It's definitely flawed, I can definitely see where the complaints come from, but honestly, it's been a blast for me, and a major step up from CS1 and CS2. Definitely one of the better first parts of Trails arcs, not just graphically and with gameplay, but in terms of raw enjoyment and pacing. I might be in the minority with some of these, though.

A lot of first parts in Trails arcs are about exploration and character interaction, and I think the mentor/student dynamic in a school setting really helps with that. The more militaristic and sci-fi-ish setting really works for me. The field trips have some of the most fun episodic Trails content for me, and some of the cast being from Crossbell really brings an interesting dynamic to a cast that is for the most part from Erebonia. I also really like Rean in this one.

That ending really hit for me, as well. No idea how people waited an entire year for CS4 to come out like this. I immediately opened up CS4 and played the prologue, which blew me away, as well. The hundreds of hours invested into the series are definitely paying off. I will have high expectations for it and Reverie now. Let's hope that I end up being one of the people for whom CS4 really works, since I see extreme opinions on it more than anyone calling it mediocre or just okay.

This game, bar none, is the best Ace Attorney experience I’ve ever had, one of the greatest gaming experiences I’ve ever had, to the point I doubt these two incredible games will ever be topped, in their series or otherwise. They didn’t drop the ball a SINGLE time in this entire collection, to the point where “good” doesn’t aptly describe a single one. Every single case is on par with some of the series’ greatest, a great cast of interesting characters, a great overarching story, great investigations, great trials, it has EVERYTHING. Truly deserving to be named "The Great Ace Attorney".

What is there even to say about Chrono Trigger that hasn't already been said before? It's the quintessential JRPG; not only did it have all the makings of a great game, with its vibrant pixel art and jaw-droppingly beautiful soundtrack, a tightly constructed narrative (somehow with no gaping plotholes alongside extremely clever time travel mechanics) and phenomenal worldbuilding through realized settings and a colorful cast, and a rich combat system through combining turn based and real time combat mechanics, it also set the standards for JRPGs to this day and popularized classic mechanics such as New Game + and multiple endings. The bar was raised so high that even today, every JRPG gets compared to Chrono Trigger in some fashion; the Phantom of the Opera of its generation, Chrono Trigger is, for lack of better words, timeless. It's not my favorite video game or even my favorite JRPG, but it remains a staple of video game history and I'm glad to say that if anything, it's only gotten better with age even after 27 years have passed. Everyone should experience Chrono Trigger; it's just one of those games that is practically perfect, and probably always will be.

Shigesato Itoi's ending to the Mother series leaves off on its strongest messages to take home. I'm of a family of brothers and sisters, but most importantly I have a twin brother of my own. That made the story around Lucas and Claus that much stronger and poignant to me, not to discredit that the writing in general isn't already incredible.

From the slow corruption of Tazmily village as it conforms into a capitalist society that comes with less pros than it does take away familial strengths and bonds within the community, to the surrealist hero's journey of the seven needles, Mother 3 fantastically paces itself out and keeps the core message of family ever so strung through the whole thing.

The characters, while not so much riveting examples of three dimensional characterization, each found their way into my heart as I played through. This is a game where, though it has its lows, had a profound effect on my life for a very long time. Even when you dig to its core, to where you find that it's simple in scope and works off of a fine tightrope of emotional beats, I still think it's a shining example of video games I've ever played. I can hum most of the soundtrack to this day.

The combat may not be riveting, it taking up a huge percentage of the time playing the game and just barely good enough thanks to some great boss design, some solid enemy encounters, and the cohesive rhythm system. But still, I never lost my engagement for a single moment. I was gripped until the credits rolled and the game came up and told me that it wants the very best of my life as I did the characters at the end. And I think, I wish everyone here the best too, and that maybe if these words find you that you also play Mother 3. (10/10)

"A story is a series of memories. Memories are remembered with other memories, and in turn become memories themselves. If you don't take care to preserve your memories, you'll forget them. So, please tell us frogs your memories of everything so far... That is what people refer to as 'saving'."

This isn't really a review, more of just some...thoughts on this game and my relationship to it. Fair warning, it's pretty navel-gazey and self-indulgent. You may not really get on with this one.

One of the all-time best Hard Drive headlines remains "Huge Earthbound Fan Excited To Play It For The First Time". It's a good gag, an playfully teasing dig that is funny because it's true, and could only come from a place of understanding of the EarthBound/Mother fandom. I know, because once upon a time, I was a Huge Mother 3 Fan Excited To Play It For The First Time.

