This is a truly fantastic and beautiful visual novel with (I think) very light kingdom management mechanics. Pros: - Beautiful graphics and music - Voice effects really set the tone perfectly for each line of dialogue - Being the king and making decisions on the throne is just fun - All choices feel brutal, like there's never any "correct" choice or "best" choice - The game felt largely like it respected the decisions that I made Cons: - Too little variety on a second replay to merit replaying over and over. - If you're doing too well on your first run, it's hard to see how things could go differently (i.e. how many branching "paths" there are). - Kingdom management mechanics are fairly light - There's definitely a sense of "correct" choices in that, by making certain choices over the course of the game, you can ensure that more characters survive rather than fewer (there are definitely a few different ways to make all characters survive, but most of the variation in choices seems to be between "everything is going poorly" and "everything is going okay") All in all, I recommend it for anyone who enjoys visual novels or heavy story games with some strategy mixed in.
The main gameplay in this game is examining evidence closely. You try to identify plants correctly based on single-page old-school-botanist descriptions, and you choose locations on a map based on clues you receive. There's a story, text-only with simple sketches for locations or character portraits for people. The Lovecraftian idea of the danger of curiosity is really prevalant throughout the whole game. My favorite part of this game is using the magnifying glass to closely examine everything. 10/10 would be a botanist again.
My wife and I have played this for over 600 hours since it came out. If each day in Stardew Valley takes about 10 minutes (which it does, give or take), that means that we've played more days in the Stardew Valley world than actual real life days have passed since the release of this game. Stardew Valley is life.
