Long Live the Queen (PC) - Guest Post

Sorry, can't talk long, too busy. Bad time management and poor decision making on my part has given my scheming friend Jihaus an opportunity to (temporarily) invade my site, so today he'll be sharing what he thinks about this recent indie game. You'd think that with a name like Long Live the Queen this would be a British game about assassinations and intrigue... and it actually is! Also anime girls, apparently. I'll leave Jihaus to explain how that works out.

Today I play Long Live The Queen, a harsh game about medieval court intrigue and politics wrapped up in a deceptively kawaii package. A cursory glance at the main developer, Hanako Games, shows a history of visual novels and casual games for girls which tend to be on the cute side. Of course I know going in that the story is anything but that, and that the title itself is the challenge of the game. Let us see about meeting that challenge then.

(Clicking screenshots will display them at their original resolution).

The story begins with a short conversation between our protagonist, 14-year-old future queen Elodie, and her father, Joslyn. We learn that Elodie's mother, the late queen, just passed away, leaving the succession of the throne in her hands. It seems kings hold little power in this nation since her dad is just playing advisor until her coronation. I suppose the game wouldn't be too interesting if someone who knew what they were doing was in charge instead. Since I don't know what I'm doing either, I opt to take a tutorial to fix that.

I have to manage emotions as I go along, with a total of eight that balance each other out. They will either grant benefits or penalties to the rate at which you learn skills depending on what the dominant emotion is at the time. Whatever emotion is the farthest from the middle becomes the dominant emotion.

Here's the skills screen, showing all the skills that I have to work on learning. At this point I don't know how any of these will affect the game or what I should work on first. You can see the bonuses and penalties on each category here, and the RPG player in me says I should probably work on leveling the ones that I have bonuses on for now.

This screen is where you actually make choices and pick what classes to study that day. These all correspond to the same categories on the skills page. Since I got bonuses in Expression and Animal Handling, I choose Decoration and Horses for morning and evening for now.

Here we see how many points we get from the classes of that day. It shows a window for each class as well as a short blurb talking about what specific thing Elodie's learned about that may potentially help later. It's a very straightforward interface so far.

Events will occur after the class windows, which generally come in the form of conversations. After all that, you can roam around the castle and do various things which can change your emotional balance. Then, you're back in the previous screen, picking what classes to learn and repeating the same thing. One of these cycles is one week.

So that's pretty much the game, you pick two skills to learn, see what happens, deal with the events of the day, repeat. Seems easy enough, right?

We go about happy royal life learning about decorating and horses and whatnot Elodie (who, hecenforth, we will refer to as 'myself') ends up talking one of the visiting relatives, a girl about her age. Suddenly someone else comes out and points a sword at a snake at my feet and yelling at me not to move. I get this choice to hold still or look down and of course I opt not to move.

Except that didn't work because I have no points in composure and just had to peek at the interesting snake at my feet, causing it to get tense and attack. The other girl pushes me out of the way and gets bitten. This causes the relatives to mistrust us and take their now-poisoned child and leave. Whoops.

Well whatever, they were probably of little consequence anyway. I've got bigger things to worry about, like more decorating and horseback riding.

At some point this pretty boy named Banion visits and talks about a diplomatic issue. Of course being that I currently don't know anything about foreign affairs or strategy I pretty much just derp my way through the conversation as if Banion was talking about rocket science. It seems a neighboring country to Banion wants blood and he's asking us what he should do. I have no idea what our military strength is so I figure we'll have talks with them. I take this opportunity to decide that maybe I really should start learning some other skills even if I don't have bonuses on them.

Sure enough, the diplomat from the other country comes and the heat is on.

Well, there's a lot of choices here. Recent studies in foreign affairs told me that Banion's predecessor started this conflict in the first place by inciting rebellion over there, so I say HOW COULD YOU and proceed to surrender the whole province to the foreigners. Naturally, Banion isn't happy about this, but too bad.

