I bought 1931: Scheherazade on sale, probably for about $10. I was very borderline on the purchase due to reviews, but ultimately enjoyed myself. I nearly loved it, in fact, and am going to play it probably several times over. So it hurts me to have to say that this game is *not recommended* for anyone that doesn't deeply love the Otome/Visual novel niche, especially at full price.

I'm writing this review because while the other reviews aren't wrong, they don't really pinpoint exactly where the game fails and where it shines. I want to help you decide if you would enjoy the game despite its flaws. I very much did.


The huge problem with 1931: Scheherazade is its stats/time system. Even on easy, the obstacle level system is unbalanced and poorly explained. Let's say you spend turn after turn leveling up one stat or, like me on my first try, randomly trying to grind a few things evenly to support a specific playstyle. Once you get on the "same wavelength" with the game, it isn't too unfair to get around in most situations. However, 1 of 4 things will happen to you early on.

1. The one stat/inspiration you ended up grinding meets close to the obstacle level! Hooray, you pass.
   
   
2. The one stat you ended up grinding isn't used, and instead this other random stat (NOT listed on the obstacle challenge list) has just as high of an obstacle level. In fact, the stat you prepared for might not even come up in the challenge depending on the options you play, and there's almost no way to tell. I've even done a few that listed several obstacles, only for me to have to face none. There's also the opposite, where I only had 1 or 2 of the listed obstacles and the rest are unlisted obstacles.
   
   
3. None of the stats you've evenly grinded meet obstacle level. You blunder your way through the mission and wrack up a lot of stress or you save scum and have to grind some more.
   
   
4. The challenge you were grinding for is removed as an option because its time limit (which is not shown to the user) is up. This doesn't happen very often and namely has only occured to me at the start of the game, but it's extremely confusing and frustrating when you're just getting into the game's groove.

This game would have greatly benefitted from a dynamic system that adjusts to your skill level. One that could tell what level your skills are and initially adjust the obstacles to something reasonably above that to push you to do better. Even the inspirations you train for can be random and not be enough, forcing the player to save scum to keep up.

Stress itself adds so much to the obstacle difficulty. Have a tiny bit of stress and watch the obstacle levels skyrocket. But, like every other stat you need 10 points to get a grind bonus of +1 to stress stats. This wouldn't be so horrible EXCEPT random events that have obstacles can appear and affect your relationship with other characters. This can be a big deal when trying to romance specific characters that are known to be more difficult than the others. You can even rest away your 2 stress only to get an uncontrollable random event that only exists to give you stress, making you waste turns for no reason.

Instead of a dynamic obstacle setting, everything is on a linearly increasing difficulty path by what I assume is the ingame date. Do you have 0 Diplomancy because you haven't needed that skill at all? Do you suddenly need Diplomacy for a required skill? You might be out of luck if you're later in the game. Even when training the whole time until your next trip, you might not have enough time to reach the requirement and will miss out on the rest of that character's entire romance subplot for the game. Oops.

AKA, the stat mechanics and requirements suffer horrendously from a lack of clarity.


GRINDING THE STATS THEMSELVES CAN BE TEDIOUS.

On the plus side, by saving and loading at just the right time, there's an "infinitely grind stats without using a turn of time" cheat I figured out myself. On the minus side of that, there's no way to "skip" days, which was a problem even during my first playthough (which was legitimate). While in the early game you can never get enough to meet some obstacles or, in mid/late game, a random new high level obstacle for an arbitrary skill can come up, the rest of the time could be spent just clicking getting to the next thing, which just points at a completely different game design balance problem.


I need to make it clear that I love these types of games. I love branching and well written stories, and Scheherezade has that. I can tell that, mechanical balancing aside, a lot of love went into the references and story of this game and it shows through even the frustrating grind.

• The art, while not breathtaking, was varied. It was detailed: characters would visually wear costumes that only appear for a few scenes in a single quest, to comedic effect. Even the goons got things like alternate costumes, pallet swaps, or their own designs. It quite grew on me.
  
  
• The female protagonist is strong, competent, and adventurous. She was fun to play as. She was always getting into odd adventures, some ridiculous, some daring, and she was always good humored. She's almost always entertaining.
  
  
• The dialogue and choices can be witty/funny. I'll give an example of an optional (Key word: Optional) exchange between characters:
  
  Female Protagonist: (Excited) Roland, Roland, Roland! We've had a sighting!
  Roland: And when she said his name THREE times, all her fondest wishes came true...
  
