LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!- Frustrating, Rage-Inducing Yet Addictingly Awesome

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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. 

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- 

This mood was the next best to Neutral
I think 

MY OVERALL VERDICT: This game for all it's faults is at the end of the day a good one. Price-wise, I would have paid an extra ten if that meant they fixed the skills system to not be so frustrating, but otherwise you got your money's worth, in a good way, I think. The story is pretty solid and intriguing, there's a plethora of achievements and it is a fun game in it's own odd way. The art is solid and it is a time suck because it is so easy to die so the otherwise short game time is extended quite a bit depending on your determination to finish the game. If the day I bought this game was somehow repeated with me knowing all I do now, I'd still buy it so that has to count for something doesn't it? Overall, I have to give a thumbs up to Hanako Games on this one. Nice job guys, you've made a game that's nearly as rage worthy as Dark Souls (which is a whole other devil that we'll save for another entry to this blog.)

Happy gaming to you all,
Amy 

Heroes Rise: Prodigy & Heroes Rise: The Hero Project Review

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Steam: $3 for Prodigy, $3 for The Hero 
Project 

Like I said in my last review- it takes a lot, and I do mean A LOT to get me really invested in a game and I finally figured out why. It's the story. The story has to be compelling enough to really draw me in and make me actually care about what might happen next. And before any of you jump on me, yes graphics do matter, gameplay does matter, etc etc. But at the end of the game, all video games are essentially interactive novels with really great graphics aren't they? 

Which brings me to these two wonderful games! The Heroes Rise Saga. Really not so much a video game as an Interactive Novel, but it is on Steam and honestly gives you the same feel as a video game because even though there are ,brace yourself, NO GRAPHICS it brings an excellent game-play experience, one to rival most games I've played. 

Here's the gist of the main story arc, the subarcs develop depending on the choices you make throughout the game: You are an aspiring superhero in Millenia City and by aspiring I mean you are absolutely unknown and are just one of the many denizens of Millenia that are, as the game puts it, Powered. You live with your Grandmother, also Powered, on the East Fringes (read as: the slums) and are simply trying to make a name for yourself as a Hero. For what reason you may ask? Well that's your choice.

And that is all I'm going to tell you about that because any more and I'd ruin the story for you, but essentially the name of the game is pretty much  the same as Always Sometimes Monsters, you can check out that review here, you may not be able to alter the main storyline, just as you cannot alter the hand life deals you but you can choose how to power through it. 

That is exactly the point of the Heroes Rise Saga. Will you be a hero in the name of justice? For money? For fame? Or for Power? Will you be loyal to those who help you or are you always out for number one?  (On a sidenote I turned out to be what the game calls a "Heroes Hero" through both installments.)

The story itself is very much compelling and has it's humorous moments but I will say this, if you do not enjoy reading well... This game, being essentially an interactive novel, is well a novel. I did notice that it was getting quite a lot of flack on Steam for this very reason. For some reason people are going into this game expecting it to be completely customizable as far as the story arc went and complained  that the choices they made "didn't matter" and "didn't change the story at all". They were expecting a visual novel experience in an interactive novel game. And the reason I'm making this distinction is because there is a reason that the Heroes Rise Saga is marketed as an interactive novel and not a visual one. Aside from the lack of graphics, they operate on two entirely different systems. 

Visual novels generally work on a points system- if you choose certain choices x amount of times you get x amount of points which makes the game give you ending x. Visual novels are meant to have different endings and although that could very well have worked for the Prodigy, it would have made it tricky to continue your story in Hero Project. An interactive novel has a set storyline, meant to be left open ended so a continuation is possible. 

But I digress. 

What I found really neat about this game was that you can continue your specific storyline (i.e. your stats, relationships, customizations) into the sequel which is not a common feature found in games today. It made for a really great flow between games and an easier transition from the first story arc and the second one. Although I will say, while the decisions you make in both games are very difficult to make -depending on who you want your hero to become- the decisions are significantly harder to make in the second one. 

Prodigy deals with more moralistically motivated decisions. What I mean by that is that your decisions seem to be made solely on the basis of what your character would find to be in sync with their motives as a superhero whereas in Hero Project, the choices at hand have to do more with where your loyalty lies and how to reconcile your motivations as a Hero with those loyalties. Also in Hero you get a nice little chunk of your back story to complicate it all so that's also a thing.

