Ambition: A Minuet in Power

It started out well, easy to follow, interesting. Not too heavy text, easy to follow even if you aren't a native english speaker. But after a few hours I realized that no matter what I did, or what happened in the story, I couldn't see any allegiances or power changing between the factions!? Also, you constantly gain/loose favours to people, but those where nowhere to be seen either. So I started feeling that what I did had no effect, or if it did I couldn't find it anywhere. And there are only like three tabs in your journal to check, so it's not like stuff are hidden in obscure menus or so. Game could use way more explanation of how everything works, specially the stats/factions/favours. Easy things like hoovering over the never changing levels (power/allegiance) to bring up information, or easy things like clicking a person/portrait and giving you information about your relationship. I can for example choose not to pay my servant, and it says she will not like it, but I can't see anything change. Who likes/dislikes me? I have no clue, the game doesn't tell me. Playing this blindly is no fun, and I'm uninstalling after like 4-5 hours.

An ok game that I found interesting for a couple of hours, but that grew rather boring after that. The classical music is great, the presentation is excellent and the writing is well done. You're just a professional gossiper who makes a living and influence politics by accumulating scandals and selling them or using them to influence other factions. That's it. There is a scale for the power of various factions as well as which of the two major factions (crown or revolution) they support. You use the right scandals to push those scales the way you want it, finish the dating story line of the right person to get the best situation for yourself once the faction you want to win wins and that's it, you just picked your ending. It is fun for 1, maybe 2 playthroughs (probably if you got guillotined in your first playthough and want a better ending), but that's it. It ends up feeling a bit shallow after that and the fact that you're playing a phony doesn't help to add much depth to the whole thing. I guess I was expecting deep branching layers of intrigue for the game and got a bit disappointed that in the end, it was mostly scales. There is some forking in the events for the major factions (by tipping the scales certain ways before major events) and your romantic partners (depending on who you get them to support), but this is only fully appreciated on several playthroughs and given that the game takes several hours to complete, you might not have the patience. There are other mechanics like credibility and peril (and resting, managing money and getting fancy dresses), that will add a bit of depth by forcing you to mix and match your event choices, but you'll probably have all of that mastered rather quickly. I will stop short of calling the game bad, because it really isn't. The presentation, atmosphere and dialogs are top notch and the gameplay is intriguing at first. You might just get bored after a couple of hours though, because most of the game is skin-deep.

The game is still in alpha, even not beta, several gameplay features are completly useless. It's a pleasant alpha, but a mockery of a game, finishing in an interactive novel.

I really enjoyed this game. The writing and music are both top notch, the art work is good (albeit a bit limited) and the game play elements are fun and intuitive. If you enjoy other stat-raising games like Long Live the Queen and Royal Alchemist then I recommend you give this one a try as well.