Hooray for good news! Utawarerumono is back, with Aquaplus announcing that Monochome Mobius: Rights and Wrongs Forgotten will be getting a global release. This game was developed to celebrate 20 years of Utawarerumono, which has become almost the defining definition of “cult hit” among JRPGs.
Related reading: Our review of the previous Utawarerumono to be released in the west.
People that can be convinced to play Utawareumono typically love it, because it’s not your typical JRPG. For one thing, it’s one of the very few games out there that draws inspiration from the Ainu culture (the indigenous people of northern Japan), and that gives it a unique aesthetic and spirit that is really quite uplifting.
What is interesting is that this new Utawarerumono (and I don’t care what it’s actually called, this is what this game is to me) will not be a tactical JRPG like the previous entries were. Rather, it’ll be a traditional JRPG, though the developers are promising that it will have the same focus on a “great story” (and the same writer is back to pen the narrative). The artist behind the character design is new, but I’m already in love with the art. This game is gorgeous.
Sadly, there is a catch. The game is going to be released on PlayStation 4 and 5, and PC, in Japan. In the west, it will only be subtitled into English with the PC version. It would seem that Aquaplus wasn’t able to secure NISA or Atlus (the previous publishers of Utawarerumono games) to take this one on. Don’t count it out, of course. If it sells well on the PC in the west there’s no reason that NISA in particularly won’t do a publishing run on the PlayStation version, but for now, make sure your PC’s up to running JRPGs if you want to give this one a whirl.
Either way, the game will release on September 8 worldwide. There will be a digital art book bonus for anyone who purchases it in 2022 (so, by December 31)
I’ll play this game happily if the PS5 version has English (as always, I’m willing to import if necessary). If they limit the English-supported version to PC-only, they’re losing a lot of potential players in Asia and the west.
My understanding is that there will be no English in the PlayStation version at this stage. Which is crazy and I agree it’s going to lose them a lot of audience. Hopefully NISA comes in to save the day or something.