It's hard to emphasize how much of a fetish object Mother 3 was for the western EarthBound fandom, even for the wider JRPG fandom. I became aware of EarthBound through Smash Bros, as I am sure most people my age did, and was immediately taken in by how out-of-a-piece it was with the rest of Nintendo's stable, and my interest only skyrocketed when I searched the internet and found out that EarthBound was super fucked up and weird and scary in a way only slightly off-beat Nintendo games hyped up by 14-year olds who don't really know anything else could be.

(See also: Majora's Mask, and endless features in Official Nintendo Magazine UK swearing that the ReDeads in Ocarina of Time were the scariest shit in the fucking world man you'd fuckin shit and piss your pants)

And then, of course, there was the sequel on the Game Boy Advance, that never left Japan and never would, implicitly because it would emotionally scar anyone who played it and was even more messed up than it's fuckin twisted predecessor. EarthBound has a habit of being slightly spoken over by many of its most ardent fans, certainly, those I was privy to in my days lurking on noted Haven for Absolute Unhinged Freaks Starmen.net, but Mother 3 was on a whole other level. Everything about this game was spoken of in terms of absurd religiosity, which was only heightened by its relative inaccessibility. Speaking about the game in hyperbolic terms practically became a core tenant of the EarthBound fandom, as if an official translation could be physically evoked out of the ether if enough people were enthusiastic enough for it. Entire swathes of the game were freely discussed, both before and after the (also given a kind of quasi-religious status by the fandom) fan translation were released, spoiling every single conceivable thing in the game in order to entice someone, anyone to give it a go and join the chorus, never quite seeming to realize that, mostly, they were was just talking to each other, and to impressionable 13-year-olds like me.

I swallowed all of this. It was hard not to. I remember one day, on what was probably at the time the most exciting website ever devised, the Smash Bros. Dojo, which contained daily updates for the sure-to-be greatest Smash Bros. ever made when Lucas and New Pork City were announced. To say I lost my shit was an understatement. I freaked out to just about any of my friends who would care to listen, performing the same role of Eulogist that all the people I saw online do for Mother 3, giving away every possible twist and reveal and plot point to people who, maybe might have actually played EarthBound on their own one day and liked it well enough. To say that I was a fan of Mother 3 at this point would be incorrect: I was a religious convert, a cultist, a Happy-Happyist passing down the teachings that I had taken in from sermons of the mount like "Blues Brothers Symbolism in EarthBound". Blue, blue.

I did play EarthBound, and really loved it, mostly because like 80% of the conversation around the game, when I was getting into it, was about how totally fucked up the final boss battle with Giygas is, and the remaining 20% was endless relitigating about why a game so impossibly magical and amazing didn't sell well enough, which carried the implicit conversation with the unreleased status of Mother 3. Because of this, I found so many surprises and things I found personally resonant, things that I had nothing to bring to other than myself. I didn't even have this feeling with the even-more over-discussed Final Fantasy VII because the things culture remembers of that game are bafflingly at odds with what it actually is and what I took away from it when I came to it.

But with Mother 3? I can't say the same thing. It's partly because it's a much shorter, more focused game than it's predecessor, it's partially because it stands alongside Far Cry 2 and Dark Souls as one of the most over-analyzed games in existence. But mostly, I think it's because the fandom conversation around this game warped my perception of it and turned every step on the Nowhere Islands into charted territory, where everyone had left their mark, and I had no space to make mine, no space to find myself beneath everyone else.

There are a huge amount of things that I love about Mother 3, so many things that I appreciate, and so many things that make me smile. But I've never been able to feel like my experiences of it were entirely mine. I've never been able to find the unique resonances with my own life or experiences that characterize all of my favorite games. Everywhere I look, every corner I turn on the Nowhere Islands, I see the words of others, the perspectives of others. I look at little elements like the doorknob, and instead of being able to turn it over in my head, and place it within the wider whole, all I can hear is a cacophony of voices echoing throughout the years, the interpretations of posters on Starmen.net, Itoi and Brownie Brown's own comments on the subject, drowning out any thoughts I might have.

