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 Diplomacy 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
The Play’s the Thing
This one was enjoyable, would recommend
– Real player with 89.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Diplomacy Romance Games.
My mom was very much into theater.
– Real player with 45.9 hrs in game