Royal Alchemist

I am absolutely baffled this game has such a high positive score. Let me break it down: Positives: >The MC is fantastic, they actually act like a mature adult, they stand up for themselves, and they have good smarts. >Art and music are pleasant! >The story, characters, and world-building are all quite good. A little tropey/simple but fun regardless. I was absolutely invested until I hit the wall described below The problem: The game works by building up stats for yourself and the boys every week, and then using those stats to pass random checks in the story, make items, or complete missions that provide some extra moments away from the main story. These checks are VERY random, can't be predicted, and have dire consequences if you fail. Best case scenario, it's a little awkward between you and another character. However, some checks if failed will cause you to DIE and the game to END, the only options are to go back to your last save or to start over. That is an incredibly frustrating feature that, in my opinion, doesn't provide real value to the game. You don't get to carefully strategize what stats to focus on or if you want to be a jack-of-all-trades like a management sim (certainly without a guide), and it doesn't have any interesting effects on the story (for example, if being really good at charisma could allow you to pass a check that normally requires something else or if it changes the story a bit by noting that your high charisma helped one of the princes understand the commoners better. The game doesn't have anything like that!). Essentially, you have to deal with a frustrating system just to get to what's actually interesting.

💮🌸💮 I'll be honest, I wanted to love this game. I tried. But the stat system made the experience so stressful that I found myself obsessively saving and reloading, just to get the right amount of “likeness” required to unlock the ending I was aiming for. The game claims to prioritize story over romance, but the plot twists felt abrupt more like sharp turns than meaningful revelations. I kept waiting to feel something real between the main character and Aurelius, but the connection never truly landed. It wasn't until around week 30 out of 57 that it even began to feel like I was actually romancing him. And then the ending arrived with a hollow finality, leaving me asking, "That’s it?" Instead of building relationships or exploring character depth, I spent most of my time tutoring or crafting repetitive tasks that felt more like grinding for stats than engaging in a meaningful narrative. It was disheartening to realize that the route to a “good” ending depended less on emotional choices and more on numerical precision. There was potential here genuine potential. But it felt buried beneath a system that prioritized mechanics over connection. If the stats hadn’t overshadowed the storytelling, I think the emotional impact could’ve been far greater. 💮🌸💮

Quick summary: I really enjoyed this visual novel and especially the characters, but only because there is a fantastic steam guide for it. Positives: + The characters are fantastic. I enjoyed the day-to-day interactions with them even more than the main story. + The worldbuilding is a great combination of a magical world and palace politics. The magic system is simple enough to understand, but still offers a lot of depth and possible combinations. There are also mentions of other kingdoms and visiting ambassadors, so it doesn't feel like the world is reduced to the palace. + The player character has enough personality to make them likeable, but also leaves enough room to shape them a bit. + The game features a lot of artworks. The chibi mission arts are really cute! + Good replayability. The story focuses on the prince you choose and mainly revolves around him. So each of the three story arcs feels really distinct and offers a lot of new scenes. Of course, there are some repeats regarding the main story, but besides that everything else is different. Mixed feelings: o The pacing of the story. It spends the first third of the story building a mystery and intrigue, but then just forgets about that from time to time. Like, in the first weeks you have this big, dramatic scene escaping from assassins and in the next scene everyone acts like nothing happened and you just go out to town and have tea parties until the next thing happens weeks later. The threat didn't build up constantly, but felt very sporadic. You really felt the difference between main-story-danger-weeks and the ~10 weeks of downtime in between. o The resolution of the story. There are two main mysteries to unveil in the story and while I think one of them has a great setup and resolution, the other one kinda came out of nowhere. I initially thought maybe that's because I chose the wrong route, but none of the three really set the twist up. To be fair, that gave it a really good shock factor. But I wished it would have been set up a bit more. Negatives: - I think the stat raising aspect is an interesting idea, BUT it's way too unpredictable. You just have to trial-and-error your way through the stats, which I found quite frustrating sometimes. In games like this, I want my story choices to matter, so I tend to play with only one save file. But that's pure suicide in this game. I can live with dying because I trusted the wrong person or made a wrong decision. That's on me. But it's really frustrating to die/not being able to finish missions because the water/darkness-magic guy isn't good enough at light magic in week 40. Like, how was I supposed to know that would become relevant? - The whole point of the player character is to be a neutral party in the palace. Which makes a lot of sense in-universe, but it causes the story to lack personal stakes. They aren't involved in any of the politics or palace intrigues. They are just reacting to everything happening around them with no own goals besides teaching the princes magic and not dying. - There are a lot of minor characters, who don't have character art and just get represented with black shapes. I understand why it is this way, but it still feels kinda weird to talk to 3 shadow entities for an entire scene. - There is no voice acting. To be fair, a lot of visual novels don't have voice acting, but the player character even has speaking animations, so it feels like it was supposed to be there. Using a guide, I'd give this game 8/10. I have my nitpicks, but definitely had a lot of fun with it and binged through a majority of the story. The characters are lovely and the world feels developed enough for me to start the spin-off/sequel afterwards.

