A Royal Mess – Reigns Review

The initial design is very appealing, which is why it gets two stars. It's cute... on a first playthrough, before it gets repetitive. However. Heaven help you if you try to make your kingdom prosper, because having any power prosper TOO MUCH causes them to overthrow you. Too much money? You die in a tragic party accident. Too happy a populace? The mob storms the gates and... adores you, even though they depose you. The theocratic revolts and military coups at least make sense, but the other two were absolutely phoned in. So you MUST pursue mediocrity to the point of actively sabotaging your own progress, including deliberately starving your populace when you could easily feed them. But that's not all! In a triumph of fake difficulty, the game shows you how much impact decisions will have, but not in what DIRECTION. So you must learn through trial and error whether this decision will increase or decrease a given stat - not always obvious - while suffering deaths by starving peasants or... too-happy peasants. Brilliant. This, however, is at least not RNG. What IS RNG is visiting the castle dungeon, which has a semi-random internal structure. Said dungeon must be traversed successfully TWICE in order to get the good ending, WHILE getting a randomly-available bonus item WHILE on a timer of constantly-draining stat bars. As said dungeon is randomly available, you may only gain access while one stat is low, causing ignominious death even with perfect execution. You are never actually told of the bonus item's existence unless you get it, and it's quite possible (indeed, probable) to reach the exit and return to your reign without seeing it, so you may end up repeatedly traversing the dungeon without having any idea that the randomly-encountered skeleton (who may also kill you in a semi-random duel, though you can drive the odds of a loss quite low with practice) is ANYTHING but a gag character. The riddle allowing you to find the correct path through the dungeon is also quite obtuse unless you're really, really bored. (I thought it was warning me about in-game events and was confused when the mentioned dates passed without any. Turns out you're supposed to look at the timeline screen... normally only available right after you die...) So suppose you look up a guide, as I did, after a frustrating and eventually boring first playthrough. Well, essential events can flat-out refuse to trigger. I will detail that in a moment, but first... Recommendation: DO NOT BUY. Look up a Let's Play if you must. How did this get so many 5-star reviews?! Now begin the SPOILERS. -SPOILERS- I got the vase and the witch and started a crusade. Well, the witch apparently can't offer the Ruby while you're on crusade, because she never triggered that event line in about a century of crusading, despite triggering it on my first playthrough soon after I got her. Eventually the damned DOG took pity on me and brought me the Ruby. Kudos at least for safeguards against progress-jamming. And then the event that triggers while you're on crusade never went off, so I had to stop that one and start ANOTHER crusade before it worked. But the witch eventually came through, because she triggered the event line after THAT crusade and we went through the same song and dance routine, including the same event on a third crusade. Uh... I can understand having the option to get another strawberry plant if it gets squeezed out before you visit the skeleton again, but shouldn't that quest line just shut off if you've delivered it to him? It serves no other purpose. And here's the worst offense that made me review. The devil only arrives every 666 years. I missed the second arrival because the dungeon RNG didn't line up for a second successful visit in time. So I was forced to wait OVER FOUR HUNDRED YEARS to complete the game. That's over four hundred turns of just faffing about, accidentally revealing the terrorists, and mostly just churning through kings while waiting. How in the WORLD is that good game design? The devil's deal doesn't even really WORK for most NPCs, as non-event-chain ones will be replaced by identical NPCs with different names. What is the point of a shocking decision like that if there are no consequences? In fairness, the True Pacifist ending is apparently achieved by never activating the deal, so it really only takes ONE hundred years of pure tedium to win if you're savvy about it. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the supposed focus of the game in the first place! Hooray! -END SPOILERS-
Review by Magic Kingdom Zeal on Reigns.