If you haven't been keeping up with development/beta, there's a bunch of new content that's been added in for the Steam launch, including some new characters and a set of graphics for the epilogues. And yes, as requested, there are trading cards, so you can collect all the deaths.
But don't listen to me talk about it, go explore!
... can I sleep yet?
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9 comments:
Congratulations on the Steam launch! I am so excited for you.
Nice game I love hanako games for creating games like PM2 ~ already bought the game on steam, time to get all the achievements :3
Any chance if we've already bought it, we can get keys to unlock on Steam?
If you bought it from me and have a license key instructions for how to get a Steam key are posted in the Steam forums.
Most excellent, thank you!
When I encountered this on Steam I was momentarily stunned to encounter something like this so unexpectedly, and then instantly very, very excited. Princess Maker 2 is one of my all-time favorite games, and this looked to be in the same vein. I bought it, installed it, started playing it... and quickly became deeply confused and frustrated.
I can understand how I am supposed to play the game in the literal, technical sense- check skills to see how mood is modifying them, then use classes to raise skills, and at the end of the week use activities to modify mood- but I am completely at a loss as to how to play the game in the emotional, role-playing and goal-motivated decision-making sense.
When I first tried playing, I role-played, and chose what I thought my character would; this lead to me failing every single skill check for months and months. This got so frustrating that I quit and restarted. Then I got wise and planned out a schedule ahead of time to maximize successes, based on my foreknowledge of events- but when I did this, the game quickly started to feel pointless, as Elodie didn't feel like a person to me anymore. Rather than talking to an NPC when I felt she would choose to, I had her talk to an NPC when the mood adjustment they offered would result in a particular skill training faster. Elodie's life stopped being a story to live through and started being a puzzle to solve, and it wasn't any fun like that, and I stopped trying.
What am I doing wrong here? I really, really want to be able to enjoy this game, and if there's a better approach to it I dearly would like to know what it is.
This game IS NOT PRINCESS MAKER. They're both fantasy stat-raising games, but that's about where the similarities end!
This is a game of high-stakes politics and deadly intrigue, where the goal of survival has already been set for you. If you roleplay a girl who just wants to play all day and ignore the dangers around her, she will probably meet a nasty end - that's not failing, that's the natural conclusion to that character's story.
I've seen players who took a roleplay approach of massive paranoia do just fine, even on a first attempt with disabled feedback bubbles. :) Others try out many concepts and discover that a lot of them die (in different and hopefully interesting ways) before arriving on some ideas that work out.
It definitely is a puzzle in the sense that there's a challenge that must be overcome. It's not a puzzle in the sense of there being only one solution. There are lots of solutions. There are only certain points that can kill you - if you can get around those the rest of the game is open for however you want to explore it.
You don't have to try and find some mythical perfect playthrough. You SHOULD fail some checks because those are the areas your character has opted not to focus on. If simply seeing the 'failure' bubbles go by makes you feel like you're doing something wrong, you might have more fun if you turn them off?
That said, many people choose to think of themselves-the-player as playing Homura to Elodie's Madoka, to give themselves a justification for how they know things from previous playthroughs in order to nudge her away from deadly outcomes.
Does that help at all? Feel free to talk to me by email, it's hard to get a detailed conversation over blog comments!
If you haven't seen
I think you'd be very interested to see a video about one of the most serious and cynical of video game critics have been forced to play Long Live the Queen by his wife; it's hilarious to watch
youtube com/watch?v=KeSm9qPBSJM
I know this post is very old, but I just wanted to say thanks for making "Long Live the Queen", it's really fun and I wish my princess didn't die so much. One day I'll get her to learn how to swim!
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