If you are wonderig, yes, this is directly related to the anime series currently airing. The game came out two weeks before the series started to air, and both should follow the same characters and storyline, only that the series certainly has a better pacing.
Developed by Aquaplus and Sting, Utawarerumono Itsuwari no Kameno follows the story of Haku, an amnesiac man saved by Kuon after he was wandering in a snowy wasteland and came under attack by monsters. Itsuwari no Kamen (InK for short) takes place in the same world as the first Utawarerumono, only some time later; how much I'm not sure, I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the Utawarerumono genesis.
Being primarly a developer of visual novels, Aquaplus brings this style into Utawarerumono as well: turn-based missions are sandwiched in between sequences where characters talk. And talk. And talk some more. And then more.
I'm very displeased to see that Aquaplus didn't learn from Tears to Tiara II and still drags dialogues to incredible lenghts, to the point that I once spent an hour skipping dialogues between missions. And the dialogues weren't over yet, so I turned on the option to skip all unread text.
The pacing in the first hours of the game is absolutely unacceptable. Maybe I say this because I can't read what's going on, but I doubt this will change if the game was in English. The effect of such long cutscenes, filled with characters taking tens of minutes to get a point across has the side effect of making cuts important to the story completely overlooked, as you patience for reading has expire long time ago.
It doesn't help that character portraits have very few expressions and that a lot of times you are just shown a static background; no matter how good those can be, it's simply boring witnessing such long dialogues that most of the time have little to no relevance to the story.
And it's not like that character portraits or backgrounds look good, they are great: portraits, while not on Vanillaware's level, have different shadings based on environmental lighting; backgrounds are lovely crafted, though I spotted perspective errors in a couple...and you have plenty of time to spot those.
Dialogues are entirely voiced, so far no line has gone without being spoken by someone, even filler characters; so, it's clear that Aquaplus put a lot of effort in these sequences, but not enough to make them interesting.
As a final note on the visual novel part, the game features points where you choose which location to visit, but that apparently doesn't change the story, character interactions, or missions you'll face. If Aquaplus wanted to make the VN part of InK meaningful, they should have taken their time to implement such possibility, and above all, learn to cut their cutscenes.
This leaves missions. And I wish I could tell something more than they are turn-based, characters move on a grid, and each has his or her own sets of abilities. I really wish. However, out of the 5 hours I've played (and I tell, once again, that it's 5 hours with skipped and fast forwarded dialogues), I played 5 missions, each 10 to 15 minutes long.
All the pieces seem to be there, and the interface feels good enough, but I can't really say anything else, because the amount of time I've spent actually playing (issuing orders to characters, rather than being uninterested in what they have to say) is nothing.
If you are interested, here's a look at the first hour of the game.
Developed by Aquaplus and Sting, Utawarerumono Itsuwari no Kameno follows the story of Haku, an amnesiac man saved by Kuon after he was wandering in a snowy wasteland and came under attack by monsters. Itsuwari no Kamen (InK for short) takes place in the same world as the first Utawarerumono, only some time later; how much I'm not sure, I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the Utawarerumono genesis.
Being primarly a developer of visual novels, Aquaplus brings this style into Utawarerumono as well: turn-based missions are sandwiched in between sequences where characters talk. And talk. And talk some more. And then more.
I'm very displeased to see that Aquaplus didn't learn from Tears to Tiara II and still drags dialogues to incredible lenghts, to the point that I once spent an hour skipping dialogues between missions. And the dialogues weren't over yet, so I turned on the option to skip all unread text.
The pacing in the first hours of the game is absolutely unacceptable. Maybe I say this because I can't read what's going on, but I doubt this will change if the game was in English. The effect of such long cutscenes, filled with characters taking tens of minutes to get a point across has the side effect of making cuts important to the story completely overlooked, as you patience for reading has expire long time ago.
It doesn't help that character portraits have very few expressions and that a lot of times you are just shown a static background; no matter how good those can be, it's simply boring witnessing such long dialogues that most of the time have little to no relevance to the story.
And it's not like that character portraits or backgrounds look good, they are great: portraits, while not on Vanillaware's level, have different shadings based on environmental lighting; backgrounds are lovely crafted, though I spotted perspective errors in a couple...and you have plenty of time to spot those.
Dialogues are entirely voiced, so far no line has gone without being spoken by someone, even filler characters; so, it's clear that Aquaplus put a lot of effort in these sequences, but not enough to make them interesting.
As a final note on the visual novel part, the game features points where you choose which location to visit, but that apparently doesn't change the story, character interactions, or missions you'll face. If Aquaplus wanted to make the VN part of InK meaningful, they should have taken their time to implement such possibility, and above all, learn to cut their cutscenes.
This leaves missions. And I wish I could tell something more than they are turn-based, characters move on a grid, and each has his or her own sets of abilities. I really wish. However, out of the 5 hours I've played (and I tell, once again, that it's 5 hours with skipped and fast forwarded dialogues), I played 5 missions, each 10 to 15 minutes long.
All the pieces seem to be there, and the interface feels good enough, but I can't really say anything else, because the amount of time I've spent actually playing (issuing orders to characters, rather than being uninterested in what they have to say) is nothing.
If you are interested, here's a look at the first hour of the game.
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