Thoughts on the Game

[Iaokim]

I enjoyed the game, but once you figure out the right decisions to make it is extremely easy and you have an abundance of gold and supplies that snowball as you increase your alliances and contentment of your citizens. Here are some things I would have liked to see:

1. Your should decisions matter more. If I play well and have more than enough men to defend in the first battle, then the outcome should reflect that. Instead we get the same act of god event as long as we have a bare minimum of men. When the king confront's Ivo about beating the elder daughter, he just lets him walk away. Why not option to stop him? Why force us into the option of the marriage at all? I get that the developers wanted a more linear driven story than open ended, but the overall story could have still been told while giving us more meaningful choices on how to get there.

2. You should see how your decisions impact the kingdom and the surrounding areas. If you start selling drugs with Etton, you should see the results of that with more petitioners in dire circumstances from the increased drug trade. If you side against him and take the harder route, then there should be consequences that reflect that.

3. Sense of progression. I was hoping we could take the kingdom from its dire state and raise it up to greatness or not through a variety of different methods, but instead you get locked into a linear story that you have to follow. But no matter how much gold or supplies you get, the castle still looks like crap and you get no sense that the kingdom is getting better apart from making a few citizens happy.

4. Replayability. Given that the petitioners come in the same order, it is very easy to predict and play the "right" choices. How about sending the petitioners to us at random? And have more petitioners in the pool so you don't always get the same ones every time. I was hoping for a more dynamic story that is different every time with new or harder challenges. Your decisions should shape the story, not be driven by them.

5. Better sense of the world. Where are all these rulers coming from? It would be nice to see their kingdoms on the map and compare their kingdom to our own.

Again, I really enjoyed the game for what it was, but I'm hoping later expansions or sequels push the concept further for a better open world where decisions matter more for that epic ruler decision making rpg.

[Jmac]

Its a small team and Honestly I think your requests are unrealistic
Its basically a choose your own adventure book not really a video game.
think about it, all you ever did was point and click.

This really isn't a video game. Even in defender of the crown you personally did more. Its a choose your adventure book. The adventure is in the existing story. This my friend is not dragon age.

If you take into account its really a video adventure book it doesn't make sense to tell the author to change the book. It's just not practical.

This is published, maybe on the next game if they sell enough units they can consider your suggestions.

[Hymzir]

I agree with your points. While I enjoyed the game, it did feel a bit too linear and your "hard" choices didn't really feel that hard. There are couple of key points, where the optimal choice (like demanding that Talys pays for your general's upkeep, thus ensuring you have more than enough gold to get training grounds up and running the moment they are available, or figuring out the optimal way to handle Sir Friderick for maximum resource gains) that lead to the snowballing effect.

And once I got my snow ball rolling, the gameplay aspect of the thing withered away, as I was able to just start saying yes to pretty much all the things the petitioners were asking for. The only times I really had to say no, was when two petitioners asked for the same agent at the same time. Other than that, I generally only said no to cheats, drug pushers/users or people who just generally annoyed me. Everyone else got what they needed and my happiness was around 90 by the end of the game.

Also, there are several moments in the game where I felt that I was being forced to carry the idiot ball. There were moments were I couldn't slip into the role of the king because of his utter blindness to what was going on, and most of the time I felt more like watching a tv-show, that I had to manually crank to keep going, instead of playing a game.

And while I do consider the story to be quite excellent from narrative point of view, as well as one featuring excellent characters, and some really touching and believable interactions between the cast, I did not really enjoy it as a game. There were too many moments were I felt that I had to make a decision that I had no real reason to make, just so that that the story could happen the way it was supposed to.

The biggest of these, of course, being the moment that our hero learns how truly rotten Ivo is. I.e. the moment he finds out about the bruises. At that point, every fiber of my being was screaming "Do not let Ivo leave with Lulie! It will end badly!!."

What I wanted to do at that point was to tell Ivo to go ef himself, and take my chances with the barbarians on my own, and the 1006 men I had gathered under my banner.

I mean, what could Ivo had done at that point? He was a guest in my castle, the castle where my army was.No way he could have forced me to allow my daughter to leave with him, his personal guard would not have been enough.

I don't think Eryck would've been willing, as a person and a ruler, to kill the moron on the spot atop the wall. I think that such an act would've kinda alienated his allies. But keeping his daughter away from the b-tard that Ivo was, would've been something, I think, he could've justified to his allies. In a sort of "Look, we'll deal with Ivo and his madness later. Right now we need to deal with this barbarian horde on our border."

Then the rest of the story line and the game could've gone more or less the same. No help from Ivo at the battle of the mountain pass. The second act would've been more or less the same, with Ivo declaring war on Eryck. That would've been the narrative that my choices should've led, instead of the one it did.

