather oppressive atmosphere. Unfortunately falls apart afterwards.
After the first two missions, the story takes a backseat for a while as the game focuses largely on the gameplay. It’s not that the basic plot of this section is bad, it just has extremely little detail.
– Real player with 137.9 hrs in game
Asterism
Asterism is a visual novel about a young Aligner, a high school student who, along with his friends, has the supernatural ability to detect specters and banish them using weapons made of constellations. And by ‘constellation’, I mean a physical manifestation of the mythological concept. Constellations appear in both a weapon and human form, the former the means to banish scepters and the latter being characters within the story. Once you accept the premise; it makes sense, I guess?
The plot can be summed up rather succinctly; it is about the protagonist Aligner and his friends rescuing constellations of the Zodiac from being consumed by specters.
– Real player with 9.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best RPG Fantasy Games.
Ayoub
القصة ممتعة وفريدة
الحلقة هذي ممكن تجلس ٣-٤ ساعات تقراها مدة ممتازة بالنسبة للسعر والمحتوى
الشخصيات أعتقد محبوكة وتخليك ودك تعرف عنها بالأجزاء القادمة القصة مشوقة وفيها احداث ماتتوقعها , الاتجاه الفني رائع حتى اغلب الرسمات قعدت اتأملها من جمالها,, الخلفيات رهيبة وتعيشك داخل العالم ,, فيها نظام خيارات ممتع و بسيط ممكن يغير اشياء بالقصة ان شاء الله يصير افضل بالحلقة الجاية,, باختصار لعبة رائعة ومجهود يشكر عليه المطور بانتظار الحلقة الثانية
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
The novel about school stories, reminded me of the game Everlasting Summer, but this game has a good musical accompaniment, and two endings, so far I have passed on one.
– Real player with 2.6 hrs in game
EVOLUTION - Versicorae Domlion
-
Hybrid between a 90s inspired RPG and a Visual Novel.
-
7/10 hours of gameplay.
-
Experience the connection between five different stories set in may 1938.
-
System based on riddles and strategic fights against horrible creatures.
-
Gloomy pixel art and hand-drawn graphic.
EVOLUTION - Versicorae Domlion is a hybrid horror video game between a Visual Novel and a RPG.
The player will have the opportunity to experience four different stories, different depending on the character chosen, to finally compose a single great story. To advance, you will have to find out why Cathrine, Michael, Arthur and Anne were chosen by the mysterious Alexis and help them resolve their inner conflicts.
The game offers, in addition to the rich storyline, the opportunity to visit the city of Gris to get to know its inhabitants, enhance the skills of each individual hero and to face dungeons guarded by fearsome monsters.
Grave Knight
Under developement, Grave Knight is an interactive RPG adventure inspired by SRD 5.1 ruleset and classical game books, where your decisions weave the fate of the characters and the story. Let the dice forge the fate of your hero and the realm by fighting the Grave knight and his horde.
Grave Knight is a Visual Novel, an interactive RPG-style adventure game, where your choices will determine the path in which the story and characters will develop. Do you save the heroine or let her die? Do you talk to the monsters or face them? Do you take the left or right path? Do you take any chances to save someone, regardless of the consequences or do you let them suffer a cruel fate until death? The fate of the narrative and the world is in your hands (or in the fortune determined by the dice rolls…).
Features
-
A Visual Novel with over 70k words
-
3 playable character classes
-
Fine Art in Painting Style
-
3h of gameplay
-
Dice roll entry system
-
Several Achievements throughout history
-
Original soundtrack
-
Nonlinear storytelling
-
RPG elements (character evolution)
-
Kobolds,Trolls and Goblins!
Old Bron
The last to see the group of adventurers entering the Tomb of the Forgotten.
Vivianne
A young tavern attendant who hires an adventurer to find her foster brother.
Liluth
The refugee wizard elf from Rozania seeks redemption after losing all members of her group of adventurers.
Donothan
A brave young man who seeks to become an adventurer and prove his worth.
The Grave Knight
The great evil released by the adventurers, he seeks revenge against those who betrayed him in a past life.
