A fun game with an interesting premise that is marred by performance issues and lack of polish.
The idea of influencing the political landscape of a fantasy realm with the power of the D is really compelling in concept, and there really aren’t many other games like it. It kind of reminds me of a sexy Mount and Blade minus the army combat. Which is a shame, because the action rpg combat the game uses instead is a little lacking.
The first time a princess declared war on another reign, I immediately rushed over to the weaker kingdom to buff it's defenses. I spent the next few days fighting battles on the map and pressed on to the aggressor’s capital. But before the city could be taken, I used my political influence to persuade the princess of the winning reign to declare peace, thus maintaining peace and harmony throughout the land.
This was a really cool experience, even though I learned later that I missed an opportunity to rescue the enemy princess and potentially have her join my party, it felt like my actions had prevented one reign from growing too powerful. I felt like I had influence over the world.
But, that didn’t really last.
The narrative makes the Knight out as a great peacekeeper, maintaining stability across an inherently chaotic and warlike realm. However, after that one experience, I never witnessed anything like that again in my playthrough. Now that the Dragon Queen has fucked off, the reigns are supposedly in a constant state of war. But, in my game, no other wars have been declared.
Despite the fact that NPCs actively travel the map and princesses allegedly have their own machinations, it feels like not much gets done without you. I even went to the fortune teller in the desert festival, and she said that the princesses were going to declare war on each other but they never did. Kind of a bummer.
Other than the political stuff, the combat mechanics are clunky, the game lags really hard on the overland map, and I often feel directionless. A lot of the time I have to sit there and think: “Ok, now WTF am I supposed to do?”
Plus, the H content is kind of lacking. The animations are great, and I dig the chibi art style, but it feels like an afterthought. There are some BF mechanics in the game, and the overall experience might be better if they got rid of the action-rpg style combat and just made the game a BF. Though, that may be a lot harder to do.
At the writing of this review, I have entered the Kobold route, and there seems like there’s a ton of story content already in the game for the other princesses, but I kind of wish the warfare stuff was more fleshed out. I haven’t finished any routes yet, so maybe they will blow me away. Who knows?
So yeah, the core concept is really cool and I had a lot of fun so far, but it seems like there's still a lot of room to grow. The game is constantly being worked on, and I don’t know much about the dev but he seems to put out updates pretty frequently. It has a lot of potential, so I am curious to see where it will end up.
V 16.13
