Picking Up Steam: Long Live the Queen (PC)

The life of a princess can seem like a glamorous fantasy, an upper-class lifestyle with all the riches and respect a young girl could hope for. But with the title comes a caveat, that one day you will step up to rule the land yourself, with all the concerns and consequences that can come from such important and demanding work. Long Live the Queen is about trying to navigate that difficult shift from being a carefree princess to a prospective queen who must now keep the peace and it’s not afraid to show the ending where Her Majesty loses her head for not being prepared for the task.

 

Princess Elodie has been asked to step up and prepare for her coronation after the mysterious death of her mother, the weight of important decisions about the land of Nova falling in her lap despite how little she’s been prepared for the role thus far. As a result, the player’s role in what is otherwise mostly a visual novel is to decide how Elodie will study each week to improve her skills and knowledge to be prepared for the unexpected demands of her new station. While the game presents a screen with options to pick for from her training at the start of each week, the weeks end up feeling more like a day, the player even asked to pick between a morning and evening class to help her brush up on particular subjects. After you’ve picked whatever subjects you think she should study, you’ll usually see some sort of conversation or event for the week and then be asked how to spend your leisure time, some weeks going by fairly swiftly when they’re not full of the heavy consequential events that could lead in radical shifts in the story or your untimely end.

As a result, Long Live the Queen is a game mostly about trying to make Elodie a well-rounded future queen who can tackle the issues that arise as she prepares for her coronation. There are 14 subjects in total that each have three separate classes to pursue, and for the most part the game isn’t going to be too cruel about what you should focus on. A future queen would definitely benefit from brushing up on how to assume a Royal Demeanor, but spending time learning Animal Handling or Weapons can be more situational. At the same time, since you are the target of potential assassinations or may end up making decisions that lead to peril, it can help to have these skills to get out of a jam. In fact, the classes you choose to take can lead to the overall plot heading down enough somewhat unique paths to make such investments feel truly worthwhile. An Elodie who learns a lot about political intrigue and local history can better maneuver around socially and tackle royal rivals with cleverness, but you can also brush up on your military acumen to make her better able to hold her own against more violent uprisings. The game is set in a fictional medieval kingdom where monsters and magic truly exist as well, Elodie able to hone her own mystical skills and learn more about that side of the world should you keep training her up in relevant subjects.

 

Elodie’s training can be influenced or supplemented in a few ways as well. Once you’ve reached a good understanding of a subject’s three class types, you’ll unlock a related outfit that gives a passive boost to those subjects as long as you’re wearing it, meaning it is in essence a temporary way of hitting a higher skill level in that department without having to take the necessary classes. There is a range of cute and silly outfits to earn, some like her tea dress, coronet, and military uniform finding a mix between looking stylish and appropriate for the bonuses they provide, but others can be a bit stranger. If you invest in a lot of Intrigue points you can get a full on stealth catsuit with a monocle, Elodie’s exercise gear looks surprisingly modern, and while the tutu for raising your Agility looks fine, it also feels a little funny to imagine Elodie performing her duties in such a dress. A good deal of the game’s events are portrayed through text only, a sometimes appropriate background and character face portraits doing some work to sell the scene, but there are many people you don’t actually see despite talking to while Elodie will be depicted in her current outfit of choice even if she’s gone to explore a haunted forest or supervise a war at sea.

 

Elodie’s mood plays an important factor in her growth as well. Depending on how she’s feeling, she can sometimes get more out of taking certain classes or conversely fail to learn much at all, and while you can always press through whatever mood she’s in to at least get some points if you feel they’re necessary, it is definitely good to try and cater her emotions to providing big bonuses. After the weekly event concludes, you’ll be able to pick something for Elodie to do around the castle, the task often over in just a single text box but it can provide emotional boosts related to what it was. Some emotions like fear or cheer can be easily catered to by doing things like exploring eerie parts of the castle or playing with some toys, but you can also have Elodie express more complicated emotions like feeling Dutiful or Willful by doing your royal duties or shirking them. Only her strongest emotion will impact the next week’s work, and for the most part it’s not too hard to manage save for those weeks where the event itself might heavily impact her emotions.