On to the customization! If you're like me then in every game that allows customization you fiddle with the settings until you're really happy with what you've come out with (for me that means either making it as pretty or as ridiculous looking as I possibly can). The customization, being text based, is limited but they make these limitations interesting in that you can choose their physical gender but then also their gender identity- which is new for me at least in video games. You also choose the appearance of their costume, their power set, to an extent, and their Hero name (I was Tinysaur and my energy was purple, for obvious reasons).

Replayability is also a factor that I look out for when playing a game and this game, both actually, are very replayable. There are some achievements to be had on Steam and they're mostly based on the type of hero you choose to become. I really want to replay both games but have to set aside time for them because, and this is a testament to how good the writing is, I played through both in approximately 8 hours- which I played through straight and as a result showed up to work the next day on only 4 hours of sleep. Was it worth it? Definitely. Definitely. Definitely. Was the game worth it's price? ABSO-FRICKING-LUTELY. 8 hours of gameplay, for $6. (I got both with in the Steam Summer Sale with the Legendary Guides for $4.) So $6 for two games, 8 hours of incredibly engaging gameplay and story....It's more than worth it.

That's my two sense about these two wonderful games. I'll now go back to pining for the third installment, which I'll definitely be reviewing once it's out.

So what type of Hero will you become? Let me know in the comments down below! 

-Amy (AKA Tinysaur, the Heroes Hero)

Always Sometimes Monsters -Addicting, Fantastic and Heartwrenching

(Picture Credit to http://www.devolverdigital.com/)

Always Sometimes Monsters

Steam: $9.99 

Trailer Here

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   It takes a lot to get me into a game, and it takes much more for the game to entice me to play it for several hours consecutively. Always Sometimes Monsters easily pulled me in and has held me captive ever since I got this game on Steam yesterday. 

   I was trying to explain the feel of this game to one of my friends and the best I could come up with was if the Sims merged with a really good visual novel and was being presented to you in RPG form- that's Always Sometimes Monsters in a nutshell. However, you cannot simply contain this game in a single nutshell, there must be multiple nutshells for all the
emotion this game invokes in you as you play through it. See the GIF below if this point is still unclear to you. 

(GIF credit to sorryimkindofblonde.tumblr.com)

    

    You start out as an assassin trying to tell his boss that he no longer wants to kill for him, and after some arguing you meet a masked (perhaps faceless?) hobo that asks you to spare some change. Both the boss and the assassin you're playing tell him to amscray to which the hobo pulls a gun out and points it at them. After what was some very eloquent dialog from this unfortunate soul, the hobo I mean, you are given the option to either shoot or listen to his/her story. I figured if you shoot the hobo the game merely ends there and through the two play throughs I've given it so far, I decided on the story bit and boy am I glad I did. 

   

   The story he tells takes you to the scene of a party where you play as the host, Larry for a few moments and you go around looking for "a person of substance" to represent at his company. Basically you go around from person to person, each of whom offer you a different drink and whomever you decide to share a toast with becomes the protagonist of the game, who before toasting with you must go retrieve their "ball and chain", which you also get to choose. 

   I thought this aspect of the game was actually quite interesting as you not only get to choose the protagonist but also their lover- in many games you have to work towards your lover (yes, I'm thinking Dragon Ages and most non-rpg related visual novels). I'm 90% sure that the partner you choose has a significant impact on the backstory you get, but I'm not quite sure as for both playthroughs of this game I chose the same partner- SHE'S THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY OKAY, I CAN'T LET HER GET AWAY.

    Ehem. Back to the review. So you name your two characters and head back to toast to Larry, and a transition later you find yourself one year into the future- dumped, penniless and a month behind on rent to your anal landlord who thinks of you as a deadbeat. This is where the game truly begins and where I will stop talking in specifics about story line because I know I hate spoilers, and I can imagine you all hate spoilers. The only specific on the story line that I will give is that I absolutely hate the developers for taking me on such a conflicting emotional roller-coaster. (But really I love them for making this game because I didn't know I needed it in my life until yesterday afternoon) 

    Now onto the technical stuff. This is a 2-D RPG game, where the controls are a bit wonky if you are a PC game junkie like myself (Note: if your WASD and space keys are worn out, you are in fact a PC game junkie) However this is a small drawback in the large scheme of things. The music is on point and doesn't get tiring to listen to as you wander through the city looking for your next source of income, and following the next chapter of your adventure. The controls for those of you who were wondering are the arrow key pad as well as space and escape to navigate through your inventory and on-screen GUI's that pop up throughout the game. 

