Errant Kingdom

The release for this game was pretty rocky, though that's not really the reason for the negative review. I don't think the develop acquitted themselves particularly well with respect to the release or the communications about it, but the full game is, at least, out now. This is a good example of a game that deserves a "meh" option in between positive and negative. There are a few things to like here - the art is sometimes nice, the game is very inclusive/diverse, and there are a few scenes that are interesting or fun. Overall, it's challenging to recommend this game. There are numerous technical issues with the writing (typos, poor or misplaced punctuation, the wrong words being used), and they are prevalent enough to be distracting. More substantively, though, the quality of the writing is extremely variable and the overall story doesn't make a ton of sense. Unfamiliar characters show up in the final chapters with surprisingly central roles, which undercuts the emotional weight of their actions. Additionally, although it's a visual novel, there are basically two choices to be made over the course of the entire game (one about choosing your love interest). Again, it's a visual novel, so I don't expect big gameplay elements or anything, but the inconsistency of both the writing and the art - which ought to be a visual novel's strengths - make it harder to enjoy. There are also a lot of plot holes and places where character motivations or actions don't stand up to much scrutiny, which makes the overall experience feel rushed and shallow. In the end, I wouldn't recommend this one. There's just not a whole lot *here*. It very much feels like this could have used more editing: a copy editor and a developmental editor would have gone a long way here. There are things to like, but it all ultimately feels fairly flat.

They Bamboozled us hard. I supported this game, had patience, not even once complained. IN FACT, I called out folk on Twitter for giving the devs a hard time. The fact that they removed every episode that was out FOR YEARS, after promising for a whole year we would have the game finished by December. Actually, I would have not minded if they had said "you know what? we're moving the release date to February, sorry it is on us, sorry this sucks I know but this is something that happens, we are moving the release two more months to have it perfect" I would have not minded, but the re-release with MISSING chapters is such an ugly perverse thing to do. They have been working on that damned underwater VN or whatever, and ever since they stopped caring about this. To me, the other game is cursed now, and utterly ruined over how they have abandoned and mistreated this title over the other one which in all honesty does not even seem that good. I would have much preferred the honest truth that the chapters were not ready, and that we needed to wait a little bit more. I would have understood. But this? This is blatant disrespect and an "eff off" to everyone who MONETARILY supported the game. Awful behavior.

I'll show up late to a review for a game that's undergoing a rewrite. I cannot recommend anyone play this. I only bought it because of careful consideration of the reviews, and the game is being overhauled by the developers. After playing this, I don't have any confidence in their future titles. I've played Nomad and Ambassador routes completely. I gave up on completing the Knight route, and I'm sorry, but I really couldn't take much more of EK. Why is this game so bad? It's someone turning their Dragon Age x The Elder Scrolls 2010s roleplay thread, or cross over au fanfic, into a paid product. It's embarrassing enough as is their go-to is whipping up room designs in The Sims 4. The player isn't deciding on romancing Maja and Erik. No no, this is just the player third-wheeling the thrilling tale of the Amell x Alistair, with their adopted daughter, the Warden Commander (from Awakenings). This game made me so, angry when I realized what was going on. This game straight up forgot it's supposed to be a visual novel, let alone, a story to tell. I'm also heated. Hot. This is the second time the MC could not handle their own Opps! I didn't even want to try out the "worse" endings. Their handling of sexuality was worse than the previous game. As someone who is a poc and lgbt, this is garbage. I always get nervous seeing these games pride themselves on diversity and fumble the bag so hard when it comes to handling poly, wlw, trans romances, and including ace options. When The Night Comes may had its issues, but at least you could tell they had someone who was bi and/or poly on the team. You had time to let these relationships cook. I felt like my hunter was truly in love with Alkar or Ezra + Finn. Errant Kingdom? If you didn't romance the Great Value Alistair, Fenvran, and Warden(s)... your love interest is a cameo! I absolutely cried at Roux and Lucien's initial romance scenes, but their romances might as well been a fart in the wind! You can really patch out bugs! You can patch out glitches! You can't patch out bad decisions, bad writing, and honeyed promises. There's no need to play this since you can easily run Dragon Age and Skyrim on a flip phone. I'm genuinely am still shocked by this game.

Art - beautiful, characters - great, premise - decent. Done right, this could have been an amazing game. Too bad it wasn't done right. It seems like there wasn't even an effort made. Maybe initially, before the whole mess with postponing deadlines, diverting resourses to other projects, empty promises, etc. The game was completed (allegedly) by a skeleton crew who evidently were only concerned with finishing it ASAP, just so the players would finally stop nagging. The LI routes and MC of different origins don't get equal amount of content, the romantic content in general is very limited (not at all living up to the expectations set by the first few chapters) and some MC's (*cough* Ambassador *cough*) get literally no more than crumbs, depending on the LI. The pacing is atroucious. The first 80% of the game barely anything happens, as if the writers were feeling like they have all the time in the world for developing romances and unveiling the plot, and then suddenly it was time for the grand finale and they went "oh crap!" and crammed everything they could in the last 2 chapters all at once, but there is only so much you can fit there, so the majority of romance content was cut as well at a number of lesser plot threads were left untied. Some scenes felt really last-minute, half-baked, with filler vibes. A disappointing purshase all in all. But it sure looks pretty. And hey, they have representation. For some players that would be enough, I guess.

