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I can't bring myself to recommend Monochrome Mobius - not because it's a very mediocre JRPG, which it is, but because it lacks many things that made the previous three Uta games compelling. It's as if Uta got rid of everything that made it unique and decided to be a poor man's Dragon Quest. Remember charming character interactions, the political intrigue and the larger-than-life plotlines of the previous 3 Uta games? Let's deemphasize that, the game said. Let's be more of a "true JRPG," it proclaimed. What does that entail, you ask? Trekking in complete silence through miles upon miles of empty open maps filled with copy and pasted recolored monsters for you to grind so you are actually strong enough to defeat the token boss monster at the end of each map. The JRPG gameplay sections were absolutely soul-crushing and are the exact opposite of what I look for when I play these games. The first 10 hours were just relentless JRPG gameplay with a paper-thin, microscopic story. They were the most miserable first 10 hours I've spent with a videogame in a while. Now, I don't hate JRPGs. Some of my favorite games of all time are JRPGs, and that is exactly why I have very high standards for them. Monochrome Mobius is not so much a JRPG as it is a skeleton of one. The gameplay is shallow, boring, and only serves to pad out game time in between story beats. And even when the characters do open their mouths to talk to each other, their interactions don't hold a single candle to what the casts of Uta 1, 2 and 3 brought to the table. Strap in folks, I have a lot to say about this one.
Firstly, let's talk about the characters. Monochrome Mobius just has nowhere near the same level of character-writing as Uta 2 and 3. At the beginning, the journey is mind-numbingly boring because Oshtor and Shunya, the only two characters in the party, have zero chemistry with one another. They have no real meaningful interactions beyond just being nice to one another. I know that is supposed to be the point since they just met, but if you'd just take a look at Mask of Deception, you'll know that there are many ways to make interactions between two newly-acquainted characters very interesting and entertaining. Hell, even later into the game when these two start to warm up to each other, they were still extremely boring to watch. I think the problem is that both of them as individual characters pale in comparison to Haku and Kuon. The latter two are just objectively more compelling characters to follow on their own. Slap these two together and you get the dynamic duo that we see in Uta 2 and 3. The same cannot be said for Oshtor and Shunya. Slap two middling characters together and you get a middling combo. But then, I tried to remember what Oshtor was like in Uta 2 and 3, and I remember him being a lot more interesting there than he is here. Well, that's because this game shows him when he was still a pretty boring guy. It is through this game that he gets his Akuruka, develops his Ukon persona, and made the friendships and connections that he has in Uta 2 and 3. Same with Mikazuchi - the game explores his life and his long-standing friendship with Oshtor. Learning how far back these two go together really recontextualizes how Mikazuchi must have felt in Uta 3. All this was quite interesting, but it was still not enough to bring them to the level of Haku and his posse of peeps for me. Haku walked around with 5 dudes, 8 girls, a big bird and a squid. They hemmed and hawed and yelled and bantered. They were practically tripping over one another to make some kind of funny joke or interesting observation whenever they encountered something new or unexpected. Compared to that, Oshtor and crew feel like they're half a vicodin away from cardiac arrest. He and his mumblecore support group can barely keep their eyes open when they're entering mythical ruins and countries that literally no one even knows exist. I'm exaggerating a bit here but that's because if I didn't, I'd fall asleep too. This leads me into my next complaint:

Monochrome Mobius felt very low-energy and emotionally subdued compared to previous games. When I played Mask of Deception and Truth, I laughed my ass off during the funny parts, and genuinely felt sad during the sad parts. Those games had this infectious energy and genuine human quality to them, and there was a never a dull moment where I didn't feel at least some kind of emotion. However, when playing Monochrome Mobius, there were points when I felt like I was staring into a dark void. Everything just feels a lot more... serious and straight-faced? Uta 2 never took itself too seriously, and Uta 3 took itself seriously in all the right ways, but Monochrome Mobius is just serious for the sake of being serious. The country is not at war yet, guys, you can chill the fuck out. Well, the one bright spot this game had in the upbeat department was when the cast made it to Yamato and spent some time there. This was when the game felt less like a shitty Dragon Quest and more like the Utawarerumono we know and love. However, it was both short lived and too little, too late. The game had already spent the last 10 hours souring itself for me, and this was just not enough to keep my interest at all. It doesn't help that I already know what happens to these characters in the end - I've played Uta 2 and 3. The character developments, deaths, and all that stuff are already spoiled for me, so I really struggled to find any reason to subject myself to another 30 hours of JRPG gameplay for some story that won't even matter by the time the events of Uta 2 happens.
TLDR: The series simply did not make a graceful transition to being a true JRPG at all. The gameplay does not meld well with the story. All it did was introduce way too much downtime in between character moments and plot developments, courtesy of token JRPG things like grinding for exp and running through big, empty maps, etc.. Contrast this to the previous Uta games, where we constantly got gut-bustingly hillarious and compelling character interactions and worldbuilding every minute. The combat sections in those games were also always relevant to whatever the story was doing at the time, and when it was over you went straight back to the story, no BS. Beyond the gameplay issues, however, the cast of Monochrome Mobius is simply not as interesting as the previous ones. It breaks my heart that I could not enjoy this game as much as I wanted to. I love the Uta series. I love the world and characters and stories, and I know Aquaplus released this game as a sort of celebration for their 25 years of making games. However, what I ended up getting was a very subpar prequel to an infinitely more interesting set of games with infinitely more interesting stories and characters. A heavy "been there, done that" vibe permeates every inch of this game, and there was never a single moment where I did not wish we'd gotten a sequel to Mask of Truth or at least something fresh instead of what we got here.