A case study into what happens when you trap a good story in a bad game. For every hour of exciting plot development you are forced to trudge through another 3 hours of some of the most boring dungeons in your life, riddled with bloated environment design and wildly unbalanced enemy encounters. I respect the ambition and I do think the story lends itself pretty well to being an RPG, but their various attempts at giving "depth" to the system among other things only serve to further frustrate me. The fact that it was a buggy mess of a release also does not help, though I think they should patch all of them by now. I think I've had enough instakills for a lifetime with this game.

As a side note, I'd only recommend this game if you are an Utawarerumono fan, as all the usual good sauce from the series is still there from the characters to the lore. Realistically, I'd only recommend this game after you have finished the original trilogy. Believe me, this game spoils a ton.