Did you say, Goblins?!?!?!
Planet Stronghold
A choice-laden narrative and attractive soundtrack are minor positives for a game let down by an immature story, horrible dialogue, and boring, badly implemented / balanced combat. Avoid unless frustration is your preferred form of masochism.
First the choices. There are a lot of choices, and they do branch convincingly: if you wanted to romance a certain character and screw it up, there’s no way to charm yourself back into their good graces. Find a save, and re-load. The choices aren’t just about romancing: every single member of your party has dialogues and side missions that will unlock if you talk to them enough and make the right dialog choices. Even faction alliances are contained within mutually exclusive dialog choices. Full marks for a branching narrative.
– Real player with 20.1 hrs in game
I had long wanted to play this game, as well as Winter Wolves' Loren The Amazon Princess, mostly because I was curious as to how well an RPG made in a visual novel engine would work. Now that I’ve finished this game once, I can say that its value lies mostly in being a curiosity, an example of what is possible in Ren’Py.
Unfortunately, whether I look at it as a visual novel with RPG combat or as an RPG with visual novel storytelling, as a game Planet Stronghold falls short.
The RPG part alternates between dull and irritating. The battles themselves fall into predictable patterns. I’ve seen the threat mechanic before in other indie RPGs, so it wasn’t particularly impressive to me.
– Real player with 17.4 hrs in game
Sacred Earth - Promise
Story: Priel Aylin is a Dragonkin mercenary who often finds herself working alone, but ends up fighting alongside her estranged sister Perrine for the sake of a tag tournament. After winning, they discover that their opponents are actually criminals and that their old chuuni friend, Fate, is working with them for his own purposes. This conflict eventually forces the sisters to confront their grim past in Icefall, their strained relationship, and their outlook on life.
For those that played the original free version from RPGMaker.net, there’s some new dungeons and story segments between the old ones, as well as a True Ending if you complete all the sidequests, which leads into future entries in the Sacred Earth series.
– Real player with 26.4 hrs in game
Sacred Earth - Promise is a fun RPG. The thing that appealed to me the most was the combat system. Its a little like a fighting game combat system in a RPG. Spend a lot of time building meter to do big attacks that form a combo. Has a nice story and lots of party banter.
If you try the demo and enjoy it you’ll probably like the whole game.
– Real player with 10.6 hrs in game
Sucker for Love: First Date
Obsessed with occult rituals, you have finally obtained the last thing you need to summon the eldritch horror that has been haunting your dreams; a strange, bright-pink Necronomicon. You perform the only ritual that doesn’t appear to be insane ramblings, and inadvertently summon Ln’eta, a cute cthulhu-like girl. She agrees to a kiss, on the condition that you perform a few rituals from the book for her first. Looking back at the Necronomicon… all of the other pages suddenly make sense?
-
Three chapters of laughs, screams, and tears, all in one thick package!
-
Every decision you make will significantly affect gameplay and determine which ending you arrive at!
-
Immersive re-imagining of the visual novel genre loaded with gameplay!
-
“Three” “fully-voiced” “dateable” “girls”
-
A stylish artistic/musical direction reminiscent of old-school anime and dating sims!
-
No horror elements or danger whatsoever
The Vellescian Gambit
The Vellescian Gambit is a very neat game that looks like a visual novel, but is actually more of an economics-based puzzle game embedded in a well-written but compact visual novel. I highly recommend it for those looking for a new twist on the VN genre, or games with economics or trade-related themes.
Your character is given a particular mission that needs to be accomplished with limited resources and time, and nearly every single choice has small consequences that add up and determine what happens. In this sense, it is quite different from your run-of-the-mill VNs, where the player has very limited control over what happens. You freely choose from many possible options, ranging from which routes to take and the pace of travel, how much protection to hire, and what commodities to buy and sell along the road (or whether to do any trading, as it can cost you precious time).
– Real player with 19.3 hrs in game
Pros:
+Pretty good artwork and soundtrack
+Nice story
+Very interesting puzzle-like gameplay
Cons:
-A bit short
– Real player with 1.4 hrs in game