 Long Live the Queen
The Dark Souls of anime styled visual novels. Long Live The Queen game is punishingly difficult. You play as a princess whose mother was just slain. This leaves you as the prime matriarch, except you were totally unprepared for the role. As such, it’s your duty as future queen to learn as many skills as you can and prepare for your coronation. Without getting killed, of course.
That’s the easy part. This game has approximately a billion different stat points (42 to be exact, spread across 14 skill trees). As you play through the game, it will force skill checks upon you. Failing a check may be as simple as Elodie not being offered a multiple choice, or as dangerous as her getting bitten by a poisonous snake. While the game is forgiving in the first few in-game weeks, the difficulty ramps up as the game intends you to pursue an optimal build strategy, balancing a few skill trees in tandem with one another. Moreover, a mood system forces you to continually monitor Elodie’s mood in order to most optimally learn the skills you wish.
And if that wasn’t hard enough, the game forces traditional skill checks upon you. Forget to level up your Poison skill and you won’t  be offered that skill check if someone taints your drink; forget to rank up your reflexes, and you won’t be able to dodge that knaves dagger that punctures your heart. This game is stupidly complex in the best way possible, and one tiny mistake can ruin an entire run. This gives it great replayability, and although the story and skill checks never change from run to run, learning to find the most optimal builds and reaching your coronation with the fantastic climax gives this anime game easy praise.
Check out our review here!
