Ambition: A Minuet in Power
I almost fainted when I saw Ambition’s premise. A choose-your-own adventure? With political intrigue and love interests?! Taking place in the French Revolution!? It seemed perfect for me - and, oh, it was!
You play as Yvette Decaux, a woman who travels to Paris on the eve of the French Revolution to rendezvous with her fiance, a baron named Armand. But oh no! He’s missing! You have the option to try and find him, and/or abandon him for one or more of the five other love interests. Each of those love interests are part of a faction - the Crown, the Church, the Military, the Bourgeoisie, and the Revolution. To build your power, you must go to parties thrown by these factions to meet your romance options, collect gossip, and participate in a randomized and vast array of entertaining minor intrigues. The gossip you get can be sold for money (used to buy dresses, pay rent, bribe the authorities, and purchase coffee - the usual!) or bend the factions to your will. You can increase or decrease their power, or nudge the middle factions towards the Crown or Revolution.
– Real player with 146.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dating Sim Political Games.
First and foremost: this game gets my recommendation. Its content is deep, compelling, and interesting. Despite having limited hours to do so, I wanted to keep playing. The historical perspective seems incredibly well researched and founded (though I admit I am not a good source to weigh in on historical legitimacy), the characters were diverse, and the story was compelling.
That being said, I found numerous issues. The most frustrating being that many of the randomly generated interactions kept appearing “out of order” in such a way that the story felt massively interrupted and disjointed. I’m honestly not sure if it’s some strange series of choices I made to cause this, but I kept accidentally running into one of the main characters in the game in side missions at parties in which she would act as if we had some very contemptuous history, when in reality, I had never even seen her before let alone (to my knowledge) upset her before. As I found from playing the entire game, I believe she was destined to be an adversary, but I was SO confused when I was playing. There were several other instances in which I found that interactions I had already had with characters didn’t jive with interactions I went on to have with them subsequently, and honestly, this is my biggest issue with the game.
– Real player with 48.2 hrs in game
Palais de Reine
Played a bit more, and decided to add some new and fresh feelings. I definitely recommend this game, like 99 out of 100. Though lots of texts, even the opening took me like more than an hour (I’m a slow reader, though).
Highlight of the game, I think, is the way of building characters. Each character have distinct personalities and personal stories, for like 30-40 characters? It also built a pretty complete world, with reasonable explanation for all things I can think of.
This is a mixture of romance and strategy, like half-half. Yet I guess a reason why this game is not very popular is that neither is out-standing. I mean, both are great, but if compare each element to famous games like Civilization (famous strategy game) or 蝶の毒 華の鎖 (famous romance game), neither part stands out. I don’t play strategy games, so I only can speak romance-wise. The number of characters is both the tame’s highlight and weakness. With so many characters, it is just impossible to make everyone’s story equally impressive. Personally, only one character’s route made me feel like in love. All other romance route makes me feel average-good but not impressive (or maybe I’m too harsh). Though most non-romance routes are beautiful.
– Real player with 85.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dating Sim Romance Games.
Highly recommended.
-Romance parts are optional and not required to finish or to enjoy the game!!!
-It has two difficulty settings, normal and difficult.
-You can’t just click your way through the game. If you fail the strategy part then that means game over.
-Has partial voice acting. The 7 “poster boy” knights are all voiced, while the 20 kights are not voiced. Some of the Lords are
voiced, as well as the Princess’ two aides.
-Don’t focus too much on voiced characters. The rest of the cast all have their own stories and the majority of the characters can
– Real player with 48.5 hrs in game
Questr
I found QUESTR to be very entertaining. It is not much as a game, but what it lacks in gaming substance it makes up in content.
You start by inviting people to join your quest party. Many of the people lie on their profiles and some characters hate your other members so much that they quit right away.
Every quest has multiple events in which you need to select one characters idea how to solve them. For example you encounter a vampire. Will you send a) the Vegan to talk to him about being vegan b) the drunk to talk about drinking c) or the bro who says he got this as he had to watch vampire movies with his ex. Results might not be what you expect.
– Real player with 29.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dating Sim Dungeon Crawler Games.
Questr is an RPG parody of dating apps similar to Tinder.
In a similar fashion, you swipe left and right to build the perfect RPG team. Every potential party member has likes and dislikes, levels, costs to hire, and personality traits as well as their own class, guild, and ancestry.
