Reseñas

• gamedeal user

  Jan 2, 2021

  If you are an otome fan, this game is a must-play. The backgrounds and CGs are absolutely beautiful, and the soundtrack is very good. The story is compelling and I love all the references to Chinese history and mythology - the world really feels alive and believable. The translation is also really good, with some minor spelling hiccups here and there. Some things do get lost in translation, especially some of the more poetic parts.. there is nothing inherently wrong with them, just that some things lose their meaning in another language, and because English is not a particularly "poetic" language. I think the main character is a breath of fresh air, since most main characters in these type of games usually have no backbone or are incredibly flat. This one is the complete opposite, a woman with her own personality and strength, who doesn't give off the forced "strong independent woman" trope. The other characters are also quite enjoyable, with Wu Zixu and Goujian being my personal favorites because I really love their routes and the conclusion to their stories. However, I think Chen Feng got the short end of the stick, since he feels a bit too disconnected from everything. I think his route would have needed some extra scenes, maybe even from his own perspective of things, like internal monologues or seeing him struggle to maintain himself while the main character isn't present with him. His route was not necessarily bad, it just feels like something is missing. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed playing through everything. I also have to say that the developers are incredibly fast with bug fixes and they really seem to care about the maintenance of the game, so kudos to them for that! I will certainly buy any future otome titles they release, and I also wish that we get a sequel to this one in the form of a fandisk one day.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 23, 2021

  My Vow to My Liege has everything that should make this game something I love, but I didn't love it. I'm still recommending it because I think it's a wonderful game with so many good things about it, but in my dive into ancient China and the mystical world of legend and lore, I found I really don't care at all for large-scale warfare and plots. It starts out very solid, and for the first four chapters I was riveted, but as the political intrigue increased in scale outside of Ng, and the traveling and combat also increased to include the other areas, I was less interested and wished for more personal interactions outside of fighting the good fight. I wanted more romance and less world-saving. I certainly wouldn't call MVtML a bad game, even if I didn't enjoy it to its fullest. In all honesty, I think it's a rather well put together game, it just seems it isn't what I was looking for. What's the good, bad, and in-between for this game? Good: I really enjoyed the soundtrack. Sprites and art are very nice, imo. Story is exactly the kind of thing movies would be made from. MC is a strong (physically, mentally, & emotionally) person. ShaoJiang is actually my favorite character and I'm sad I cannot make her my wife. Translation was very well done. Beautiful text descriptions that really amplified the sense of dread. No true route, so whoever you want to be your canon character can be. Interesting use of links and achievements to get you to explore outside of the game. Choice options with character portraits was very nice! Especially at the beginning when I was still learning everyone's name. PRICE! $10 game is ridiculously low for this quality with full VA and 24 distinct CGs, many of which have alterations so you get around 55 total. Bad: Story can get choppy when covering large spans of time without indicating what had happened in that span; you're here > fade to black > suddenly in another place and it has apparently been a month, but no one mentions the passage of time until much later in the scene, or sometimes even several scenes later. Sometimes actions would take place that had no text description, so I had to make up what happened on my own; for instance, the screen would shake and there would be a punch sound, but did that mean that the MC was hit, the MC hit someone, the MC hit an object, or that something thudded against something else? Who knows? Features don't work properly all the time. If you turn off the BGM, sometimes it would turn on even with the checkbox still checked as off. Skip feature would pass unread text, even without the checkbox marked for forcing skips through unread text. In-Between: Translation may be too good. Hear me out, sometimes flowery and descriptive text can be too flowery and descriptive; most times I enjoyed it, some times I would have rather the 16-word sentence be cut to a very clean five to emphasize the point. Turns out I don't like large-scale war dramas, I was over it by the second battle. I was hoping for some homo-erotic confusion with MC pretending to be a man, but in the first chapter you learn that every LI knows she's female. There's a lot of weight put on MC "not being man nor woman" due to pretending to be a man, and her body being less feminine now, which made me uncomfortable when she would degrade herself, sometimes severely, due to her appearance. I'm not sure if it was something lost in translation, or a cultural, or even a time-period thing that I didn't connect with, but it felt a little damning to those outside traditional gender norms. Some sound effects could get repetitive and annoying on their loops. All-in-all, this game is worth the look if you want an epic story about a king attempting to break her family's curse and keep her kingdom safe. It has mysticism with spells and spirits. It has war with large-scale combat, both naval and ground troops. It has political maneuvering and assassinations. It's a good story. It's just not the story I was hoping for since the romance and gender reveal of the MC is more of an afterthought than forefront as I believed.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 16, 2022

