Long Live the Queen (2012)

Not entirely sure what I was expecting when I bought this game.

Long Live the Queen is filled to the brim with deadly hilarity and a lot of face palming when your little princess ends up doing something dreadfully stupid because you didn't level one of her more mundane skills. The goal of the game is to try to keep the princess alive long enough to inherit the throne. The concept is simple enough but the journey to becoming queen is full of death traps. Some are obvious. Some are chocolate.

Elodie's mother has passed away and she has just been called back home to learn the reins of reigning (I'm sorry), but will she even make it to her own coronation, or will she die any number of (oddly hilariously depicted) gruesome deaths?

Don't be deceived by the distinctly candy-colored magical girl appearance. This game is hard. It's entertaining, the story and characters are enjoyable, but the game can be quite frustrating at times. With a twist to the choose-your-own-adventure style wherein your actions, reactions, and the choices available to you are highly dependent on the skills you have chosen to cultivate, which are in turn affected by Elodie's mood, it's a bit more complex than the average visual novel, and the things you must do in order to win are not readily apparent. For instance, I won the game via a route involving a magic showdown, the outcome of which was, for some reason, entirely dependent on a skill not even remotely related to fighting...or magic...or strategic wit.  These things are not made obvious, and one (as I was) may be tempted to learn many things at once in order to win all the mini-challenges along the way.  However, this is practically impossible and detrimental to achieving the true goal. One cannot make a perfect, flawless princess who does everything right out of Elodie, and that's fine. She's only human, after all. Even if she will someday, barring a bitter backstabbing noble or two, be Queen.

Long Live the Queen was not quite the game I expected, in spite of the fact that it's everything it promised to be on the cover. In this royalty simulator, you control Elodie, a precocious little pink-haired 14-year-old princess who, upon her mother's death, has been thrust into the role of matriarch. Establishing this game firmly in the G.R.R. Martin school of political thought, your goal is not so much to save the world from evil or to rule as a beloved queen should, but to survive long enough to reach your coronation.

Your country is weak, your neighbors ambitious, and your education incredibly limited; spend your time training up the many, many skills you'll need to be an effective leader, juggling pressing needs for the kingdom with personal desires to help you get what you want. Meanwhile, the constant flood of events around you will send your emotions scattering all over, and since it's hard to study Military Strategy when you're terrified or Court Manners when you're feeling defiant, you must manage your personal time to keep you in the right state of mind. On top of all that, you'll be asked time and again to commit money or military strength to a number of causes; until you've trained up the proper understanding of economics and military theory, you won't even be aware these resources exist, let alone that they're something you should be mindful of. Screw up along the way and you're dead - assassins, poisoned gifts, bandits, monsters... There are plenty of horrible things out to get you. And they will. Repeatedly. It's a surprisingly anxiety-ridden pile of disasters to manage, and while I adore it, your mileage may vary.

On top of that, there's also a decent story set behind everything, though your point of view limits what you can see. The cast of characters is overwhelming at first, but you quickly start to remember which assholes backstabbed you and which actually seem to be decent enough human beings. There are plenty of story paths to follow, plenty of branches that reveal details otherwise hidden, and plenty of endings to grab. Are you a meek and pretty trophy wife? A blood-stained military empress? A strange and terrifying witch-queen? Bear the demands of the throne, squeeze all you can out of the spare time you are given, and forge whatever destiny you so choose.