H-Scene Count- 9
Created by Leaf, translated by Mirror Moon
Length- 15-20 hours
Story
This is a story of a man cursed. A continent covered by different races, none of which understand each other, and so turn to war. The man rises and builds his own country toward peace.So you play as an amnesiac who was found in the woods near a small village. MC becomes a member of the village and improves their way of life through scientific means that no one in that world should know(medieval setting). Through various events, MC goes from tribesmen to something akin to a king. Through actions of others his friends and county continue to fight, even though they wish for peace. Any more would be a spoiler so I will stop their.
The story is probably the best part of Utaware, for both its scope and what it leaves for the player to figure out. The only issue storywise I had was the ending sequence is a tease, but other then that I applaud the plot. The characters though, did not have any lasting impact on me. They were alright, but none of them really stood out as greatly written to me. Even the main lead had nothing stand out beyond his plot importance. He is a generic good guy who is bossed around by the girls with no traits that stand out other then his knowledge he should not have.
Gameplay
Utaware is a turn based strategy game like Castle Fantasia. Each character has a limit break and a normal attack, and a few have magic. The differences from Castle Fantasia come in the leveling system, a action command system(to hit more times), no choosing direction faced, everyone having an element which lets you deal more or less damage to them, and a few characters having more then just the standard one range.
Leveling is done through exp gain, but the real power comes from buying stat ups after battle. Through comboing and killing(every hit after death gives more BP), you gain BP for that character which can be spent to increase their number of attacks, atk, def, and mag. def. To get each characters ultimate attack you must max out the combo and build up their limit bar for a over the top attack that oneshots most foes.
Action commands are fairly easy. Every time you attack a circle will appear and start closing. You have to click right before it closes to succeed. All the other combat systems are fairly simple, so I won’t get into them. One thing to ntoe is that the game has no routes, just a linear plot. It does have 6 difficulties, and you have to play on at least the second one(Hard Mode 1) to unlock the final cg in the game. The reason for that is the game has a bunch of titles that you can gain when playing, but only when on a difficulty above normal. These make it so that you have to replay the game twice to get everything. Luckily, on 2nd playthroughs you can skip all the story content and just do the fights to get the titles you missed.
H scenes and other things
H is bland. They are unvoiced, since the voices for the game are just PS2 rips(you should have the voice patch, it makes the game more enjoyable) and are just kinda average. Length is alright for most of them, and if you like tails and animal ears all the girls have variations of them. Most scenes are consensual, with an odd drunk/drugged scene and 3 extremely similiar femdom ones.
Utaware is the first Vn/H game I ever played, and so it is kinds special to me. But when I went back to play it, I realized it was only an alright game. The gameplay is solid and the action commands are a great idea and work, but with no routes there is little replay value, especially since the final cg from the titles is not special at all.
Utawarerumono
http://www.mediafire.com/download/se2wmileokk667q/Utaware.rar