I always liked history combined with romance. Actually, that's not true, I think I might just like anything that implements romance in any way. Therefore, I was immediately interested at The End of an Actress' premise. Admittedly, I don't know a lot about history so this review will be solely about the game itself without influenced by any other kind of knowledge. This means that I, unfortunately, am not able to compare it with other historical views, but as this game is only inspired by the story of Marie Antoinette, I guess it doesn't necessarily have to follow the exact same events. Either way, this visual novel tells an emotional and tragic story and I couldn't stop until the end once I started playing it.
[h2]The Beloved Queen…[/h2]
The End of an Actress follows the story of Marius who was always in love with Liliane who became the queen of Artoire with sixteen. In the beginning, everyone adored her with the hope of their lives finally becoming better with her help. However, years passed and the situation is getting worse. Everyone is starving, and thus, Marius decides to end the king's and queen's regime with a group of rebels. The king is supposed to get investigated for his crimes and — if found guilty — get executed. Liliane follows the same fate, however, she gets imprisoned until the trial. It turns out that the trial takes longer than anticipated and as Marius is taking care of her, both of them are slowly getting closer to each other.
[h2]A Tragic Love Story and its Development[/h2]
The End of an Actress noticeably focuses on its love story. While Marius only loved the queen because of the symbol she represents, he quickly notices that she is different than the rumors say and is only a human at the end of the day. It was easy for me to get invested into the story of both of them and I always was attracted to love stories I know will not end well. It's not like I love to see two people suffering, but I feel like the more hardships both of them endure together, the stronger is their bond in the end. Well, in this particular case, Marius and Liliane couldn't stand each other in the beginning and before they both realized what they felt, it turned into love.
So, how is the development of the romance in this game? Admittedly, the whole visual novel is rather short and there are not a lot of events present, however, the development of the romance was still well-done. The reason here is that the game is told in a more different way than usual. There are a lot of time jumps available here and the story takes place within a couple of years. This way, it feels like only fragments of the plot gets told to the reader but the cast actually spends much more time together. As Marius kept Liliane company for a whole year, it's not that unusual that he started to develop feelings for her once he discovered her real personality.
[h2]The Cast[/h2]
Liliane was not a likable character at first. However, she grew during the playthrough and notices that there are other people out there who are struggling to survive — although the realization came slightly too late. I found that she began to change the more time she spent with Marius and I slowly warmed up to her as well. It's understandable that someone who never had to worry about anything in her life might not realize that others would kill to get in her shoes. That being said, Liliane isn't the only one who grows but Marius begins to listen to her and understand her own struggles as well. After all, everyone has one or two negative aspects of their lives. Despite Liliane being shown as a cold person at first, she is surprisingly kind — once she opens up.
[h2]What About The History Setting?[/h2]
As aforementioned, The End of an Actress's main genre is romance. The history aspect is present, but not in-depth and isn't meant to be informative at all. I would say it's a love story that takes place in the historical time period — and that's it. I found it was a positive aspect as I'm not interested in history itself but feel like it's rather refreshing as a lot of things worked differently back then which has an influence on the romance as well. For instance, arranged marriages are hardly present nowadays anymore, whilst it was a common thing a lot of years ago. I like that the premise that the romance itself stays the same and, even with different circumstances, everything that matters is that the way both of them feel and that they are together.
[h2]Endings, Choices, and Their Impact[/h2]
In total, there are five different ends available in The End of an Actress. However, only one of them is the true end, although the choices that lead to that end are pretty obvious. Each decision either results in a bad end or advances with the plot. That means that the player can just reload the last save file and select the other decision to continue the story. Something slightly misleading, as the credits are popping up after every end, is that the story is, by no means, finished when reaching one of the abrupt ends and I would highly recommend going through the game until the end. The bad ends, however, might be skipped as well as they just end the plot in the middle of the game.
That being said, I would like to comment on the endings itself as well. It's important to keep in mind that The End of an Actress is a tragic visual novel through and through. By that, I mean that neither of the ends feels satisfying and left a sour taste in my mouth. That doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing as I sometimes even prefer those ends over happy ones, however, this game is by no means a fluffy nor cheerful game at all. In addition to that, the whole vibe of the game stays rather depressing as well and there is hardly a moment implemented that felt light-hearted.
[h2]Graphics and the Immersion[/h2]
Graphic-wise, The End of an Actress is stunning. I loved the sprites and although most of the game only shows Marius and Liliane, there are other side characters with sprites available as well. Whilst I loved the CGs, a few of them got reused for other scenes which slightly bothered me. I feel like CGs are special images for specific scenes so it didn't feel right to me when I saw the same one popping up in a different part of the game again. Luckily, this only happened a couple of times and most CGs are only used once. Unfortunately, The End of an Actress doesn't contain voice-acting which would have greatly improved the immersion.
[h2]So, what do we have in the end?[/h2]
I enjoyed The End of an Actress a lot, despite not being familiar with the historic events. However, the game doesn't focus on that aspect, and thus, prior knowledge is not necessary at all, although it might be interesting to check out the parallels between the stories. Anyway, I loved the story of Marius and Liliane and once in a while, I just need a tragic story in my life. In addition to that, the development of both characters is well-done and this game tells a story within a span of years. That being said, The End of an Actress is a romance visual novel, with a historical setting, that I can highly recommend to everyone who is a fan of bittersweet love stories.
[code]𝐅𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐦𝐲 [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34470115/]𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐚𝐠𝐞[/url] 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬!
