[h1] The Boys? Neah, The Princess is More Attractive! [/h1]
So I usually prefer novels with a stronger more headfast female lead and this VN does have that, and it is the reason I bought it in the first place. The VN however, is undoubtedly short af and I wonder if it's worth the price point. But, nevertheless I enjoyed it mildly (please notice the modern english to traditional english here) which if you really can't handle it then do not buy the VN at all. Mild fascinating plot twists and the catchy music were the only interesting points.
Madeleine Valois is a valet of a the prince of Oceandwyr and is on a mission to help the prince secure a bride. However, the prince has someone already in his mind and is not willing to let go of her. What will Maddie do? Is it the duty or the heart that comes first? Meanwhile, they arrive at a new kingdom and gets tangled in a weird plot of dark royal family affairs and betrayals. Have a peek at this utterly medieval theme based VN with princes with an unusual story line to find out.
Cute lil summary:
PROS: Music 100, Gender Bender 1000, Strong female lead 100, Weird Dark Story 100, Gaston as a prince 100
CONS: Short routes, aged old formal English, unfair price
[b] Story [/b]
The story is emotional and sentimental at first, the girl is like a bodyguard and the prince is in love with her. It is sort of a forbidden love story where the ends cannot meet, and the prince have to marry someone else. The MC has no royalty whatsoever but a weak noble. but that itself is interesting. The story is pretty much rational and logical, displaying intelligence of the main protagonist. Other than that, everything is kind of boring, the looong descriptions of kingdoms and their relationships will bore the reader out if you are not into this sort of a thing. Also the story lacks depth and seems very rushed with the routes. There are 5 routes together and 4 of them are princes and the last being a servant girl. My personal opinion is that the princess's route should have been included if an irrelevant servant girl is added lol which would have been the most epic story line in a straight otome VN. The story has elements of dark backstories, assassinations, forced gender transition, neglect, unpredictable friendships and some slight erotica. I do feel like the darker aspects of the routes are not executed a bit dramatically so you don't feel the pain of the characters. The questions about the mysterious gender transition are only fully answered if you finish every route.
[b] Characters [/b]
Set of interesting, a bit contrasting characters. The MC herself is very strong, armed in combat and is intellectual. The prince she serves, seems timid, soft hearted, loyal yet displays interesting opposite traits. The princess's brother seems aloof, neglected, lonely and family oriented. The beauty and the beast prince tho, LITERALLY inspired from that character Gaston(?) and got on my nerves immediately but he still had some surprising traits. Lastly, the ice prince. He is a farmakeist and dark one at that, seems manipulative and has a princess and the frog backstory.
Seems like the authors, took some elements of other fairy tales but was just thrown randomly in the story which is disappointing. Dolores is the one I disliked the most for obvious reasons. She is just in for the dimes. For some of the characters there are slight progressions in their character development but nothing major, the princess on the other hand is the most attractive (I'm not gay or bi, but then she has a dark secret which makes you think so) She is literally the most interesting character of the whole story with some character development at least. Her parents and relatives seem to be very cold but one can ponder when you are at the highest peaks of power, is it ethical that someone would utilize greed and political manipulation using their own family as bait to ensure their success? I shall never know (oops went formal just like the VN)
[b] Gameplay[/b]
The game difficulty is very easy, idk why should there be an effort to even think. The settings have an auto play button, a skip button and all the necessities. I did like at first that the dialogue box where the text is displayed is on the right which is not something you see every day, but the box is with great height and a lot of text is being displayed which makes my mind not want to read it for some reason. Initially the text display speed is way too fast for me, very fast so I had to adjust that. Also this VN is mighty SHORT, the character routes are over before you know it. Another thing is, the whole story is narrated in very formal English with some sprinkles of French, which makes me wonder if all characters are French. Minus the French it can bore you or sometimes it feels like you are reading aged Shakespeare poetry and you will fall asleep in 10 seconds.
[b] Art and Music [/b]
The art of the sprites are pretty much okay, but I did not like the CG art of the characters. This has been a flaw of many visual novels I have read, always the sprite art has to be different of the CG character art. The landscape shots are also okay. The music is what takes the cake in this whole VN, interesting music! It feels latin/mexican vibes and I am all for that. Those pieces were very much atmospheric and I greatly appreciate it.
[b] Achievements [/b]
Achievements are not hard to get and for each ending (Good, Normal, Bad) you get an achievement unlocked for each character. The normal endings I found, are a bit harder to get than the good or bad ones but not super difficult at all.
[b] Overall [/b]
A very short medieval western VN which had a great potential to be an interesting story but got ruined by rushed routes, no or very little character development yet I am going to recommend it because I saw some elements which I haven't seen in other VN's. Found myself that I needed unusual motivation and I procrastinated a lot to finish this. Its very recommended to buy it during sale because I have played much better and lengthy VN's at a less price.