Yes, I could definitely discuss my thoughts on the fact that the village of Tazmily was in some way doomed to it's fate from the very beginning because of it's pursuit of an idealized vision of a specifically American past draped in western imagery that conveniently ignores the great darkness of that time in material history...but even this thought echoes with perspectives I've read countless times before. Wess' abuse, the Magypsies as a deeply clumsy but earnest attempt to explore gender non-conformity as it relates to the social and "nature", the way forgetting haunts the entire game world, as if everyone else on the Islands knows what a terrible mistake has been made by choosing to move backwards rather than forwards and desperately wishes to avoid it by enshrining themselves in your memory...it's possible you've read stuff here and thought "oh, that's interesting!" But every time I go to speak, every time I open my mouth on these things the words of others spill out, so ingrained and intertwined that I don't know which thoughts are mine and which thoughts are creeping in from forum threads long, long ago. Playing this game is like playing with a director's commentary track inside my head that I cannot switch off, commenting on the meaning or intent behind every single pixel on the screen, and it's heartbreaking because I truly believe this kind of voracious all-consuming analysis is completely antithetical to why these games are good.

Mother/Earthbound games are free-wheeling, lackadaisical, and rarely concerned with all-consuming arcs and statements. Those things are there, but the real pleasure of playing one of these games is just meeting the weird and wonderful people of this odd and beautiful world. You can see it in the battle system, in how it is playfully carefree with it's rules and rhythms, with many boss battles being beaten after you have technically been dealt lethal damage, but the game is kinda taking it easy until it gets to you. You can see it in the, frankly, absolutely astonishing soundtrack that freely mixes and matches genres and tones and instruments all processed through the woeful GBA speakers. You can see it in how the MacGuffin that dominates the first half of the game's plot is basically forgotten about and never mentioned again afterwards, in the lack of interest in connecting the dots between EarthBound and this game, in how the same reverence that the fandom spaces I hung out in hold this game and EarthBound are viewed with huge scepticism via Porky's Museum of EarthBound ephemera.

Mother 3 is not a religious object of absurd fervour, it's not a mythical Dark Dragon waiting to be unleashed. It's a video game, one that is laid back, at ease and confident in itself. And I wish I could be the same with it, but I can't help but play this game with the same awkward, nervous, stammering energy that comes with meeting an internet acquaintance in person. I wish I could be normal here, I really could! But my brain is too filled with EarthBound fansite trivia, I'm so sorry. Did you know there's an unused sprite that depicts the creation of the Masked Man, but that it was never used because it's probably just too fucked up and scary f-

Boney attacks!

...yeah, ok, I deserved that.

I've read a lot on games I love, and games I don't, but never do I really feel like those perspectives take me over, leave me unable to see the game beneath them. Certainly, my perspective has been altered by the perspectives of others, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill but with no other game do I feel so wholly unable to find myself in, no other game has this opaque wall around it made of What Other People Thought About It. Not even EarthBound has this for me. And it makes me really sad. Mother 3 is a special game. A really great one. And I think I do love it but...it's a love with a lower-case L. Despite it's reputation as a merciless feels machine, my appreciation of Mother 3 is extremely emotionally detached in a way I find kind of upsetting. There are definitely things about it that I feel strongly about, things about it that provoke profound emotion in me, but I wish I had been able to find those things for myself, instead of my love for the game sold to me by overzealous fans.

No, that's wrong. It's not the fan's fault. Well, not entirely. I do think that a lot of the conversation with these games is kind of fundamentally opposed to what they actually are in a way that speaks to the relative immaturity of a lot (not all) of the people talking about them at the point in time where their critical reception was still cooling. But ultimately, It's not the fault of people just talking enthusiastically about a game they loved, or at least, wanted to love. Mother 3 is just...as a result of my interactions with it, how long its shadow is cast across my mind as a child...trying to find personal meaning in Mother 3 that relates personally to myself is like trying to find something new in Citizen Kane. When something is that storied, that discussed...what hope do I have?

When people who were there talk about their first interactions with EarthBound, it's so often framed as this unfolding flower of a work, that grew beyond whatever humble thoughts they may have derived from the game's legendarily misguided marketing campaign. They weren't expecting to find one of the best games of all time inside it, but they did. It's the same I feel about when I played my favourite game for the first time. I wasn't prepared for the things it would do and show me. This is not to say that novelty is an inherent facet of a game I love. But at the same time...I don't know how fully I can love something that falls into a dutiful checklist of the things I already expect to find there.