I continue to bungle about the castle, such as refusing to invest in a printing press because a lack of knowledge in production causes me to think such a thing is ridiculous, or letting eldritch beasts run amok in the countryside because I have no idea what they even are, but it's fine.

All my horse, dog, and falcon training got me this snazzy outfit so it's all good. You get these outfits from learning a lot about certain categories and they give you boosts in those categories as well. Since that category is in the bag, I decide to start learning about intrigue and history now to prevent more derps in my conversations

At some point, this joker comes in demanding me to execute some girl. Of course thanks to my recent studies I know about his family's shady history and when I'm presented with a choice, I try to question him about it, but he gets even more pissed and kills the girl on the spot and walks off. What a jerk.

Well whatever, I'm feeling pretty good about that because I kinda made him look like an ass by calling him out on his crap. Studying history is pretty great!

Soon after, a royal ball is held, which I proceed to royally drop the ball. I mean, look at all those failed tests! No matter, it's fine, I'm the queen, there's nothing to fear!

Just then, Banion, still butthurt about me handing his territory to his enemies, proceeds to sarcastically raise a toast to my wisdom. Since I have no royal manners or composure at all I proceed to yell and thrash at him like a child would as he continues to stand there with his trollface reversing every one of my childish reactions on me.

Pretty soon the significantly more charismatic and composed Banion manages to call the whole court into a vote, one which I lose by a close margin. I'm too stupid to do anything in the face of this except thrash and yell like a child to the point where even my dad tells me to go to my room. I am to be married to a less impulsive more worthy nobleman and that's that, no more coronation for me.

Thus, I lose my power and apparently spend the rest of my time mopping dungeons. As I scrub those floors I silently vow to myself that in the next life I will bury that smug bastard Banion.


ONTO THE SECOND GAME.

This second life, I make sure to study more relevant skills. I start paying attention to Julianna here who I find is the one who can teach me magic (and also the same lady that tried to save me from the snake last time). Snake still got my relative though. This time, however, that Earl from earlier who wanted that girl executed got none of that action as I sent her off to jail instead. It looks like the events in this game are not random, so we've got some trial and error learning here it seems.

As for Banion, I still gave his province away because he's still a bastard. So it came time for the ball again, and once again he started calling me out on my decision making. I had more relevant skills this time, skills in useful categories like Royal Demeanor, Intrigue, Conversation, and even using swords. This time I was having none of his impertinence and challenged him to a duel. He started using his silver tounge saying I was impetuous and that he didn't want to shed royal blood, but with my new sword skills I was going to wipe that smug look off his face.

Maybe I should have trained harder.


THIRD GAME.


I was more careful this time. While much of my choices and outcomes remained largely the same (I put the criminal girl to work instead of imprisoning her or letting that guy kill her), through a combination of skills and knowing better I was able to resolve the situation with Banion and the foreigners by threatening the latter with the sheer might of our combined, allied force. Banion liked this, and consequently, praised me at the banquet later on instead of calling me out! Maybe I can get through this after all...

Some time after I get a letter from a distant friend inviting me to a party because she's lonely. I brush off the failed divining test (which would have probably said this was a terrible idea) and figure I got a good balance of skills, I'm sure one of them could keep me safe on the journey.

But bandits attacked, and they shot arrows. I did not have any skill in archery or medicine so there ends that story.


FOURTH GAME.

I did everything the same with a bit better skill management, putting more focus on conversation, demeanor, and economics so that I don't brush off world-changing inventions or look like a tool in public. This time I fully unlocked the magic category which would finally let me study those sub-skills, and hopefully prevent me from always failing those detect magic tests. This came with an actual magical girl transformation which really didn't mean much as I still had to raise those magic skills from 0.

This time, though, I stayed the hell away from that party.

Some merchant somewhere sent a box of candies, but because I was so well versed in foreign affairs and history I realized something was fishy and didn't touch the things. Afterwards, in the gloominess of things we decided we should throw a tournament to brighten things up. Lacking any martial skills but wanting to make an apperance, I instead decided to join in a parade on horseback wherein my sheer ridiculous skill in putting up a good appearance overrode my complete lack of horse riding skills.

