Himamori Pota Wins Both Battles of Her First Strategy RPG on a Second Try

VARIUM — Himamori Pota, a Varium streamer, won both of the battles she reached in Utawarerumono: Lullaby for the Departing on a second attempt each, in a blind first session of the game on Monday. It was her first time with a simulation RPG, and she asked viewers at the start to be patient while she learned the controls.

She played the all-ages Steam edition, having bought it in a sale. She said she was drawn to it after enjoying To Heart, another game from the same publisher, Aquaplus, and she praised the opening music and animation as soon as the title screen loaded. The story opens with a masked man who wakes with no memory in a mountain village, is nursed by a girl named Eruru, and is given the name Hakuoro by the village elder, Tusukuru. Pota, who said she is a fan of *kemonomimi*, or animal-eared characters, laughed through a scene in which the hero grabs a villager’s tail, and chat reacted to it with “She touches everything, lol.”

“The story moves along so quickly, it’s really fun, and I’m excited to see what happens next.” — Himamori Pota, wrapping up the first session

The first harvest from the village’s revived fields came about two hours in, before animals raided the crop. That led to the game’s first battle, which she approached by reading its tutorial screens closely and comparing the elemental matchups to Pokémon. She lost, restarted, and won around the 2:43 mark with a flanking attack from behind. Afterward she spent the points she had earned on the character’s strongest stat, again citing Pokémon. “Her Pokémon experience is paying off,” one chat message read.

The evening brought refugees to the village, then a night attack by Mutikapa, a forest beast the villagers fear. Pota followed the clues to the creature’s weakness to water, and the second battle, a chase in which the party lured it onto a trap, took her two tries before she cleared it about 5:44 into the stream. Chat also seized on a moment when she cried out over a line praising Eruru and then noticed Tusukuru watching from a doorway: “Grandma saw her, lol.”

She stopped after a scene in which Aruru, Eruru’s younger sister, produced a baby Mutikapa, saving the game for the first time. She said she hoped to get better at the battles, and named Yuzuha, a frail girl the hero meets, and the brash Nuwangi as the characters she most wanted to follow. The stream drew 23 Super Chats. The next session is set for 7 p.m. the following day.