I bought this game bc I thought it would be a funny dating sim along the lines of Monster Prom or dream daddy, but it's really not all that fun for a few different reasons.
It kinda reeks of rainbow capitalism, like all the dialogues surrounding being gay is basically everyone reacting poorly, me having to choose to come out, and/or being microagressive. It just feels like it was written by a bunch of straight people, like it simultaneously feels gay and homophobic, y'know?
Ex: you out and deadname your spymaster bc you're so obsessed with their gender and you don't have an option, it's just an event that happens, and for what? All so the devs could put in a story line where they say, "hey you shouldn't have looked into that info, it wasn't kind." Like I didn't! It wasn't something I got the option to opt out of! Every conversation you have with your spymaster about their gender is not optional and very transphobic. It feels like the entire dialogue was written by a cis person who genuinely thought they were doing something good and progressive with that story line.
Aside from that, it's just not a very good game from a story or game play standpoint:
- Resource Gathering
Either it needs to be longer, or gathering resources needs to be less time consuming or more rewarding or all three. Spending 2 whole days just to get 10 gold or 15 support is not enough. You have to choose between making gay marriage legal and dating or any other social cause like free healthcare, because they're all so expensive that no matter how well you manage your time and resources you absolutely cannot do more than one thing. Which is kind of a bummer bc then it's like, great I made gay marriage legal but I don't get to experience the dating side of the game bc I had to spend all of my time making it legal, so I don't even get to experience the rewards of my hard work.
-Spying and Dating Sim
Using your spymaster to spy on princesses is essentially useless bc there are so many of them and it takes 2 days to research any info on them. Spying on princes is also similarly useless for the same problem with the added difficulty that they're not all gay so you spend 2 days looking for info on them, 4 if you want more info, and then you find out maybe they're not even gay so you wasted a ton of time and the spymaster is better used gaining favor so you can make it legal to even be gay, otherwise what's the point?
I think a) there's too many ppl to spy on for it be effective, b) the duties of spying and gaining support from royals should have been two separate people bc it's impossible to do both with only one spymaster. c) the rewards of spying on princesses is essentially not worth the effort because they come to you randomly, and even if you have spied on one that proposed to you later, it doesn't help you unless you've somehow memorized their likes and dislikes and there's far too many to do that.
- Managing Relationships With Countries
No matter how hard I try, the elven country ends up mad at me and saying I was "being mean to them" even though all of my choices when I had them were not negative. I just kept losing favor with them for no reason that I could see or understand. The only way to fix that would be to have my spymaster try to gain favor with them but I was too busy using him to gain support with nobles just so I could pass laws.
-Potion System
Meanwhile my wizard just sits there unused and useless bc none of the potions are particularly helpful even though they take between 2 and 7 days to make and he can only help me gain favor with the vampire empire, who I never need help with anyways bc I have a plethora of opportunities to gain favor with them outside of the adviser management system.
-The Gay Meter
Which brings me to my next point: the gaydar, or suss-o-meter, or whatever you want to call it, goes up way too quickly and almost never goes down on it's own, so I have to use potions that just barely make it go down, then if it gets to the top I have to stand trial for being gay even if I have already made it legal, so like what was the point of making it legal then? There is never any other story or anything that happens when the meter goes up, it's the same trial with the same weird options to "prove you're not gay." Besides just being kind of offensive, it's just boring and a bad plot device.
- Skill Building
On the weekends in the game you get to choose between different activities that build skills, these skills have absolutely no bearing on the game in any way shape or form. I thought building charisma would allow me to make better excuses when turning away princesses, or at least give me more of a shot at doing so successfully, but it did absolutely nothing. It might have given me a new outfit? Extremely unclear as to how outfits or the skill tree work.
- Lazy Story Telling
Lastly, there's so few events in this game you just get a repeat of the same exact ones, so replay value is essentially not worth it. In six hours I played through twice bc the first one I was trying to give my country education, higher pay, and marriage equality and realized I could only do one of those things successfully. So I played through again and tried to focus on marriage equality and dating, but during my second play through I was so bored I skipped almost all the dialogue and missed nothing. It was all the same exact situations they just occurred in a slightly different order. I wish you had more choices when it came to letters too, but you only have choices sometimes, and again you get the exact same letters every time. I would have told my pal Omar to stop cheating on his f*cking fiance had I ever been given the option. It was so utterly boring, and given that the game description advertises that "every play through will be different,"it was a huge let down.
Tl;dr: utterly disappointing from both a story and game play stand point. Felt homophobic and microagressive despite trying very hard to be progressive, would not recommend.
