The game's been out for a little bit now, and I just finished the main story, so I figured I'd make a thread about it. Share your opinions if you've also been playing it, or feel free to ask any questions you have about it! I know there are a few other importers around here, so if you want to give multiplayer a try, feel free to post your info.

I'll go ahead and cover what I expect to be common questions...

What is Utawarerumono Zan?

It's an action game developed by Tamsoft, developers of the Senran Kagura series, based on Utawarerumono: Itsuwari no Kamen (Mask of Deception).

What's the story about?

It's a heavily abridged version of Mask of Deception's story. Sometimes several hours of dialogue are reduced to a few seconds of narration. Several major characters and events are completely gone or only briefly mentioned in summary. Don't play this game for the story. There's only one thing of note added, near the middle of the game: When Ukon and Haku break into Dekopompo's ship, you they fight Dekopompo and Bokoinante in the ship's hold. That's it. If you just played straight through the game without doing side content, you could probably beat it in somewhere from 5 to 10 hours.

Outside of the narrated segments, most of the cutscenes are done in VN style except using the new 3D models instead of the 2D art. They're fine, although it's a little bit disappointing when scenes that were actually fully animated in the original game's 3D engine are now just 3D models standing behind dialogue boxes. On the up side, there are a few scenes that are fully animated using the new 3D models, and they actually look really good.

What's the gameplay like?

You progress through stages that are more or less based on stages from MoD. In each one, you pick a party of four characters and use them to beat up hundreds of enemies. There's also a pretty good variety of bosses that show up during the stages. Every character has a standard attack combo and a couple of different special attacks. It's mostly just button mashing, but every character is unique and you can switch at will, so there's some variety there.

Inbetween stages, you get BP that you can use to increase characters' stats, and you get scrolls that you can equip to give them various bonuses or other passive abilities. You also get money that you spend on a gacha game which randomly gives you new equipment and costumes. It's a little annoying that your item drops are up to the gacha, but it's not that bad; there's absolutely no real money involved, and the drop rates are pretty high. I have had several 10-item pulls where I got something good on every item.

There are also many side missions you can do that unlock new abilities, new costumes, and new music. Every character has at least 4 costumes, most of which are palette swaps of their standard outfit, but several characters also have completely new outfits, and they're planning to add more as DLC.

There is online multiplayer, but no local multiplayer. Online is just like offline except it has a unique set of missions. I'm playing in the USA and it's been a little laggy but perfectly playable. If you have the game and want to play, my PSN is minneyar; just send me a message and let me know who you are.

If you're looking for people to play MP with, come join the Discord server and ask in the Utawarerumono Zan room.

Is this a good entry point for new fans?

Oh, heavens no. Like I mentioned above, huge parts of the story were cut out. This game assumes you've played Mask of Deception and that you're just here to beat up some mooks.

Is it worth buying?

It's an action game from a smaller developer, so keep in mind it's not going to win any Game of the Year awards. I'm having fun with it, and I think that you will, too, if you just want to beat up tons of enemies as your favorite MoD characters and keep your expectations in check. I'm glad I bought it, and I'll buy it again if there's an official English release.

Is it import-friendly?

Yes, actually! The gameplay is very straightforward -- your objective is basically always "beat up X enemies" -- and even if you can't read the menus (I can't), most things are fairly intuitive if you just experiment with them, and there are convenient icons everywhere to help you remember what things do. /u/Crygie has been thinking about making a video walkthrough for the menus, so let him know if that would be useful for you. The PS4 is region free, so you can either make a JP PSN account to buy the game digitally or import the disc from your favorite retailer.