I think Mother 3 is a great game. But I think people should be allowed to find that for themselves, or not if that's how it goes. It is, ultimately, A Video Game, after all, a children's video game at that, the video equivalent of a Ghibli or Pixar film, and not a holy missive from on high. Because I don't know if I feel, in my heart, that Mother 3 is a great game, and I think that's terrible. I think fandom and conversation can be really special, and I hope this doesn't come off as a condemnation of the western Mother/EarthBound fandom. But I think sometimes, Fandom can do terrible things to work, warp it to fit their enthusiasm. I see it in games like Persona 5, Xenoblade, Dark Souls, games that become disseminated by voices that come to dictate the scope of their meaning.

Maybe you would find Mother 3 weird, funny, or heartrending. Maybe you would think of it as super fucked up and nasty and scary. Maybe it will be the saddest thing in the world for you. But I think, as with any game, you owe it to yourself to find out for yourself, rather than have some ageing boomer online tell you what it should be.

It's like the frog. You can dissect it forever, but nothing you learn or examine or analyse will change the fundamental fact that the frog is dead. Wouldn't you much rather meet it for the first time when it's still alive, while it can still save your game?

Cold Steel I is a game that almost doesn't feel like Trails. It's 3D now, the MC is more anime than all the others (the entire female cast wants him + Persona dating social links), a vast majority of the plot is episodic city exploration that bloats the narrative more than the previous games ever did. But the high points, especially the last part, redeem it.

The music is great (an obvious statement about a Trails game, but noteworthy nonetheless), the combat system is a step up from Crossbell's, and it just feels fun to play, with even its duller moments being pretty comfy. It doesn't have Sky's comfortable and homely vibe, it doesn't have Sky 3rd's level of themes and character writing, it doesn't have Crossbell's consistency and high points overall writing wise, but it does have one thing that it crushes the previous games in — the rule of cool.

Rean (as of this game) is no Kevin, but his struggles are quite compelling, and more importantly, he has a katana, which is the coolest weapon a Trails MC has had yet. He is a cool swordsman. And Cold Steel is very cool when it wants to be. The last act some real hype moments that rarely work for me in videogames, and they were done creatively. I immediately booted up the beginning of CS2 because I just couldn't wait.

Despite at times looking like an obvious lower budget JRPG (why replace 2D character portraits with 3D models..? it took some time to get used to), and having a worse (IMO) art style than Crossbell, CS1 definitely has a nice visual style. Despite being the first 3D Trails game, once you get used to how it looks, it's really nice seeing environments that would have been previously seen from a 2.5D, top-down view in their full glory.

Overall, it's a heavily flawed, inconsistent, almost messy (you could even say it sucks sometimes) game, but when it hits, it's very exciting, and leaves you wanting more. I can't wait to see more of this journey.

So, I was sick in bed these past few days and have been going through this. At times it was the perfect thing to distract me as I got better, and at other times I genuinely think it gave me a worse migraine and fatigue than being sick ever did.

CS2 is weird because its peaks are higher than CS1's right from the beginning with its awesome premise, but it meanders more than CS1 or any of the Sky games ever did. You have so many similar dungeons that go on and on and on, with the game often involving repetition of slightly similar events or places in other areas in the middle of the game, as well as its later portion. Also, the game seems to never want to end, there's an epilogue after the credits to the finale, and then the intermission before the actual finale. I didn't mind it that much though because I really liked the Intermission and Divertissement chapters, but the actual last chapter being that long was unjustified. At least it was pretty emotional near the end, and the point it was trying to deliver was interesting. Rean's rival of sorts is pretty nice too, but I wish they had more screen time.

Overall a fun game, I'd put it above CS1. It is more ambitious than CS1, but more flawed for sure. I did play the intro to CS3 and the graphical upgrades that come with Falcom moving on from the PS Vita and years of technical advancement, as well as the improved gameplay and insane music have me very excited to play more.

This game is FUCKING CRAZY. I was skeptical over whether they'd top Sky the 3rd yet they somehow did.

I don't know how they did it, they somehow made three back-to-back 5-star, 10/10 games. This has NEVER happened to me in another series, even my favourites.

It's extremely emotional, the artstyle is awesome, it's fun to play (the small gameplay additions compared to Zero are appreciated), the characters are all awesome, they throw so many twists at you, the likes of which I haven't been this affected by since finishing my top 10 favourites across all media, that you can't help but binge. The backtracking is some of the least tedious in the entire genre from what I've seen. This is one of the closest things I've seen to perfection, from concept to execution, in my life. My only actual complaint is that the difficulty curve is kind of unreasonable in the last few fights of the game, but who cares, it was really hype.