I really wish Steam had a middle of the road voting option. While I don't think this game is necessarily worth the full price, I think if it were cheaper then my feelings about it would be far less mixed. I'm going to recommend it, but only at a discounted price. I am excited for Call Me Under, and will support Lunaris Games because their games are charming and inclusive. I just hope they don't spread themselves too thing working on multiple projects. First of all, the cast are really nice and fun. Lunaris Games tends to do characters very well. They offer a diverse cast with options that are inclusive for the player. Something that's still a rarity in otome-esque/amare games. The differing backgrounds for the player are also fun, and while I haven't yet played them all, I like the options for customisation value alone. I was also super interested in the setting. I wish there was more exploration of the lore and history going on. You get the info you need, but it was still a shame. Lunaris Games makes interesting worlds that mostly go unexplored and that makes me sad. One issue I have with Lunaris Games is that the games are really only good for one full playthrough. Pick your favourite character(s) for the first run because successive playthroughs will involve a lot of skipping of information you have already seen to get to see the few relationship-dependent differences you get. Which, honestly, didn't seem to happen that much in this game. The biggest difference is in the background you chose but even they don't ultimately add very much. I've done Lucian's route, Rai's route, Erik's route, Lucian & Rai's poly route, and Erik and Maja's Poly route. All of them on the Ambassador background. After doing these routes, I could basically skip the entirety of the end chapter. There are not really any differences between them. The Poly routes are also a little annoying, because when you have done the character's individual romance, mostly the Poly route is the exact same content save a few lines of love and romantic interaction between your partners. I'm not poly, myself, so maybe i'm speaking out of turn, but I feel like there should be a little more content there to add to the thruple's relationship growth and dynamic. Otherwise I feel like an interloper who is somehow one equal footing with people who have had long-standing relationships. Maybe i'm being a little to meta there, though. I was most disappointed by the ending. I know that main characters being special little snowflakes chosen by destiny is a thing we see everywhere, but when you are set up to be a central figure of the main events only to have the ending go "Just kidding! This other character you may or may not have even paid much attention to is actual the chosen one!" was beyond the pale irritating to me. I didn't feel like there was any foreshadowing about it (but that could be in one of the other character backgrounds I have yet to play, which is still a bit of an issue) so it was basically from nowhere. The other issue here to me is that when you make one character central, it always feels to me that they are pushed as being "the one you should go for" because none of the other characters needed to be there except The One. That is a personal frustration, though. And the ending slides/epilogues were also not very well done and kind of jarring. Lunaris Games also really like there tropes. The biggest one seemingly being insta-love. Which is okay, insta-love can work, though it's not for everyone. When the Night Comes also had this, but everyone felt important in that game so I didn't mind it. In Errant Kingdom, there are characters you interact with a lot and characters you know are there. But you can choose who you want. Then, after the "Big Reveal" you get to choose who you want to go for and are suddenly sucking on each other's face and making huge declarations of love and it...makes me squirm a little. It just seem too much too soon. There's not much time for building relationships because everyone has to have their turn. So it comes across that you have one or two flirty conversations with a person, and the next thing you know you're wholly devoted to one another. Even if said characters were in a (sexual) relationship or ex-lovers who were still openly pining for one another. There are some minor issues. Grammar mistakes were the most obvious to be, but I know they're working on that. And I can deal with some "not perfect" spelling and grammar in an indie game. Characters appearing to have big roles and portraits that I had never seen before but knew were supposed to be important. Really, after my first full run through with Rai, it was a bit annoying to do the rest. And I'm not really very interested in the lady characters or Roux. Overall I think the game has two problems. First is that if you do not like tropes, they will rub you the wrong way. Insta-love can work, but only when done well. In this game it felt like "we gotta move this along so they're in love now". And the overarching plot didn't work in it's favour. The second is that it is very obvious that the devs got to a point where the people who had already paid and supported were getting antsy and they needed to get the game out. To both pacify the folks who bought it and to focus on Call Me Under. And the game suffered for it. Still, on sale, it is a fun little game with nice characters and a kinda okay story. I just probably won't pick it up again in the future, whereas I still play When the Night Comes every so often.

