Jester / King

Definite step up from Ice Demon, love the story

Jester/King is a VN that I have a little difficulty recommending even though my over all experience is positive. This is a story that is best experienced blind, but here is as spoiler-free of a rundown as I can make it: Madion is the jester for the King Damian of Quilissia and a frequent target of cruel king's abuse. After losing consciousness, Madion awakens amid the ruins of the once opulent palace near the slain body of the king. He had no memory of what transpired to cause both the king's death and destruction of the kingdom. After wandering empty palace, he connects with the only other three people left alive. No one has any memories of what happened, but everyone is hiding secrets. Madion's three companions are: Edwina, the royal alchemist, who seems to know the most about what's going on but is also the least trustful of Madion's allies. Lucille, a noble prisoner of war being held hostage in Quillisia, who seems innocent at first glance but has the greatest motive to want the king dead. Finally, Calix, an orphaned street urchin that the king has taken a special interest for reasons unknown. From here, Madion must navigate the story's dialogue options to uncover the eleven clues needed to solve the mystery and maybe fall in love with one of his companions. While I enjoyed untangling the convoluted plot, I feel that it is a lot stronger in concept than execution. It has some pretty severe pacing pacing issues. The first few hours of the story are a bit of a slog as Madion slowly wandering the abandoned castle with no clue what is going on until the story hits it's first major climax that sheds light on what transpired. The rest of the story moves at a decent clip, doling out just enough tasty revelations to keep you intrigued as to where this is all going. I do feel like the script is a bit too wordy in the sense it gets weighed down by Madion's thoughts. He mentally chews over every interaction he has, judging how trustworthy he finds each new droplet of information he gets from other characters, and I do think this tendency could have been safely reduced without losing much. Over all, I enjoyed my time with Jester/King and felt the plot came together well enough to justify the slow beginning and the pacing issues caused by too much exposition, but I can't really see myself returning to this one to try to get a different character ending.