NIS America announced it will bring Aquaplus and Tamsoft’s PS4 exclusive Utawarerumono Zan to the west in Fall 2019. The announcement was previously leaked by Koch Media France who uploaded the reveal trailer a few hours too early.
Utawarerumono is initially a trilogy mixing visual novel and tactical RPG elements. Utawarerumono Zan is the first action RPG of the franchise and the first game in full 3D. Players make a team of four out of 12 characters and can freely switch between the four in battle. There’s also equipment to custom and new skills to learn through quests. The game also has an online co-op mode.
The story of Zan covers the events from the second game, Utawarerumono Mask of Deception. While it takes place years after the first game and mostly features new characters, the story was cut down quite a bit in Utawarerumono Zan, so newcomers who didn’t play Mask of Deception or the rest of the trilogy will easily lose track of what’s going on.
A limited edition for Utawarerumono Zan was also announced in the west and is only available on NIS America’s online shop.
The first Utawarerumono game released on PC in Japan in 2002. The game took place in a country based on feudal Japan inhabited by humans with animal ears and tails. The story specifically followed an amnesic masked man named Hakuoro and the group of people who welcomed him, as they got engulfed in war.
Utawarerumono‘s story and characters, down to their clothing, are heavily influenced by Ainu culture. The Utawarerumono franchise is quite popular among connoisseurs, and the first game had multiple ports and remakes along with an anime adaptation. While Aquaplus and the game’s scenarists revealed quite early it would receive sequels and that the story was planned as a trilogy, for a multitude of reasons, the second game only released in 2015, 13 years later. With a bit more luck, Utawarerumono could have become a huge franchise like Type-Moon’s Fate/Stay Night.
We’ve reviewed the previous games of the series: The second game Utawarerumono Mask of Deception, released on PS Vita and PS4 on March 2017, and the third game, Utawarerumono Mask of Truth, released for the same platforms on September 2017.
A PS4 and Vita remake of the first game was already released in Japan in April 2018, and it’ll come early 2020 on PS4 and Vita in the west as Utawarerumono Prelude to The Fallen.
The Japanese release of Utawarerumono Zan had collaboration costumes from Trails of Cold Steel 4. It’ll be interesting if these are included in the western version as well, as we’ll only get Trails of Cold Steel 3 by Fall 2019. The costumes are part of a long collaboration between Falcom and Aquaplus, and live concerts featuring OST from franchises of both studios might be happening in the near future.
You can find the announcement trailer for Utawarerumono Zan below. We’ve covered past Japanese gameplay trailers as well.
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