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.
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.