YMMV / Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception

• Adorkable: It's tempting to not want to cuddle Kuon whenever she gets excited over something.
• Arc Fatigue: A rather common complaint during the first half of the series concerned how it was a bit too conflict-free and easygoing, especially compared to the prequel series.
• Awesome Music: Nuedori (White's Thrush), for the opening to the game, really creates a sense of grand scale for the world.
  • Fuantei Na Kamisama (An Unstable God), for the anime's 1st half gives a much faster paced theme.
  • Ama Kakeru Hoshi (A Star Flying Through the Heavens), for the anime's 2nd half, as the drama finally builds up.
• Contested Sequel: The game averts this, but the anime got a lot of heat for not being able to stand out on its own as an adaptation unlike its more popular predecessor.
• Game-Breaker: Atuy shreds just shy of everything in the game, due to her massive attack stat and having an attack range of two tiles (which is a lot more significant than you'd expect), above average speed, and most importantly, the best ability in the game: when getting a kill (which given her attack stat, can be against almost any enemy with full health, even on Hard), she has a 50% chance to refresh her actions so long as the skill hasn't activated this turn. While she's meant to be a glass cannon, she has way more on the cannon part than you'd expect, and can fix the glass part with scrolls and codex equips that can also be abused to amp up her destructive power even more at the same time.
• Growing the Beard: The first half of the show is rather slow slice of life comedy and rather easygoing, while then the second half really picks up the phase and starts to take on many of the traits that where so liked in the original.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: In contrast to the original game which had things more evenly spread out, this game is simply the first part of a larger story and piles most of it's developments in it's second act, meaning it takes quite a while before the story starts gaining momentum with it being mostly light-hearted and zany hijinks in the earlier half before shifting into the more serious and political narrative that was so loved with the original.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: While not as bad as White Fox's adaptation of Akame ga Kill!, the anime caused quite a stir among the VN readers who were not pleased with the liberal changes the anime made and the elements that were cut from the original VN. Complaints include Haku's and Atuy's characterizations being altered heavily, exaggerating Rulutieh's fujoshi tendencies, stretching out the Slice of Life scenes as mentioned in Arc Fatigue, adding many anime-original scenes that altered many of the events' meanings and characterizations, removing the hints that clued readers in as to who were implied to be responsible for the emperor's death and Anju's attempted assassination, removing the epilogue that displayed the full extent of Kuon's powers that she inherited from Hakuowlo and the heartbreaking dialogue she had with Oboro that revealed she was in love with Haku, and removing the Sequel Hook that came with that scene that linked it to the sequel game. To say that they were upset with how the anime was handled is... an understatement.

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