Blog: Thoughts on Long Live the Queen

I saw Dan Floyd play Long Live the Queen a while back and was reminded of the weird awesomeness that was Princess Maker (2) back in the day. Last week, it was on significant sale in the Summer Steam Sale, so I bought and played it for about 3 hours. I feel a bit conflicted about the game, but at the moment I don't really want to play more, so I thought I'd write up a quick thoughts post now.

Long Live the Queen

 As always, beware spoilers for Long Live the Queen (at least one of the major endings).

Things I Liked

I like making numbers go up. I think I've mentioned that in some other of these "Thoughts On" posts, but I have a long history of falling into games that have a numbers go up mechanic. At one point towards the end of my undergrad, I found myself obsessively playing a "Stop Being a Loser" simulator and realized that if I quit playing the game and did the things I was getting my avatar in the game to do, I'd be a lot happier.

All the things the Queen might learn.

Long Live the Queen follows on the tradition of the Princess Maker games, where in, you are responsible for taking a young lady and preparing her for life. In this case as a queen of a moderately sized country. You do that by sending her to various classes, such as Queenly Deportment, Sword Mastery, Ecclesiastical Divination, Economics or Magic Use. The points you (or the Queen) gain in are then used to pass or fail various checks which determine how following events go.

The Queen is feeling under pressure today.

In the case of Long Live the Queen, failure at a lot of these checks seems to either lead to nothing or to fairly swift death. Passing the checks, however, is quite satisfying. Knowing that you’ve prepared the Queen by learning avoid insulting a guest by understanding courtly manners feels great.

The Queen is not immune to arrows (without training).

I also generally enjoyed the setting of the game. I’ve been reading through all of the Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga books and the idea of playing an Aral Vorkosigan simulator appeals to me as well. Can you take the leader to be and grow them up to be a strong, caring, beloved, leader (or a horrifying, but entertaining monster)? The setting of the internal and external forces on our Queen are interesting and lend themselves to the possibility of some interesting storytelling.

Things I Didn't Like

While the possibility is there for interesting storytelling I feel like there isn’t that much effort put in to actually telling that many stories. The story of the game hinges on the various tests of the Queen’s abilities and on a few of her choices (but generally the choices only master if she’s able to pass the check first). There seems to be one strongly preferred plot, with small side deviations (generally leading to death). There seem to be a few other larger plots, but they seem to require playing the game in very specific ways to trigger them. As such the plot felt a little as though I was being railroaded in my choices about how to develop the Queen.

The Queen knows production and trade, so can make good choices.

In one example you sentence a criminal to execution and he tries to personally attack you. To the best of my understanding, the only way to successfully manage the situation is to have the archery skill prepared, so that you can fling a sceptre (or something) at him (unless you’ve learned magic, but we’ll return to that point in a moment). If you fail the test in that particular case, you survive, but I can’t help but feel that the responses to that situation were very limited.

The Queen cannot defend herself.

For instance, if instead of training archery, you trained fencing, you could grab a sword and personally defend yourself, or if you were trained in diplomacy you could talk the criminal down, or if you studied tactics you could position yourself so that your guards could better defend you. In these situations the direct pass or fail may not actually matter, but it could lead to more interesting stories.

Beyond the specifics of the various tests the Queen must pass, it feels very much as though the only acceptable path through the game is to learn magic. After several playthroughs where I died in various ways I ended up taking a walkthrough for the last time and was able to navigate most of the checks I had struggled with. I think having the magic route be important is excellent and I enjoyed that playthrough, but it felt very much as though having magic rendered all other decisions in the game somewhat moot. I wish there had been a slightly different way to approach that.

I also feel a bit that there’s a limit on the endings of the game. I certainly haven’t exhausted the potential endings at all as though you die in some fun way, or you survive and marry someone. Either, I wish that the game had more interesting outcomes available to you, or that if it does have those more interesting outcomes, it indicated them to you a little better.

The Queen did not live long. Long Live the Queen.

Things I Noticed

I like the mood system to moderate the bonuses to the various scores, but I feel as though it lead a little to the railroading of the game for me. For example, if the Queen is angry, she gets a bonus to martial and military skills. That’s a great approach, but it means that you have to select activities for the week that will make her angry. I think a few other mechanisms to modify the mechanics might have been a good idea to bolster the emotional side.

The Queen is feeling very emotional right now.

Things I'd Include in A Game

I think my problems with Long Live the Queen are that it’s not quite the game I want to play. I think the creators were aiming for telling a story within some boundaries of personal investigation. I think I was hoping for something that allowed you to explore how an initial situation might evolve if a person made a particular set of decisions.

I see the “plot tree” of Long Live the Queen as a few strong trunks with a some lighter, shorter branches off in other directions. I would like to play something with many branches around the same length with a few interesting shorter ones to break up the game play.

Final Things

I liked Long Live the Queen, even if it wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. I’ll probably drop back in on it at some point, but for right now I feel like my three hours has been enough. That being said, in doing a little research for this post, I noticed that Princess Maker 2 has been remade and is on Steam, so I might dive that way for a little while.

The Queen is a magic queen!

Long Live the Queen has given me some food for thought for a game I’d like to make at some point and I’m glad I played it.