  Another is when a pesky squirrel stole something important. I was given the option to use the "fisticuffs" stat on the squirrel and proceeded to have a showdown with it.
  
  There's a lot of these.
  
  
• Options, even the ones just there for fluff, get unique responses at the least. Most games don't do this. Want to be pessimistic? Optimistic? Plain goofy? The people around you will respond uniquely in-character.
  
  
• It really does feel like an adventure. Sometimes the writing might go over your head if you aren't a buff on history/old religions and their gods, but there's this atmosphere of adventure and exploration that comes with helping the protagonist figure out, say, the puzzle of the mechanical statues that control hidden panels of the tomb. Or stopping the mafia auctions of priceless artifacts. The list goes on and it's all good fun (if you managed to get your stats/inspirations right).
  
  
• The game has a lot of meat on its bones, even with the long-winded grinding system. I doubt even in my 20 hours that I've barely broken the ground for all this game has to offer. The content is unique, it's engaging, it's fun, it's humorous, and there's a lot of it.
  
  
• The characters (even the minor/side ones) are interesting and can make multiple appearances. I've only finished one romance but all the guys seem interesting and have a good chemistry with the protagonist. I found myself amused by everyone's antics and goals. The ones that know each other have their own amusing interactions and stories, as well. Basically, almost everyone is endearing and entertaining in some way.
  
  
• The epilogue is pretty detailed and, dare I say, touching. Nearly every discovery, adventure, or friend you make takes a full circle at the end, resolving everything quite nicely.
  
  I'm running out of space here. I could say more positive stuff, but alas, no room. Hope I helped.
  
  EDIT: Game hasn't been updated to fix any of these issues as of Jan 2017 and I doubt it will ever be, so you gotta take it as it is.

I was very excited to play this. It sounded great. A visual novel basically but where you build stats which can be used to overcome obstacles! How fun! Travel the world, befriend people, so on and so forth!

It really wasn't very good.
The art isn't great but I can overcome it but it's more of a negative or a neutral.
Most of the stuff written is rather boring and very very very long. I've read alot of books but the writing here dragged. And I couldn't be interested usually.

Most characters are iffy. No one really shined. The main character, besides a really weird name, was just TOO perfect at everything. Hard to put myself in her shoes when she is just so flawless. Too bad her romance options are horrid too. I don't trust any of them. The mummy is the only one I liked. Her family and her friend are okay though. So I stuck with them.

The actual gameplay is near impossible. You bet I ended up cheating after realizing it's way too unfair. But even without the gameplay, the story couldn't carry the game.

Eh, I was disappointed. Great premise, but it failed.

Scheherazade is not a good game.

Among several small sins, there are two parts that absolutely sink a what otherwise could be an interesting title:
- The Game Mechanics. Oh the game mechanic. Never have I toiled so hard to accomplish so little. At first it looks like the game offers several character paths to embark upon, depending on the skill set, but quickly you realize the Difficulty checks are so high, and the base state increases are so low, your only reliable way of passing tests is getting a random selection of ANY skills to max, and then spamming the aspirations they drop for the general bonus to every other check. It’s so incredibly unrewarding, it made me lose all will to progress, which was already dwindling because of….
- The Main Character. Jesus Christ the Main Character. She has all the traits of a Mary Sue, while also having no actual character traits. She’s incredibly intelligent, adventurous, “witty”, "loveable", headstrong – and a heiress to a fortune, of “pure heart”, and with a mysterious destiny before her. She’s so absolutely impossible to relate to, I cannot comprehend how can any of the characters (or players) stand her.

Oh, and I forgot - she's also an ambitious independent woman in an age of inequality. How revolutionary! But fear not, when the situation strikes, when romance needs to happen, she has no qualms about tossing it all away to ask in a quivering voice “M-m-mummy-sama, c-can I grab your h-hand so we don’t get l-lost in the dark?”

Yeah, there is a Mummy in the game. The MC doesn’t seem to be all that phased by that fact. I guess I can see why, since the Mummy isn’t all that particularly interesting. None of the characters seem too interesting, even the romance choices. In a visual Novel. But I guess that might be just my opinion.

But anyway, add to all that some minor other annoyances, like dialogue choices not making any actual difference, bland art, cluttered interface, convoluted plot, and you got yourself a game that dreamt big, but fails to deliver on every possible level. Not worth the time, IMO.