A hesitant recommendation with caveats. Royal Alchemist is a charming game with rich lore and backstory. Alexis Rosenkreuz (long- or short-haired sprite, he/she/they pronouns) is an alchemist and part of the High Council working with their father, deployed to the kingdom of Eskia to work as tutor to the three princes. In this world, most people with an aptitude for magic have affinity with one element, but due to their bloodline, the prices have affinity for two. The Rosenkreuz clan produce individuals in their bloodline with the capacity to use all six elements, but it comes with a heavy price -- pain. Through the game, Alexis learns about the history of the kingdom, about the innerworkings of the palace, becomes close with one of the princes and navigates the intricacies of the different groups invested in the future of the Kingdom of Eskia. This game truly was a joy storywise. I loved seeing Alexis become closer with the chosen prince, which is decided mostly after selecting which prince to accompany during the annual hunt. There are crazy twists and turns in the story and moments of shock, laughter and joy. I gasped, cried out and was horrified by some of the revelations in this game. It also was much darker than I expected. The story is linear but depending on which prince you choose, you get to learn more about the events from different perspectives. In my opinion, the most interesting route was Nazir's (there are so many twists, unexpected moments of shock and he truly is a prince for the people), Serin's feels like the canon route (as he is the crown prince), and Aurelius is just such a wonderful wildcard (despite his cold exterior), he really made me think of those old-school fantasy male characters who do what they want when they want. I found myself really enjoying Alexis' personality. They are so professional and intelligent, I felt they were the perfect person for the job. Some of their dialogue responses feel so incongruent with their appearance and professionalism that it was such a riot to see them interact with the other characters. It was just so great to see a skilled and competent character contribute to the story. The closed eye sprite feels so demure and humbling, I can see Alexis in the role of a teacher/educator so well. In each route, they match perfectly with the prince's energy - teasing to Serin, competitive(!) with Aurelius and gentle/shy with Nazir. The music for this game is decent, I did play with the volume down very low. The game is not voiced, there are some sound effects though for swords and whatnot. There are three elements to this game - the social aspect and dialogue choices, the missions/crafting that is available and the weekly activity (which is the stat raising). The game can be quite unforgiving at times, even in story mode, and at others, your stats may just be high enough to pass when you'd be better off failing. You can raise 3 stats a week, and they raise randomly for a value between 2-6 per stat. So if the passing point for a check is 50, you could end up having 42 in one playthrough or 53 in another, despite following the exact same strategy. You even need matching stats for synthesising items for characters and quests. This means you need to have weeks and weeks of save files just so you can backtrack what I would suggest safely one month prior to the current date! I found this extremely frustrating, even while following a custom user guide because I was passing death checks and failing others and just unable to get the stats to match up properly to allow me to get the ending I wanted. I restarted Serin's route 4 times to get my stats up and restarted the death ends multiple times. It was thoroughly exhausting and in the end, burnt me out on the game. I usually aim to 100% a visual novel if I have the energy, but I didn't even get Serin or Aurelius' frienship endings and I didn't get all the death endings from any route as I found it tiresome. With regards to the art, many, many characters have sprites and the ones that are more minor typically just have a black silhouette. The CGs are nice, but the art is a little inconsistent, which is something I've found is common with indie games. I liked it well enough but I think Nazir was done dirty as he has zero kiss CGs and Aurelius and Serin get multiple kiss scenes and a topless CG each. There is a lot in this game, which could justify the high price, and it took me almost 20 hours to beat it (not counting for the fact that i would take longer to get all the other endings). If you DO enjoy stat raisers and don't mind RNG, I think something is genuinely wrong with you, but if you liked Long Live the Queen, you might like a beefed up version of it in this game (romance+story+extras).

Got my first death within about 30 minutes. Then got my first ending about 10 hours in. It's a fun game and the story is super interesting. I'm looking forward to exploring more storylines!

Brutal stat raiser with beautiful art and interesting fantasy narrative.

4/5，我只打了serin线虽然他很萌但这不妨碍我觉得许多剧情很琐碎很无聊。主线政治悬疑元素不多，大部分还是水水的日常，主控明明地位很高但又经常被差使去干各种各样的琐事，很多人物都太流于表面导致日常情节有点虚浮。50周以前的感情线经常给我一种戛然而止的感觉，看其他线的repo好像是因为serin太内敛克制了。最后十周的剧情终于紧凑多了。比较好的一点是RO们一般是主控的sidekick，主控有较强的自主性和人物弧光。 这部的单词适合用来巩固gre词汇（也算某种用词典雅的优点了）。遗憾的是都卖这个价格了但cg真的很少，连十几块的vn都比这cg要多；并且有立绘的角色也比较有限，大部分是黑色剪影。游戏过程中经常有很多白光，闪得我眼睛要花了。如果要再打会选nazir线，二周目的话还要操心数值判定好麻烦，以后有缘再说。 serin温柔善良有分寸有边界，可靠且值得信任，有一点点很微妙的nerd属性，无论是遇到刺客还是面对各种事件他的表现都很戳我，结局我也很喜欢。他拥有一种苦涩的底色，一直在接纳各种各样扼杀他生命力的责任并且他无法意识到这是痛苦而孤独的。

Унылое

I've completed one romance route so far. The relationship development felt natural; I didn't expect to love their pairing as much as I did. Caught myself blushing at their interactions several times. I'm glad there were different gender options for the MC, even a custom name option. Some CGs include your chosen MC as well. The art is pretty good and I like the character designs. The gameplay and survival aspect wasn't hard to grasp, thankfully. You can find little stat icons in certain places, and these show you which stats you may want to focus on. Even if you raise the wrong stats, it's easy to reload to an earlier save. Side note: I never seemed to run out of save slots. There are multiple endings to explore, but if you're like me, you may find yourself emotionally attached to one T-T Overall it was a well-thought-out, enjoyable game. Worth the price and effort.

Literally want all visual novels to be like this.