And oh my GOD, the music... Trails already secured its place as #1 in terms of OST, beating Umineko, but this is on a whole other level. You have so many bangers, like the Azure Arbitrator or Mystic Core, but they're far from the only ones.

In terms of favourites, I'd place it around Utawarerumono 3. It's just that good.

I will be slowing down with my Trails binging and going through Cold Steel at a more leisurely pace so that I don't burn out but... wow, I'm definitely a fan.

Edit: NEVERMIND I HAD A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP THIS IS THE BEST SETUP GAME BESIDES UTAWARERUMONO 2, HOLY SHIT SOME OF THE MOMENTS IN THIS WERE EMOTIONAL AND HIT HARD, AND WE EVEN HAVE BETTER DOROTHY

I had no complaints with Zero until the last chapter, which was a bit of an underwhelming payoff, but until that point it was basically a perfect "setup game" with no dull moments. None of my issues from Sky FC are in this.

Aside from the mildly underwhelming finale, the "BRO WE'RE A CINEMATIC UNIVERSE BROOOOO" issue that I've been fearing with this series rears its head. In some aspects, it's really cool, what with the payoff for a character's arc in SC and 3rd (I started crying from it, it was so emotional). In others, you have the corny MCU thing of "heh, looks like I got here just in time!" and "wow [Crossbell character], you remind me of [Sky character]!" happening multiple times. I expect it to get both better with the payoffs, and worse with the corniness. But you take the good with the bad, I guess.

Otherwise, this is definitely one of the best JRPGs and videogames I've played. The combat system, characters, music, improved visuals from Sky, the Crossbell atmosphere, all of these contributed to a very fun experience. Can't wait for what Azure has in store.

Well, Trails has finally truly impressed me. This is definitely my kinda series after all.

3rd has decent pacing of things happening the entire time, though that is partially helped by its shorter length. The dungeon structure is preferable to FC's and SC's for me, and there is way less backtracking. It has a complex main character and a personal character-driven story. The combat system is mostly similar to FC and SC, but the way it ties into the story here more often is cool. Most of the 3rd music is the best in the series so far for me, especially the final boss theme and the OP.

Every problem I had with FC and SC have been fixed. Nobody is annoying anymore; a lot of the story is a love letter to the Sky games in general. Hell, some characters are better in this game than the previous ones. I even care more about Joshua and Estelle in 3rd than I did in FC and SC.

It's also got the majority of the emotional and dark moments (especially that one door) of Trails in the Sky. I genuinely cried to a few of them, which hasn't happened with Trails so far.

I will be continuing onto Crossbell with high expectations.

For me, Sky FC is "the JRPG of all time" other than the final boss and literal last 10 minutes of the game. This is partially due to it being a "setup game," (of which I've played next to none, but have seen this often done in visual novels, and it's infinitely worse with an actual videogame due to gameplay losing tension) and as such is automatically an underwhelming part of the story. The combat system is probs my fav JRPG one from what I've played here and the 2 hours I played years back in Cold Steel I, especially later on when both you and enemies can cancel Arts (spell) casting before the attack is delivered, very strategic. The gameplay is fun, the worldbuilding is already good and this is just the first game in the series, true, and the music is good (though a popular JRPG having good music is a given), and it certainly has... soul, but it just felt like an okay experience most of the time for me. It was episodic for most of its story with okay characters and okay plot and okay pacing until it got better near the end. Although it's strange how the overwhelming majority of FC's thematic value is from that last part alone, and before that it feels more focused on worldbuilding and slice-of-life or something? The low points were Tita, Dorothy and Olivier (when he's a walking trope and/or stereotype) being annoying, as well as the stealth missions. I didn't care for the romance either.

I was feeling a little burnt out in the penultimate dungeon, too, which isn't a good sign when it's the first game in the 500+ hour series known for the "trust me bro, it gets peak" effect, with a coin toss on whether a specific player will like a particular game/arc. Additionally, it already feels bloated (it feels like I got 10 hours' worth of actual content out of my ~30 hour playthrough with how one-note some things, especially characters, were), so that's concerning.

In any case, the trailer for SC near the end looked very hype, so I'm excited to play that sometime this year.