Those weekly events are where all your hard work is tested, and the control you have over their course varies. The main reason you’re earning points and studying each week are for the times the game will do a skill check to see how the queen-to-be handles the situation. For example, if you haven’t trained her to show proper poise and manners, she’ll still be very childish and rash when people confront her or try to outsmart her. You are often given some control over your choices despite these skill checks being crucial to success, the player sometimes able to avoid failure by picking safer conversational routes or playing to Elodie’s strengths when you figure a dialogue choice might tap into a skill you’ve been training up. Many important events that can lead to your death have many potential outs though. Long Live the Queen does in some way encourage trying to see every ending, even the deaths, and while it gives you the option to save at the start of every week to try and avoid them, you can be a bit doomed if you come to specific events without any relevant expertise. On the other hand, something like getting sent poisoned chocolates can be resolved in many ways like having knowledge of who sent the chocolates, why someone would send chocolates at all, or even having very specific skills like poison knowledge or you’ve managed to become close enough to dogs that they sniff out the tainted sweets before you fall for the trick.

 

There can definitely be times it feels like there is only an illusion of coming danger or a resource that really can’t be depleted. Long Live the Queen won’t shove you to bad endings, but there are many times you make decisions involving Nova’s finances and it feels more like it’s not much a matter of how much the kingdom can spend but instead the substance of a choice like whether to invest in more soldiers or put on an impressive feast. Elodie herself can even shift in her behavior based on the choices you make and how related skill checks open new doors, the future queen able to be a kind soul or a cruel despot depending on how well you can manage such routes that won’t make either route too easy. However, after you’ve seen a piece of dialogue once, you can always fast forward next time you play through the game, making it easy to try and raise Elodie in a new way so she can go down a safer path or explore new options without much time wasted clicking through the dialogue boxes looking for something new.

 

While making it to the end of the forty weeks alive so you can assume the crown and become the Queen is the main objective, it won’t take you too many tries to get to it especially with the text skipping option to skip past less consequential events you’ve seen in previous attempts. However, merely winning doesn’t mean you’ve seen every interesting interaction, certain subplots only activating should you interact with the right characters and cultivate certain skills. Elodie’s not necessarily safe in or out of the castle so you can’t just hunker down and try to wait it out, and being more active leads to the more compelling situations like learning more about your mother’s own untimely fate. Finding new stories can be guided well by the checklists that track different special outcomes, giving you little clues on stories you can try to aim for with how you next tackle the training, but there are definitely some routes that feel leaner or less rewarding despite requiring the same amount of work to uncover.

THE VERDICT: Raising Elodie to be the best future queen she can be and learning the consequences of it makes multiple runs through Long Live the Queen an enjoyable time. You can carry knowledge between playthroughs to try and see certain stories unfold without the princess perishing or you can pursue entirely different means to surviving to coronation and uncover interesting subplots and new features of the game’s small world. While a few routes feel samey or shallow, generally Long Live the Queen gives you quite a few unique paths to try and uncover to see how your choices can impact this young royal’s life.

 

And so, I give Long Live the Queen for PC…

A GOOD rating. Long Live the Queen makes some smart decisions on structuring its story, the onus often on Elodie to bring up important political connections and familial ties rather than on you to remember it, although it does have a little pop-up you can open if you still want to refer to it. At the same time, it is a shame so much of what goes on isn’t represented well visually even for events that are likely to occur on every playthrough. Characters without even so much as face art and a small selection of unique backgrounds can make the visual side of this visual novel feel a bit lean, but the core concept and its repeated impact on the adventure definitely keeps interest alive. Little pop-ups alerting you when you miss skill checks let you better cater a future run towards success, but it can also feel satisfying to see some niche investment pay off when a different pop-up alerts you to an unexpected victory. There is an effective mix of times where your own choices hold heavy sway over what happens later down the line and when Elodie’s training takes the reins in influencing the plot, and usually if something that might require high skill is approaching like a dance or even a war, you have a bit of forewarning so you can maybe change your outfit and train up in some potentially relevant tasks. Trying to see every outcome, be it death, epilogue, or strange event, can be a bit of a tedious hunt, but there are enough routes of significant substance to make at least a few playthroughs worthwhile even after you’ve seen through all 40 weeks in a winning run.

 

There is definitely some trial and error in Long Live the Queen, but the experimentation is part of the experience. Training up Elodie perfectly wouldn’t lead to the interesting outcomes where the young queen’s inexperience leads you down strange roads of conflict. You won’t see the sometimes silly fates or you might miss the ways a more callous version of the princess reveals more about the people and world around her. The fast forwarding and easy save system definitely make it much more accessible to try and explore the branching elements of the story and the format makes it fairly simple to pop back in and quickly get to areas of divergence. This visual novel can be unforgiving at times, but being ruler of the land isn’t easy work, the eventual crowning of Queen Elodie more rewarding after you’ve learned just how hard it can be to make it to the throne alive.