Those who have played the Princess Maker 2 will find this game most intriguing, but unfortunately they will also find that this game is not half as good as PM2 was. The game is short and too linear. You guide your queen-to-be across the same setting of decisions and only difference is what skills you have. After one successful play I recognized several ways how to alter the game ending just by choosing little differently. For me it takes away replay value, because you know what to do differently next time. And there isn't really that many different options to choose from. Also the decisions you make doesn't really show much, for example the only concrete thing about raising or lowering taxes is how much money you have at your disposal. You just succeed in different skill-checks and failure doesn't seem to be registered. Also after several plays you know what event will come next. The relationship drama is also very hollow. You are supposed to marry someone, but you are not given any ways to interact with them. It seems you have to make the decision with little information and for me, there wasn't enough to connect with any of them. Long Live the Queen is just a snack in terms of gameplay. Couple hours of fun and some replay value, but not much else. For PM2 players like myself this game could be a disappointment. For others, this game would be a nice change.
Very well made Diablo 2 -clone! Even though inventory is small and the world is way smaller than in Diablo 2, they are only small nitpicks that doesn't ruin the game. Excellent idea to add a pet, that can haul those extra items to the shop and brings the money! No need to ruin something with "originality" when you can copy from the best. And this one is done with extreme piety to the original and it honors it. Not straight descendant, but very close cousin in the Diablo family.
Classic from childhood. I like very much all kind of management games and this is not an exception. Humoristic ways to cure patients and most imaginable diseases merged with the hardship of trying to manage a hospital with ever growing flood of patients and their needs. And trying to keep the hospital running smoothly and profitable. But as the game progress, starts the repeat. Every new mission must be started from the scratch and every level has ever increasing victory conditions. Starting from the scratch isn't so bad, but the victory conditions just blow out of proportion. Later missions are, after you have made your hospital fully functional, mostly just waiting for the victory conditions to fulfill. It is not fun anymore when you have to just sit and wait to gain enough money before you can advance to the next mission. So the game is really good to the point, where everything is fully built and going smoothly. Good game and a classic. Just needs more variations to the victory conditions.
As a veteran of the other Thief games, this one was far too easy for my liking. In most missions, I didn't use any water arrows and in the whole game I didn't use any moss arrows. The most loud surface was somewhat disappointment, not giving the right feeling of fear. The idea of roaming the City between missions and (pick)pocketing some extra cash sounded fun, but in the end I avoided it as much as possible. I didn't even need the extra cash. I had over 20 thousand gold to spare when finishing the game. Also the idea of first hauling your ill-gained loot to a fence before getting any cash was interesting, but the annoyance to zigzag between three different fences between different sections of the City was really frustrating. Also I didn't like the way you could accomplish the missions using the hardest difficulty. In the other Thief-games, the expert difficulty level forbid any killings, as in this one it only forbit of killing any non-combatants. But the game is not all bad. I really liked the new way of lockpicking. Also I liked the way the AI reacted to my presence. The idea of guards with torches was also neat and the idea of roaming the City between missions is great. Unfortunately in the most parts this game doesn't use its full potential. Still, it was a good run and especially the mission "Robbing the Cradle" was really good. If you're not familiar with the other Thief games, you might get more out of it than I.