The good: Story line, visuals and the amount of choice
The bad: This game is not flexible. AT ALL. You better find what you wanna do and stick to it.
The ugly: Stat raising wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't a million of them and if the game didn't require to max half of them in order to progress correctly. This was executed poorly and pretty much wrecks the game :(

It's really not fun. I usually like these type of games, but this one doesn't quite add up. The background don't change from the generic purple one, the management part is much more prominent than expect and frankly tidious and boring. The music is also a constent loop. Sometimes Up beat music is playing in more serious story line and is very off putting.

The writing itself was fun, the characters promising, etc. I really wanted to like this game. Just not for me. If you like management go for it.

It's hard to focus on what might be a decent (if somewhat scattered) story when the gameplay is such a distracting, frustrating slog.

The stat building is just awful, mostly because there's way, way too many stats and they level far more slowly than the game hikes the difficulty of the skill checks. To add insult to injury, the game will frequently heap penalties on you before you even get a chance to react. Even on easy I failed far more tests than I passed, and it felt like that was intentional on the part of the developers. Maybe they thought that would be challenging, but it was only disheartening.

It's a pity. I liked the art style and the main character and setting were interesting.

Game is currently unplayable in most resolutions on a 15 inch monitor. 1920x1080
The Devs answer in the forum to another person was basically, well that's Ren'py's fault! (Uhm dear Devs, almost every game on Patreon uses Ren'py - NEVER had this problem before.)
Due to this lack of ownership and shifting the blame, MORE than just the fact I hit a bug that makes the game unplayable to a significant population of Otome Game players, I am rating this thumbs down.

Basic Beta Testing should be done with a BASIC checklist, not just by a few friends. Resolutions of monitors should be one of the first things checked... This isn't rocket science. This is Game Dev 101.

If they responded to that with "OH WOW, We really dropped the ball, we're going to work on a patch right now!" I would have been happy to wait as long as it took them to make that patch. Instead- their answer in JULY, was that it was all Ren'py's fault. No follow up. No ownership of the task.

That doesn't scream game dev, doesn't whisper labor of love I should be forgiving of mistakes, that screams cash cow.
And not gonna lie- even for a cash cow that is a lack of planning and execution that just says "LAZY" to me.

Until they get it fixed, I suggest everyone avoid them. If they aren't willing to own their mistakes, why give them our money?

They are free to prove me wrong by owning their mistake and looking up how to patch their game to fix it, which if it is a labor of love, they would be eager to do, but as it is, I am tired of games marketed to girls being second rate badly coded cash grabs. Especially since I paid full price for this JUST to support the devs. :/

This game looks like a good Visual Novel, but it's in fact more of a management or stats builder than a Visual Novel itself.

As a Visual Novel, the story is pretty interesting and inspiring... but the text is truly heavy and the game soundtrack is repetitive. As the game is a bit long (20h+ for one gameplay), you probably will get bored before finishing your first playthrough just as I did.

It isn't a bad game at all but I don't think it truly worth it's full price.

Lower than average VN, honestly. The only thing I enjoyed was the characters' personalities and most of the dialouge.

The stat building is slow, drawn out, and there's too many stats in a game that requires you to level out pretty much ALL of them if you want the ability to do all the actions you want to do.

The game requires to have stats over a certain level to successful do some actions. Honestly, the best way to do it was to use cards that give you bonuses. However, using cards for stat bonuses were frustrating since it would be through luck or walkthrough if you had the right one. There's too many stats and the cards only brought up 2-3 stats significatlly. Not to mention, after the first few choices, you hit areas where the required stat levels are too high for just one of your cards.
It was an interesting mechanic, but probably would've been more fun if the cards held more stats to give more of a chance to have one that worked for the situation.

Dialouge more often than not seemed to cut off and feel incomplete as well despite the clear hard work they must've put into it.

Traveling in a VN and the cards with stat bonuses are very interesting elements and it could've very well this VN into a gem. However, it still need to be properly balanced, along with the stats in general, to be an effect part of the game.

It's the biggest visual novel that I have ever played.
Overall: Finishing this game takes a really long time.
That's the main problem. It's repetitive and boring.
Don't get me wrong: This really is a beautiful game.
But it just feels torturous to actually reach the end.
It takes so much grinding to finish one simple task.
And it takes even more grinding to get to the next.
In the end: The game mechanics are not enjoyable.
You should try it out, maybe you will really enjoy it.
But me personally: I have to give a negative review.