Utawarerumono (うたわれるもの?, lit. The One Being Sung) is a Japanese adult AVG+SLG (S-RPG) visual novel by Leaf which was released on April 26, 2002 for the PC. A manga version was created in 2005 and was first serialized in Dengeki G's Magazine. An anime adaptation aired between April and September 2006, containing twenty-six episodes. The American rights to the Utawarerumono anime were initially held by ADV Films, who completed a full DVD release of the entire series. In July 2008, Funimation announced that the license to Utawarerumono (and other titles formerly held by ADV) had transferred to them.
Much of Utawarerumono's gameplay requires very little interaction as most of the duration of the game is spent simply reading the text that appears on the game screen, which represents either dialogue the various characters or the inner thoughts of the protagonist. At times, the player will come to a "decision point" where he or she is given the chance to choose from a single or multiple options. Unlike many other visual novels, these choices do not affect the final outcome of the story. The time between these decision points is variable and can occur anywhere from a minute to much longer. Gameplay pauses at these points and depending on which choice the player makes, the plot will progress in a specific direction. As game progresses, the player will come across sex scenes depicting the protagonist, Hakuoro, and various female characters having sexual intercourse or related activities.
Utawarerumono features a tactical role-playing battle system that centers around the player moving a group of characters through a square-based grid during turn-based battles in order to achieve an objective. The objective of the battle, displayed in the upper-right hand corner the screen when viewing the actions available for a specific character, comprise of the player either defeating any number of enemies or moving one or all characters to a specific location. During each character's turn, the player may choose to have the character move, attack, or cast magic, of which only moving and attacking can be performed in succession, in that order. When a character attacks an enemy character, the player is given a chance to add additional attacks should he or she time his or her mouse click by clicking while a yellow circle is present on screen that disappears shortly after appearing. The number of attacks that the player can add to a character's attack is randomly generated and affected by each individual character's abilities, and the total number of attacks that the player can add attack varies from character to character. After adding a certain number of attacks to the character will perform a special finishing attack should they have the required abilities. As characters defeat enemies and participate in battle, they gain experience points at the end of battle which are used to "pay" for increasing the character's abilities.
At the start of the game, the player is given a choice of four different difficulty levels from which to choose from which affects the difficulty of the battles the player must participate in. After completing the game once, the player is given an additional two even more challenging difficulty levels to choose from and may choose to skip the dialogue.
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