Personality traits determine the outcome of encounters throughout each quest. Beating an encounter raises morale, while failing lowers it. Party members also interact with one another between encounters, further raising or lowering morale depending on how well personality types get along and whether or not you paid attention to likes and dislikes. At the end of a quest, the morale level determines if you successfully complete it, giving you a reward and the possibility of having party members continue to quest with you.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game
Shutterbug Stud
Shutterbug Stud is a fun, character driven, scavenger hunt, where the player is commissioned to take pictures of local girls for a calendar. As such, the player must roam the town and countryside looking for willing girls to photograph, and fulfilling tasks for ~almost~ willing girls. For every (quality) picture you deliver you are paid, and are one step closer to the goal of a finished calendar and, hopefully, a fat wallet.
An RPG Maker game, enjoy exploring the town, seeing the sights (and the girls) and maybe finding some hidden secrets to discover.
The core game is filled with characters and pictures that range from cute to a little suggestive. A planned expansion has pictures ranging from suggestive to very suggestive, but still fairly tame. Further expansions (or third party art) may push these limits even further.
FEATURING:
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• 12 Major Characters
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• 24 Reward Pictures
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• Scenic Morlock Lake (Town and Environs) to Explore
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• Standard RPG Maker Controller Support
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• Art package free (found in core game files)
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• DLC Coming Soon!
HaremKingdom
9/10
20 hrs for a fast reader
18+ Patch: https://www.johren.games/games/download/haremkingdom-dlc-en/
For:
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People who want harem routes:
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People who want a light hearted comedy
Not For:
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People who want a deep story
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People who want a 1 on 1 relationship with a character
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People turned off by incest (half-sister)
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People annoyed by minor bugs with the VN system
HaremKingdom is the 2020 Smee game, winner of a 2020 pink award from Moe Game Award, the 4th officially localized Smee game, and the 1st one to be localized by Shiravune. Like in typical Smee fashion this is a very light hearted comedy featuring virgin heroines, but this time Smee uses the recently popular Isekai setting and features harems instead of single pairings. Also in typical Smee fashion, this is better than every Smee game that came before it, imo, but that recommendation comes with a lot of caveats.
– Real player with 67.2 hrs in game
I swear Japanese can actually make good comedy when they try, HaremKingdom is the proof. The game is absolutely littered with over-the-top humor and intentional ridiculousness, it takes tropes from isekai and fairytale fantasies and twists the shit out of them to fit into the game’s crazy story. Comedy is all about subverting expectations, after all. When it comes to jokes, well, it’s almost always the delivery that sells. And yeah… This game does deliver. Seriously, HaremKingdom is legitimately the funniest game (VN) I’ve played (read) this year, no contest. Royal Seal of Approval.
– Real player with 32.6 hrs in game
The Vagabond Emperor
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Do you know what it feels like to be beaten, broken and struggle just to later look back at the hard road that lead you to glory? Well that is the name of the game in The Vagabond Emperor. You begin as a lowly nobody and have to really use your wits to scrap for gold and experience. As time goes on you can build yourself up to afford armor, weapons and even companions to help as you make your way out into the world.
– Real player with 14.5 hrs in game
Information / Review English
The Vagabond Emperor is an indie strategy game developed by WigglingEyeBrows. The game is still in the early access phase.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W7yAo_g3o0
Gameplay / Story
You start the game as a simple vagabond who is still so unknown in the world and has not yet made its way into the history books. The story takes place in a fictional medieval world, which is haunted by a spreading curse and has already cost many their lives. At some point you can build your own cities and buildings in them, which produce raw materials for you that you can trade with other cities and their rulers. they try to conquer your city and need your warfare to defend them. Of course, you can also use your diplomatic skills and negotiate with them. Opponents will try to sneak into your community and cause you problems. The more relationships you have with other characters, the more opportunities you have to put things right again. There is also equipment for you to make yourself stronger, such as special upgrades for your armor or clothing itself. Many different types of weapons have made it into the game, which fit into the era. After every battle won should not be unrewarded, of course, and unique spoils of war await you. A highlight is that you can also start a family and what is special about it is that when your main trafficker dies, the parents' abilities are passed on to your children. You are free to decide what your next step is and where you will go to achieve your goals.
– Real player with 5.7 hrs in game