Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception

The Sneaky Verdict Verdict: Highly Recommend Score: 9.7/10 Playtime: 60 Hours (45 Story, 15 Achievement clean up) 100% Grind/difficulty: 2\10 Difficulty 5.5/10 Grind Story: 9.8/10 Pros -Emotional Payoff -Polished Writing -Deep character development -Engaging and intense world building -Pacing in the second half ramps up the emotion, stakes, and conclusions beautifully. I was constantly in a moment of shock, laughter, sadness, or utter disbelief Cons: -There is a Early/Middle section that feels like a slog with repeating jokes/bits wearing thin after several hours of narrative that overstays its welcome. Gameplay\Combat: 7.5/10 Pros: -Character animations are well done, I enjoyed seeing characters come to life on the battlefield -While simple, the TRPG game play is fun and brief enough to be engaging without making it the focus of your play through. Battle segments last 20-30 minutes and, while easy enough to not require any additional level grinding, do facilitate strategic character deployment, movement, and skill usage -Offers a refreshing change of pace from the often multiple hour long story segments Cons: -Very simple combat with no significant depth to builds …

This ending... 10/10

7/10 I generally feel the same about this game as the first one in the series. Slightly increasing the score. The more modern artwork is nice and the character battle models were improved. Although I found that in my playthrough I only saw a handful of the Final Strike animations. The characters don't really unlock them until the final couple of fights. I played on normal, the difficulty felt more challenging than the first game. Got wiped a couple of times. Story wise I enjoyed the cast and didn't mind the slice of life stuff that was heavily prevalent. I think like 60% of this game's dialogue is focused on food lol. It all feels worth it for that final sequence.. woo boy I was left dumbstruck by it. Definitely will be playing the next game.

Peak

A huge improvement in every aspect possible to the first game and a monumental piece of literature for me personally. Second only to Miles Morales in my heart because of my Spider-Man bias.

started slow but ended so well!