I've been following this game since it was first announced, because I had played "Where the night comes" and loved it. I will admit I've hard problems with the developers and consistent delays and disappointments with the game releasing, and also working effectively in the past. I'm going to keep that out of my review mainly, but want to mention it for a) the sake of addressing bias and b) a forewarning, DO NOT buy a game ahead of time expecting it to stick to a schedule unless you do not mind waiting or just wait till the full games comes out [h1] To begin with things I liked: [/h1] - Love the concept, thought it was very fun and intriguing to start with - beautiful art, personally I wasn't a fan the two distinctly different art styles for the CGs, but either way I thought the art - especially in game, was done well - Enjoyed the different routes you could take at the beginning [h1] What I didn't like (and why I'm not recommending) [/h1] - The characters after the first couple chapters fell flat, and I felt myself caring about some more then others. Roux was an interesting character, but as far as their relationship either romantically or platonically with the MC - I didn't really feel any chemistry. While Lucien was entertaining, they story wasn't really one of love (at least considering the ending of that route), and with Maja - she felt too nice. - The Poly routes didn't feel like an option, this may be a personal opinion but when i was playing through (more so with Maja and Erik) it felt like if you were only romancing one character, you were fundamentally destroying a relationship and doing the characters a disservice, it felt like a non-choice. - My main issue came with the MC itself, and the fact that we didn't matter. When you get into game play, it really does not matter what path you choose beyond ONE key one and the romance. To keep it vague about the ending, which is where the game really fell flat, the PC character could have not been present for the final battle and it would have made no difference. There is a whole build up of chosen hero, with zero payoff and a cheap and cliche ending where it feels like you made no real impact on the story. - Lots of plotholes and/or sloppy writing, You could tell the team wanted to move on from the game by how the quality took a severe downturn towards the final chapters. [spoiler] what happened to the cultists, who are they? why was there no build up to the cliche Erik reveal? why did the Marquis daughters do a completel 180 concerning character? Why did the other routes' characters get mentioned until the final chapters, and had no role to play? Could each route really not have its own weapon or tool? What was my ambassador doing with a sword? [/spoiler]

While the character portraits are very pretty, i found myself disinterested very quickly. The characters all feel flat, like they were all written by the same person. They don't have their own "voice". They have the same speaking style, the same mannerisms, they all favor the same turns of phrase. Which is fine, but it doesn't help endear me to any of them, certainly not in a way that favors one or the other. The story didn't intrigue me either, and the worldbuilding is completely nonexistent. I started out as the rogue-type character, but the game just kinda threw me into the world and assumed i cared about assassination attempts on the king or whatever without giving me a reason to care. It was a little better when I started over as a knight-type character, but even making up a backstory for my faceless player-insert didnt keep me interested for very long. The core problem is this: the writing is simply bad. There's no character in any of it, and nothing to differentiate it from any other low fantasy visual novel. And when the core gameplay revolves around the text of the game, it very quickly becomes very hard to ignore. But hey, at least the character art is pretty.

I understand the negative reviews that have been coming in and I agree that the developer did not handle communications and the actual release of the game, or parts of it, well. I am also one of those that have been waiting for ages and when it was said, that the game would no longer be released periodically but as a full game but later, I grumbled but accepted it. But the last move to basically retract this statement a day before release, just to inform everyone that it's back to periodical releases... that did not sit well with me. Especially not, considering that we started out with less content than we previously already had. HOWEVER - I really do hope, that Lunaris Games will learn from this and work on communication, because that would have likely stemmed the flood of the negative reviews, because the game itself is good! Good enough, that people have been waiting desperately for it to be fully released! I've played the game on itch.io and all the content that had been previously available and I still highly recommend it. The art work, while not always consistent, is beautiful, the characters diverse and unique and the story is engaging! It's a beautiful, at times dark but also made me laugh and pulled on my heartstrings. So, as far as Visual Novels go, I think that Lunaris Games does a great job and I do hope that people will give them another chance, not just with their games but also to do better in the future. And if you're in doubt, wait until it is fully released.

Errant Kingdom is a game that had great potential - sadly, the finished product does not live up to this. The story is hurried and poorly paced. The narrative builds slowly for most of the game and then there's a sudden sprint to reach something barely resembling a conclusion. The game offers little agency for the MC, who primarily walks around based on hunches. The romance also feels hurried in my opinion, in that the LIs go from wary/openly distrusting/not knowing the MCs to liking and falling in love with them very quickly... without there being any specific incidents to warrant that change other than some superficial flirting. This is a personal pet-peeve, because some suspension of disbelief is usually required when interacting with visual novels, but it feels like the LIs like the MCs *because* they were already designed to do that, instead of there being a compelling story allowing that affection to take place. The amount of romance and interaction between the various MCs and the LIs is very uneven, depending on who you pursue as the ambassador, the knight or the nomad. The latter chapters suffer the biggest drop in quality, and at this point there is barely any lines that are unique to any of the romances. If you enjoy visual novels and romance sims, I do think that the price for this game isn't too steep for what will be a semi-satisfying playthrough for approximately one or two characters per route... I do not recommend this game, but it is still better than some of the low to mid-tier visual novels out there, if one has exhausted other options. WTNC is a much more solid visual novel from the same company - it is clear by the finished product and the badly handled release of Errant Kingdom that this game became a burden the company just wanted to be finished with.

This was actually the first game I've ever pre-ordered, and that is definitely not something I'll do again lol. I think the devs were just too ambitious and the game didn't turn out the way they hoped it would. There are two different conflicting cg styles, the storyline is confusing, and there is little difference in the routes besides some flavor text. Like why do my commoner spy and my noble knight character approach a subjective problem the same way? It's hard for me to explain without spoilers (if you decide to get the game) but I feel like with all that hype for the main character being different because of background the result was a fail. Also earlier builds of the game were more fun for me than the completed version... Yeah. I'm just disappointed.