Galaxy Princess Zorana

Oh this is a very good one. I like the mood system for adjusting what you can focus on studying, since it keeps you from min/maxing too easily, though sometimes it'd be nice to have a warning when a choice was about to change your mood away from one you'd been working towards. I also like how some of your skills will give you information that lets you know what the important skills are for a choice you're about to make. Music's also good, writing is solid, there are a lot of choices and paths... if I could make one complaint it might be that Empathy and Rhetoric seem a bit too regularly compared to the other skills, but perhaps other paths make them more relevant. Another certified Hanako Games banger.

A extremely worthy sequel to long live the queen

It's nice to see them try new game systems in this genre and I'm glad to have more Long live the Queen!, but it left me wanting more. Especially the main story is a bit anti-climactic, compared to the original. Probably just down to budget, the writing is competent and all the systems have their place, it just needs more of all of it.

hanako games comes in once again with a crash and a bang to redefine excellence in stat raisers with this sequel to everyone's favorite princess management sim LONG LIVE THE QUEEN, the previous GOLD STANDARD of stat raiser ADVs. in the distant science fantasy space opera future, PRINCESS ZORANA was minding her own business organizing her shoe collection when all of a sudden her EVIL EMPEROR FATHER very literally DISAPPEARED INTO THIN AIR, leaving her as his sole heir. problem is, zorana was until very recently the SPARE TO THE THRONE, IGNORED BY HER FAMILY and TOTALLY UNPREPARED FOR POLITICS. while zorana is unceremoniously dumped into stewardship for the whole EVIL GALACTIC EMPIRE the same as her ancient forerunner ELODIE, the future turns out to be an OLIGARCHIC MONARCHY, and in order to actually KEEP her seat on the throne zorana must win the majority vote in the looming IMPERIAL ELECTION!!! can she manage to impress/trade favors/blackmail enough of the broad range of electors across the stars, while also not dying on any of their ridiculous quests OR getting assassinated?! can she solve the MYSTERY of her WEIRD FAMILY PROBLEMS?!! can she find a SUITABLE CONSORT from among the empire's VARIOUS ELIGIBLE BACHELORS & BACHELORETTES?!?!?!?! ...IN ONLY 35 TURNS?!?!?!?!?!?!!! hanako games could easily have simply turned out Long Live The Queen... IN SPACE!!!!1! and people would have happily flocked to add to cart, but instead they have implemented on their original winning formula to make galaxy princess zorana its own beast. while the basics remain the same (choose stats to grind to build skills to maybe pass enough checks to not die/otherwise land yourself in hot water), zorana puts limits on how freely you can alter your princess' mood to max out your studies... and additionally allows you to outsource certain political stats to your advisers, whom you can recruit out of the various oligarchs. but be wary--if you manage to piss them off badly enough they might betray you! assassins in zorana are a bit easier to avoid than they were for elodie, and if you manage to defeat one whoever sent them will stop being a problem for you, but in exchange for the various Ridiculous Death Bottlenecks of lltq the final test of zorana is more complicated to pass. in order to schmooze with the empire's various politicians you will have to travel the galaxy board game style to visit them; each has their own political agenda and opinion of zorana, and your ability to persuade them will depend heavily on your policy choices And the skills you've chosen to build. this vast web of characters you can get to know and the huge range of potential interactions you can have with each of them, plus the vast array of locales and all of the sneaky secret things happening behind the scenes for you to discover, gives zorana a sense of greater broadness and depth that more than makes up for its shorter turn count compared to lltq. you will be delighted and astounded by the variety of trouble you can get your princess into. if you loved lltq then galaxy princess zorana is For You. if you love space operas and/or political intrigue then galaxy princess zorana is For You. if you love literally anything that is on offer then galaxy princess zorana is For You. and if you have never tried a stat raiser before, let hanako games persuade you as to how enjoyable they can be! and as with lltq i highly recommend zorana as a party game where your friends/chat/whomstever shares control over playthrough choices. is a great recipe for highly enjoyable chaos and discovering new ways to preemptively end your run. tl;dr one million out of ten gaming experience. would pause in my election grind to read a sidebar on fanfiction tropes in the science fantasy future again, and probably will, because there are probably So many more secrets i have not yet discovered. zorana does not disappoint.