  Game gave me emotional damage. 10/10 would recommend. 100% worth the money ✓ MC that shows agency, displays both strengths and weaknesses, actually feels human ✓ LIs with sufficient depth and complexity to, again, feel actually human ✓ Believable rationale/backstories for why LIs fall in love with MC ✓ Plot that keep driving forward (stakes are high from the get go and they. do. not. let. up) ✓ Clear, meaningful character growth! for (almost) everyone! depending on player choice ✓ For real, even some side characters get noticeable growth in certain routes depending on player choice ✓ Art, VA, music, localization beautifully executed ✓ Learned more about Chinese history & mythology from game glossary and subsequent wiki rabbit-holes than should be reasonably expected from an otome ✓ A+++ 2nd FL. ShaoJiang best girl. I do not accept feedback ✓ YiGuang MVP (like no joke in every route) ultimate husband. Again I do not accept feedback Seriously, I look forward to this dev's future titles. I enjoyed their previous game about dating monks that's considerably more lighthearted and now they've done it again with cross-dressing king drama and a side of trauma(TM), I'm curious to see what they produce next.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 19, 2022

  I stumbled upon this gem while browsing steam for something to fill the void going through the story and worldbuilding of Code:Realize left behind and boy did I get something even better than my imaginations. If you are bilingual and are debating whether or not to play this game in English or Chinese, I strongly recommend giving Chinese a try first because some of the feelings absolutely do not translate (but the translators did a great job doing their best!). If you're looking for a romance-heavy otome, this is probably not for you. But if you love historical fantasy and enjoy plot and worldbuilding, this is absolutely a must play! I'm undecided as to whether or not knowing about the historical period/the historical figures that some of the love interests are based off of increases or decreases enjoyment, since knowing the references to historical events/idioms and poetry is definitely a fun easter egg but probably also spoils some of the plot twists you may or may not have seen coming otherwise. (Although, if you're genre-savvy, you probably would have seen them coming anyway). There are definitely still a lot of subversions to the actual events in history though so knowing how history plays out doesn't totally spoil it for you (I mean, there are mythological creatures and shamans involved, of course it's not totally faithful to actual history, but I am quite impressed by how little anachronism there is in this game other than the outfits, which were explicitly stated by the devs to not be realistic anyway.) Otome games don't usually have a lot of replayability, but I might just replay a certain route because of how much I enjoyed the politics and poetry and how perfectly the fantastical elements were blended in.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 30, 2022

  My Vow to My Liege is a visual novel that is 45% about politics, 35% about war and 20% - mythology. And among all this fun stuff there is absolutely no room for romance. And I don't buy romance games to read about medieval Chinese war affairs, so the game just failed expectations. But I should give the game credit when it deserves it. The art is beautiful, though I would prefer to see more CGs. Game has only 28 CGs for all routes combined, 2 of them are duplicates, 1 - a map and 1 - a letter. I liked music very much. I cannot say the same about voice acting though. Maybe I'm just not used to Chinese, but I found voices distracting and just muted them half way. The MC here is more mature than in your average Otome game, she would not blush over holding hands, she would not trip over something to fall on her love interest etc etc. The game is free of this cliche romance BS. So ye, this was refreshing. Story wise, as I mentioned, it has too much politics and war. The setup is good: the lady disguised as a king tries to rule the country and defeat cartoon-evil demon. But the execution... Her struggle to live as a man was briefly touched, but never fleshed out. Too many people around her seems to know her gender. She was impersonating a man for 5 years, but 3 years ago there was a war (of course there was a war) between aristocracy of the kingdom about who will become her husband. So her gender is not a big deal. What about routes? GouJian: not gonna lie, I really like route's main idea: 2 people who have strong reasons to both hate and love each other. It brings interesting dynamics, and such situation is rare in Otome. But the execution... it was Ok, I wish it had more than 2 choices in the route and more of GouJian presence, instead of that ton of that war related stuff going on. YiGuang: your vanilla sweet childhood friend who always loved you. His route was nice, though a little predictable. And he has the most presence in his route among other love interests. Wu ZiXu: the story itself was good, with interesting plot twists. Though romance between him and MC feels very forced. In the common route they had strictly work relationships. And being king's adviser ZiXu suggested the most unpleasant and even disgusting options "for the sake of the kingdom" that no person would follow. Chen Feng: his route was absolute disaster. The setup was amazing: childhood friend, bodyguard, with dark side he struggling to overcome. How to destroy the premise like this? Put him in coma or in another town for 90% of his route and focus on the war. That said, My Vow to My Liege is not a bad game overall, it has nice ideas. It is a bad romance game.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 29, 2022

  A nakige honestly, and also a low key though likely unintentional rebuttal to everything that is wrong with Hakuoki. The protagonist in this has agency and ability. She doesn't anxiously sit in a room and wait for news about the war, she is driving the war from the front lines. Her reactions to things are reasonable, she doesn't do anything stupid or cruel, and she knows when it's appropriate to cry. Likewise, her romance interests have believable reasons for loving her. The men are varied in their motivations and the routes fill in the gaps of one another in terms of events you heard in passing. I'd argue the weakest route is the one that briefly dips its toe into yandere territory. It's ironically the one where the protagonist has the least amount of agency. I found the localisation to be fine overall. I had no issue understanding anything. Individual routes seem to suffer from something I call "the otomate effect", where the further along you get, the more typos there are. That sort of thing is egregious for a 60$ game, but this is only 10$ and translated by one person, so I was not annoyed or distracted by it. Being as affordable as it is, it's probably a bit shorter than anyone might want (10 hours maybe?) but what's here is solid, from the art to the writing.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 23, 2022