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"MID SLOP PEAK SOULESS SLOP MID MID SLOP SLOP PEAK SOUL SOUULL SOUUUUULLLL" 😐

i don't care about this game, but it made me avoid any sort of discussion about it ever since release. i will be staying as far away from any sort of conversations surrounding this game as possible. and for the love of god, please stop spamming the words "soul", "soulless" and "slop", having posts about this game show up with the same three buzzwords used 500000 times made me never want to see them used in any sort of context again for the rest of my life

Despite its flaws, unbalanced cast, often shallow war arc and occasional lack of ambition, Uta 3 has some of the most emotional moments and most ambitious premises in both the visual novel and video game mediums. I will likely never lower its score again

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Old review:
In retrospect, this VN is pretty weird. Following Utawarerumono 2's amazing ending, this kind of goes... exactly as expected a lot of the time? It's never bad, but it's severely lacking in ambition, especially regarding antagonists, warfare and worldbuilding, sometimes, especially in the final conflict and the first half of the game. Rather than something like a Coda, Alternative, Heaven's Feel, Conqueror or Terra, this makes a promise, and then ends up delivering a much smaller-scale, albeit still good, follow-up. Maybe going small-scale in both Uta 2 and 3 would've been the way to go. And then, suddenly, you have actual 11/10 moments, and then it goes back, meanwhile most of the action is an extremely average, unambitious, almost generic execution of large-scale warfare compared to some things I've seen in JRPGs and VNs. The cast is also quite disappointing, outside of Haku, Kuon, Oshtor, Nekone and Anju.

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Older review:

Now that I've had months since October to ruminate, I'm finally ready to give my detailed thought on this.

This (Mask of Deception too maybe) is the closest thing to both a perfect VN and perfect video game that I've seen. The premise for this is genuinely insane, you literally cannot discuss it at all without spoilers, so I'll talk about other things.

Well, "perfect" here does not mean it is literally free from flaws. Following Mask of Deception's ending, you have an insanely ambitious setup with a concept that I am confident you will not find elsewhere. If you think about it, this whole situation seems similar to some other VNs that are also built off of a seemingly more underwhelming setup entry and lead to a bigger, almost unanimously considered "objectively" better, more ambitious, and are a climactic finale, such as White Album 2 Coda, Rewrite Terra, Fate/stay night Heaven's Feel, Muv-Luv Alternative, Umineko Episode 8, Aokana EXTRA2 and 9-nine Episode 4. But unlike those cases, a couple dozen hours into Uta 3, the game just does a 180 and decides, "no, no, we're going smaller again, sorry". And just in general, unlike those, Uta 3 doesn't really feel a pressure to live up to those expectations and goes sort of... as expected a lot of the time? You are also able to tell that there was cut content somewhere 3/4s into the game and that the story was meant to be longer, making some ideas like a certain antagonist feel little half-baked. And also, while it does go into warfare quite a bit, the strategy is generally vague and not super specific with its worldbuilding. You kind of just get told that you have archers and swordsmen, not stuff like what the bows are made from and what model the swords are, or something. If what you want is specific strategic detail for battles you're gonna have to go read Aokana, Baldr Sky, Muv-Luv or Muramasa. Lastly, some characters, like Kiwru, are criminally neglected by the story.

Despite all this, though, I still stand by my earlier claim. From what I've experienced, this is as close to perfection in every aspect as one gets.

The art is insanely gorgeous. The Utawarerumono Mask duology art is pure eye candy. The music is fantastic. Suara's voice is extremely calming and emotional (I know you'll cry on command from キミガタメ), and the Japan-inspired high fantasy music is great. The SRPG gameplay is cool and engaging, although I don't have much experience with that kind of battle system, but I got really into it. The characters... wow. Oshtor, Kuon and Anju are some of the best videogame/VN characters you'll see, but Haku is on another level. Definitely one of the best characters ever. If you're into stories where a normal dude goes through crazy journey of character development, this is definitely for you. Yes, some characters get neglected and the cast should've been a little smaller, but at worst they are fun and still have some arcs.

The game is just great in every aspect. I did say that a lot of it is just "expected Utawarerumono 2 follow-up", but it has no real low points either. I would go as far as to say that I enjoyed basically every hour of it.

It's been months since I finished, but I think about this series to this day. This rarely happens to me. I didn't expect much going into it and mostly wanted to try it due to wanting to see what the fuss is, but I was pleasantly surprised. Highly recommended.