Posting a negative review in case you are looking for critiques. Overall I did mostly enjoy my time with this game. I'm not too versed with the genre but I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is my favorite game I played this year so far and I was excited to try more in the genre. I really liked the gameplay mechanics and the choices in this game, but my biggest issue comes from how many "death" states there are. There are so many pass/fail stat checks and its very difficult/impossible to predict when or which ones will show up, even after several runs. The worst part is, you can enter situations where there is literally no way out, you just die no matter what because you didn't put 5 extra points into tumbling and were a fool and put them in stealth instead. With no way to redistribute stat points and only being able to boost two per round, and with other caveats as well, it made for a lot of feel bad moments. One time I was literally one turn away from the final turn and I had not one but TWO separate mood checks that were assassination attempts, both of which I didn't have the "correct" stats upgraded for. After 7 or 8 runs I had only reached the final election once, and lost, and every other time had died midway through my run or worse. I don't care for ♥♥♥♥ like this, its not fun just because there's cute chibi art for Zorana's deaths. It just felt incredibly time wastey and there's too many run enders here. I'd rather the game just gave you more options to prevent or succeed at these checks, or better yet, just eliminate them entirely and put the focus on getting to the election. I'd rather have winning the election be super hard and learn from each run than cross my fingers and pray that I don't die to some dumb death skill check. Additionally, the romance in this game, if you can even call it that, is poorly fleshed out and incredibly shallow. Yes, you can romance electors, but they are all just marriages of transaction with no true feelings involved. Your two childhood friends can be romanced but you get like 3 interactions with them the entire game that essentially always play out the same. When you beat the game you get an epilogue that shows what happened to your relationships which was interesting, but why not build those up more during the actual playthrough and have us experience it? It's decisions like this that make GPZ feel wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle. Again, I did mostly enjoy my time with the game, and I do recommend it, but I was glad to be done with it when it was over. I had zero incentive to keep banging my head against a death check wall to see more information and took my one ending and 3/5 feeling and end on a happy note.

I like: Personal Quests, The Fusion between Sci-Fi and Magic (Lumen), Zoranas Interactions with some characters. Most of the CG's are nice, some are amazing. It does the Raising Sim well enough. I dislike: The Lumen Questline could be extended, there's a cool payoff scene but it does not go too dep into it. I feel that's wasted potential. Additionally while the electors are nice, too many characters mean that each one isn't that deep. Comparing it to Long Live the Queen, while the cast was smaller, you at least had some idea who is what. 100%: Ok. I was kinda over the game and had to spend 2 or 3 hours clicking through dialogues to finish the game up. The problem is triggering personal quests or deaths requires specific stat and approval combinations. Sometimes they are even a bit random, this makes it a bit annoying trying to find how exactly to trigger the quest.

This is another brilliant princess sim game from Hanako Games. Much like Long Live the Queen, this game is pretty short, but no less engaging. The point is to make multiple playthroughs feel distinct enough that you're willing to start back up from day one again. And you will need to restart. Choices and skill checks can be unforgiving, so get used to seeing a dozen failed skill checks in a row. In a way, it almost feels unfair. But that's the charm of these types of games, so go forth and die a handful of times!

ВЫБОРЫ ВЫБОРЫ, КАНДИДАТЫ Я И...

Very Fun visual novel, with the same type of content from Long Live the Queen that I played over 10 years ago.

A fun mix of strategy, visual novel and mystery solving! I enjoyed the game enough to do multiple replays (and planning to do more in the future to unlock more secrets) and I ended up creating a spreadsheet for planning out my travelling and skill training after my first couple of playthroughs. Many quests have multiple solutions, with different flavours of successful (or failed) outcomes. Replays never felt like a chore thanks to a nice quality-of-life feature of fast-forwarding previous conversations but only up until a branch you haven't seen before. You can also rewind message-by-message if you skipped too far. Fair warning: you won't enjoy this type of game if you don't like games that require replays to be truly enjoyed. During your first playthrough, you will likely feel like there's not enough time to get your tasks done and the options you have will seem more limited than they are until you start uncovering previously hidden options.