But then, trouble! Earl orange hair who wanted that girl to die so bad has been holding a grudge for me not having the girl die, and in his rage challenged me to a duel. Lacking any kind of fighting skills, of course I ran the hell away. Too bad my running skills were pathetic and I got skewered regardless.

I was attached to this game's progress though and I loaded a save at an earlier point instead of starting over. Through my prophetic powers of save/load I was able to foresee future events and thus decided to start jogging on my time off to build up my running skills. Sure enough, when the tournament came again, orange hair found himself chasing an unexpectedly fast queen and wound up pincushioned by arrows from a ton of very angry tournament contestants. He reminds me of myself back at that ball 2 games ago, acting impulsively on emotion and getting skewered. How much I've grown.

Right after, some random worker in my castle decided to eat one of those chocolates and died. I have to admit, even that plot was obvious regardless of whether you have the skills to see it coming.

Just then dad proceeds to rain on my parade by saying that a foreign nation launched a huge fleet to invade us. I had no skills in naval warfare so this looked bad from the beginning, as our fleet was horribly outmatched.

As expected, the fleet was wiped out the next turn and the invaders made landfall. I scramble to use what weeks we have to learn about strategy but on the next turn, they reached the capital. Dad says I can try to flee to a neighbor or negotiate, and fleeing sounded like a bad idea so I opted to negotiate.

The leader shows up in all of his bishonen glory, I imagine with bishonen sparkles and all about him, probably speaking in a gentle charming voice trying to smooth talk me about how it must be a burden for one so young to have power. The old me may have been suckered by such sugary nonsense, but not the me with the maxed out flattery skill. Instead he makes a wager - we have ourselves a one on one magic duel, and the winner gets the country. I've been developing my magic skills, but given how duels have gone thus far in my time in this game, I thought that was a bad idea. But left with no choice, I accepted the duel.

That went about as well as I expected. I didn't have enough magic resistance, so I effectively got nuked.

I loaded an earlier save and this time attempted to use what little time I had to beef up my navy skills to see if I could turn back that fleet. I joined the fleet myself to command the navy, but after the tournament there just wasn't enough time to really get the skill high enough.

Not only was the naval battle a disaster, I also didn't train my swimming skills so I drowned. All right then!

Very well, scratch the navy idea, this time we'll use our powers of save/load premonition to try to do better in this magic duel. I proceeded to dump my time into my magic resistance this time. I'm going to smack that foreign king around and make him eat his bishonen sparkles.

Damn it, it wasn't enough! I guess you need freakish resistance to take him on, as he got me with what was apparently a damage over time life drain move.

Let's see, we still have the option of fleeing to that neighbor instead of meeting the invaders at the capital. I guess since I can't beef up my naval strategy or magic skills fast enough we'd better get the hell out outta here.

But that resulted in me getting in the wrong end of a marriage and losing my power. Well then, I guess the only choice at this point would be to start over and do a better job of not sucking. I return to the title screen with a feeling of defeat, and I look up and see the title, "Long Live The Queen", bright and visible and mocking my failure. Thus I learned the meaning of shame.


CONCLUSION

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I'm definitely going to play more of this after this recent chain of botcheries. I think this is part of where this game gets you - it invokes that same drive that propels you to do better through trial and error situations in games. If you look at it mechanically, it's a simple game that is more or less a huge branching linear visual novel with stops along the way that check if you have certain skills or not, and about the only input comes from making choices. Its difficulty comes from balancing your protagonist's emotions, preventing you from just studying any skill, combined with the time constraints of knowing or not knowing what events are coming up when you hit that "done" button. Its lack of complexity in its mechanics can definitely turn off some players, but there is a certain joy in making choices and seeing how those choices benefit you or bite you on the ass in a story, even if it's a predetermined one. The game definitely gets you thinking almost to the point of paranoia, because in this dark world, everyone is out to get you, and just like any delusional zombie apocalypse fan will tell you, you can never be too prepared.

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Comments are welcome etc. You know the drill.