   The gameplay itself is really good. It's entertaining and because the story is so in sync with everything that is happening, you really do begin to feel immersed in the game. You have to eat on a regular basis and just like in real life, you have to make hard decisions. In my case, my strategy so far has been to not be a shitty person but hey, if you wanna play the villain that's your prerogative! It's the realness of the morals behind the decisions that has gotten  to me the most. As a new adult, 19 this August, there have been a lot of hard decisions I've had to make this first year on my own and I  think that's why this game resonates with me so much. The decisions aren't black and white like they are in the movies. There are never-ending shades of grey and implications to each of your decisions. 

   For example, and this is the most non-spoily example I can think of, there's a dog you find in an alley, you can choose to either spend some of your scarce funds to feed it or not. If you did as I did, because I'm a animal loving softy, and feed it, it will follow you around in random parts of the city. One of these places is the inside of a Cookie Factory and at first I was puzzled because I had entered this building before, in my first dogless playthrough, and was told to go away by a single pair of eyes through a slit in what seems to be a heavy metal door. 

    On my second playthrough however, I wandered into the building only to be greeted by the eyes again and offered "$100 for the dog, no questions asked". Immediately, and without having seen the posters around town advocating a "dog training camp", I understood that this guy was fighting dogs. I declined because well... dog fighting is wrong and immoral! Or at least that was my immediate reaction. Later on, I found a flyer declaring the dog as lost and I called  to return the dog to it's owner, who was very much obsessed/in love with the dog. The woman gave my character $75.

   Strangely enough, this made me pause in my quest to get back to my ex before she got married. There had been bigger decisions throughout the game but that there was this level of depth in challenging your morals that really struck me. In games you are most often faced with decisions regarding other human beings, but rarely are you made aware at how your decisions may affect some nameless stranger. Had I sold  the dog to that faceless pair of eyes, sure I would have been $25 closer to my endgame, but what would have happened if I encountered that woman NPC later on in the game? Would it have affected me, or would the event have just come to pass and life moved on? 

    Ultimately it's these kind of questions that are the main selling point of Always Sometimes Monsters. It's a narrative with a strong story line on it's own, but it is also a metaphor for the tough decisions life comes with and constantly makes you ask yourself, "Is this one decision worth the ramifications of what's to follow?"

    So what's your stance on the question this game poses? Are we "Always Sometimes Monsters"?
Let me know in the comments down below and as always stay cute and I look forward to seeing you next time :)

-Amy 

Welcome to the Blog!

So if you've made it to this page, I'll go ahead and assume you're either an avid indie gamer looking for a review on a game that you are somewhat interested in playing, or a member of the Tinysaurus Army (shameless plug ago!) that was intrigued by what this blog could be. If you are not either one of those, then I'll go ahead and explain what I'm doing here.

As an avid Indie gamer myself, I oftentimes feel that while some games get a lot of press and spotlight and feedback from the gaming community as a whole,  there are certain games -in my experience real gems in most cases- that fall through the cracks. I noticed this myself when I was looking for a review on an Indie game called "Block Story"; it had mixed reviews and the reviews themselves were from it's first release a couple years ago. Nobody had updated the reviews or followed up with the development of the game. To quench my burning curiosity I ended up buying the game and what came after is for another blog post in and of itself but let's say that I really want my ten dollars back.

In any case, what I'm striving to do here is save others the trouble of having to make a decision solely based on curiosity. I want to bring unbiased, in-depth reviews to games that I think are both worth and not worth your time. So many games and so little time right?

I hope you enjoy your stay on this blog and if you want periodic updates on what's going on not only with this blog but also my YouTube channel, click the links down below! I really do appreciate it ^^

See ya,
-Amy

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