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So this week's game is one that I picked up during the Steam Summer Sale (which mind you, I did not go crazy with this year but that's for another post) and yes, it's another Sim/Visual Novel. But in my defense this one called to me and the reviews were mixed so needless to say, I was intrigued. This week's game, if you haven't looked at the picture right above this sentence, is Long Live the Queen by Hanako Games and came out in 2012 I believe. If memory serves I picked it up for about $5 on Steam but it's normally $10 (click here for the Steam page)
Basically you're the Princess of a tumultuous kingdom who just lost her Mother and is next in line for the throne, pending your fifteen birthday. Also, everyone wants to kill you. Also, you know absolutely nothing about anything that it takes to be a queen. Which is okay because if you did, there would be nothing to work towards in this game. (My overall verdict is at the bottom of this review just so you know... if you wanna skip ahead that is....)
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The entire premise of this game is that you learn all the skills necessary to efficiently run the country, hence the screen to your left. You are able to choose two skills to level up on each week BUT THERE'S A CATCH. What you learn, and how effective you are at leveling up that skill, greatly depends on Elodie's, the princess', mood.
For example, you start out the game depressed which adds a bonus to skills in the Expression and Animal Handling Category. Simple enough right? WRONG. On top of having to learn said skills, you must deal with events that happen each week. There are some events that don't greatly differ but most of them do depend on you having sufficient and specific skills built up. The skills you need at the start of the game do seem a bit arbitrary at first but as you play through it, and go through it again and again (and again and again) you'll begin to see the logic behind some of the Skills you need. However, that being said I will now break this game down into three sections: The Frustrating, The Rage Inducing, and The Addictingly Awesome.
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THE FRUSTRATING: Elodie's moods and the skill sets. What I find frustrating about these two things is that they are entirely too dependent on one another. You can influence Elodie's mood by choosing different weekend activities because the way it works is that depending on Elodie's dominant mood that week you either get penalties or bonuses to certain skills. Which is all fine and dandy except that there is little to no indication of what could happen and consequently what skills you should be focusing on, what is coming next in the story etcetra, etcetra, etcetra. First off, there are TOO MANY SKILLS and secondly because of the lack of indication as to where the story may even possibly be going, you're not going to know which skills to spam, and thereafter which order to spam them in, until you've played ,and died, through the game at least 3 or 4 times. Normally when I die repeatedly in a game, I attribute it to my own error and lack of skill (especially in shooters) but in this game, the game devs go out of their way to come up with interesting ways to be killed off/get killed. It's even an achievement. However, the lack of indication of what skills you're going to need and the arbitrary nature which the player is forced to sway Elodie's mood in is the main reason why I got so frustrated playing through this game.
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| One of the many ways you can die and one of the few that I haven't encountered yet. |
THE RAGE INDUCING: Now, I mentioned that in the last paragraph that there were too many skills and that attribute of this game is what made me rage at the game as much as I did. I'll break it down for you-there are four main skill sets: Social, Intellectual, Physical, and Mystical. In those four skill sets there are sub-categories that contain three skills each: Social has 3, Physical has 4, Intellectual has 5, and Mystical has 2. That's a total of 46 INDIVIDUAL Skills. For a game that, assuming you reach your coronation, lasts 4-5 hours. To put it in perspective, I have only seen this wide a variety of skills in some of the RPG's I've played and if you play any of the mainstream RPG's you'll know that those games take upwards of 10 hours, if they're short, to complete. What I think it came down to was the way the system to level up these skills was set up. At two skills a week, it takes about 4 weeks to level up a skill entirely. My average gameplay, achieving coronation, was about 40 some odd weeks. In that time, assuming your mood is correct every week, you could only level up 10 of the 46 to their max capacity. Except that you need most of the skills to be leveled up at a generally high level or the "Skill Tests" that take place during the short cut scenes at the end of every week or else you'll fail them and miss out important bits of the story. For example, without being extraordinarily spoilerish, relatively early on you and your cousin are out in the garden and Juliana, Duchess of Ursul, points a sword at the ground and yells for you to be still and you have the option to either hold still or look down. Both options result in you looking down anyways and there's a Composure skill test right then and there. If you fail, the snake bites your cousin and I have no clue what happens if you pass because IT'S TOO EARLY IN THE GAME TO HAVE BUILT UP YOUR COMPOSURE PAST HALF WAY. Ehem. Calming myself down. Though that outburst brings up another limitation in the Skill System, which I suppose is a necessary evil to prevent outright spamming but is extremely inconvenient at the same time.
All your skills cap at 50 and you must level the other two skills in the sub-category to AT LEAST 25 before you can continue to level up that skill. Absolutely ridiculous. I am not exaggerating when I say some skills are more useful than others and it's absolutely rage inducing when you know exactly what specific skills ,as you're probably on your second or third attempt at this point and have an inkling of what bit comes next, you need to level up and you can't because you have to level up other less useful skills in the process. For me at least it made it so that more of my attention was spent memorizing the bits of the story where you'd need a certain skill and plotting how to possibly have that skill ready by that particular week in the game, which makes it less replayable as a whole. You note I say less replayable, not entirely un-replayable which brings me to my last bit of the review.
THE ADDICTINGLY AWESOME: Now you may be asking yourself "You just spent the entire review ranting about how much this game frustrated you, and now you're going t o say it's awesome?" Yes my dear readers, that is exactly what I am about to do. Because although the main part of the game is in effect severely broken and roundabout, this game is undeniably addicting. Because death is so easy, and your attention is much more focused on the skill set and the strategy that it takes to acquire said skills, you are compelled to keep going. With each death, each backstabbing, each noble tantrum that is thrown, you become more and more compelled and driven to finish the game and be crowned Queen of Nova. That being said, the aspects I found most addicting was the sheer amount of personality put into the characters. There are so many of them and each is so picky that is in fact impossible to keep all the nobility happy all at one time and that quite honestly makes the game. Also can we please talk about the amount of outfits you can unlock?!
You unlock outfits as you level up skills and can unlock a total of 14 different outfits that give a boost to those pesky skills as you're struggling to level them up. I am putting this under Addictingly Awesome because one the art is solid so kudos to the devs, and two it is now one of my missions in life to unlock EVERY SINGLE OUTFIT IN ONE GAME. Ehem.
To talk a bit more about the art without my getting manic, the art is as you can see in the style of anime but considering its only $10 Hanako did really well considering some of the other Visual Novels I've seen go for $10. -shudders silently in remembrance of such VN's-
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| This mood was the next best to Neutral I think |
Happy gaming to you all,
Amy
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