I also felt that many things were far too underdeveloped. Like sparing Beyran's life. In fact the whole "you need to help all Radovians" thing boiled down to three incidents, none of which had any meaningful cost or meaningful impact on the story line. I kinda hoped seeing them come to Erycks aide at the final siege or something, but their involvement was restricted to only providing some fireworks. Kind off a let down really.

Again, it's a well written story, it just feels too forced for a game. The thing about itnteractive storytelling is, that it s supposed to be interactive. I.e your choices should have an actual impact on how the story unfolds.

I feel that Yes your grace fails on this regard.

[O'shea]

Honestly the "game" deserves more negative reviews. I have no clue why people simp so hard for this kind of game when every single ending but one is objectively bad. In truth this game is obnoxious as it can be and is something that wasn't really made for anyone really at all... So it's garbage to sum it up harsh words but truth hurts.

[Lord von Games]

First... sick of linear story games not being called a "game"... by a spoiled audience. This "game" didn't pretend to be anything other than it was... and they did it well! Yes, large studios, triple A studios can produce amazing versatility and replayability in glorious sandbox (although they often don't, they just cover it up with glamorous pointless special effects). I grew up with games in the 90's... this... is... a... game! Real game. Really good game, and its meant to be tragic, where at the end, if you win... you count the cost... was it all worth it... . Great story, that considering the size of the studios, and the engine they had to work with.. AMAZING. I hated the story, and I loved the story... same way I felt for Braveheart.

[Serious Business]

Originally posted by Lord von Fleck:

First... sick of linear story games not being called a "game"... by a spoiled audience. This "game" didn't pretend to be anything other than it was... and they did it well! Yes, large studios, triple A studios can produce amazing versatility and replayability in glorious sandbox (although they often don't, they just cover it up with glamorous pointless special effects). I grew up with games in the 90's... this... is... a... game! Real game. Really good game, and its meant to be tragic, where at the end, if you win... you count the cost... was it all worth it... . Great story, that considering the size of the studios, and the engine they had to work with.. AMAZING. I hated the story, and I loved the story... same way I felt for Braveheart.

It's not a bad game by any means but it does railroad you hard. For example at the very start of the game when you try to tank the deal with Valys and demand something ridiculous like 6000 troops and he just agrees? No hesitation? There is no way to stop the marriage AND clearly this guy had every intention of betraying you from the start. He would have agreed to 12000 soldiers too probably since he was never going to deliver on his promise.

[Lord von Games]

Sounds like real life in the medieval court.

[paerarru]

Yeah, the game is only really good for a few playthroughs, after that you've pretty much seen everything there is, there's not much variation. I think what little there is however is enjoyable and on your first playthrough the game gives you a pretty good illusion of having your choices matter.
I think I understand a lot of the complaints are that people were expecting more of a kingdom management simulator, which really the game barely has a facade of it, while the game is really much more of a relatively short adventure/interactive story. Once you realize that after your first playthrough I think most people are willing to judge the game for what it is and that's why it has good reviews.

[Lord von Games]

Originally posted by paerarru:

I think most people are willing to judge the game for what it is and that's why it has good reviews.

Agree. I should try to piece together some bits on my channel... try for a SOLID capture of it's real genre (real expectations), without spoiling the first play-through (since the first is the best for this game). \Ffor an indie... it's a beauty. As for "choices matter" I am a HUGE fan, but each choice path can be a hundred man-hours of game-dev work... and TBH, IMHO... in real life? In real life our choices matter... but the BIG events in life do tend to appear a bit pre-scripted (irl).

Great game!

[paerarru]

Originally posted by Lord von Games:

As for "choices matter" I am a HUGE fan, but each choice path can be a hundred man-hours of game-dev work... and TBH, IMHO... in real life? In real life our choices matter... but the BIG events in life do tend to appear a bit pre-scripted

I like that insight, lol. And I agree, the big events in life seem almost scripted. But our small, day to day choices still matter. Those are the little things that add up over time.

[funewchie]

Originally posted by paerarru:

Originally posted by Lord von Games:

As for "choices matter" I am a HUGE fan, but each choice path can be a hundred man-hours of game-dev work... and TBH, IMHO... in real life? In real life our choices matter... but the BIG events in life do tend to appear a bit pre-scripted

I like that insight, lol. And I agree, the big events in life seem almost scripted. But our small, day to day choices still matter. Those are the little things that add up over time.

Yeah, but my main gripe is that "choices matters" implies varying story paths. Which this game doesn't really have.

I also wouldn't refer to this as a "visual novel".
It's technically more of a "kinetic novel".
A good kinetic novel, to be sure (and one I gave a positive review for), but still...

A "Kinetic Novel" usually refers to a Visual Novel that only has one actual story path (minor changes to flavor text don't count).
I normally am not a fan of KNs (as I like having variety in story paths with VNs), but this game was a rare exception. Though I wish they'd been more upfront about it being linear.