  Protip: Play the all the other Routes before Wu ZiXu...because i didn`t and now i don`t want the other guys, because he`s perfect <3
• gamedeal user

  Sep 23, 2020

  To get it out of the way right away: I'm having a really hard time to not compare this game with "Lost in Secular Love", which is such an amazing and wonderful game! So I have to admit that I might have had expectations towards this game that were a little too high and that influence my overall experience.. "Lost in Secular Love" had great care, love and effort put into... pretty much everything. I haven't touched the game in a while, but I still remember making up songs by hovering my mouse over the menu buttons or the funny little sketches inbetween scenes/chapters, loads of backgrounds and cgs to admire... and I miss that a little in this game? The story in this one is great and quite intriguing, the characters overall and the romance options are very interesting and unique despite some obvious clichés or stereotypes, some animations here and there, generally nice visuals, the song that plays during the credits is perfect... but all those silly little details that made me adore the previous game are lacking from this one. Like, backgrounds being used over and over for different settings with only slight changes, some jumps between scenes feeling a little awkward, barely any beautiful art to properly admire in the form of cgs and the romance... feels a bit awkward or rushed and is very lacking to the point it felt like they were actually too scared to have two people kiss on screen sometimes. Therefor, to me, the game felt pretty mediocre, especially under the whole "Otome Game" aspect. Though, again, I suspect that to be partly because of my fond memories for "Lost in Secular Love" which I consider a bit of a masterpiece. Said game also feels like it has a lot more length and depth to it as well. I'm still having a wonderful time with this game and I will definitely add it to my list of recommendations for people, but I do feel like the game is missing some things here and there that could have made it just as perfect as the previous game. However, you will most certainly feel like you got your money's worth. Again: This most certainly isn't a bad game. I'd even go as far as to claim it's actually a pretty good one. Just.. maybe a bit disappointing when you know what these people can really put out there. There are currently some technical hiccups here and there as well, like spelling mistakes or lines repeating themselves or people growing a third arm (like ChenFeng did for me on his route, when they fight on the ships), but I do have faith that those will be fixed in due time. Long story, short: Buy it and give it a try.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 19, 2020

  Okay, I'm sucker for angsty stories. I live for them. I’m [i]addicted[/i] to them. Long story short: Please play this game. I highly [u]recommended[/u] this Otome. Long Story below: This game is plastered with angst almost every corner and when you reach their respective route’s Good Ending, you will feel that they are well-earned. I usually played Otome that has female love interest as well. But the premise of this game is too refreshing and interesting to ignore. The typical and cringey notion when playing Otome are the Mary Sue protagonists. Too sweet, too feminine, too stereotypical princessy. Too typical. You could always roughly expect how she would react. Too Bland. Ho boy, not this one. This one, she is the King to a nation/state. She is the one giving out orders and they defer to her judgement. She ain't some wallflowers, letting men step over her just because she is a girl in those feudal times, nor a damsel in distress. She cajoles and argues for her cases with her ministers, she fights with a sword and leads her army in battles. She is such a refreshing sight in the old Otome Genre. I really love her. [b]Story[/b] As with most stories nowadays, you won’t get a full story with just one route completed. Clues and details are scattered across the games, you have to finish all 4 routes to get the full story. It’s the titbits that make the whole story so interesting. Be warned though, there are implied rapes in the story, not graphical, nevertheless they are still there. And it’s not a simple story. It is full of fricking twists and sudden turns, just when you thought you could catch a breath, something unexpected pop out. The story is fast paced, hook after hook of actions, but when they do get their moment of silence, it was some of the best moments in the game.（my personal fave was万家灯火 scene）. I only wish they were longer. The story only branches out from Chapter 11, so it can take some time before you can really focus on the character you are targeting to romance. [b]Characters[/b] The 4 male interests are distinctive enough with their own personality and themes. But i'm going to leave that cause there are too much to talk about them, that I can’t avoid the Spoiler Land Mine. I recommended going: Chengfeng >> Yiguang >> Wu Zixu >> Goujian. (Too bad Shaojiang ain’t an love interest though. Sigh.) Seriously, even the NPCs are not just some bland characters. From the way they responded and replied, despite how short their on-screen times are, they are memorable on their own, and might even foreshadows the consequences of your decisions. They aren’t some placeholder NPCs despite their sprites indicated as such. [b]Voice Acting and Music [/b] Seriously, listen to them. All of them are fully voiced. ALL. Even the NPCs. They are so good, anguished shouts, screams, tremors, and playfulness. The actors and actresses bring out each emotion. Kudos to the Voice Director! The quality is on par with those triple A games. And the Music, the developer had their OST customised. It’s not some public domain music they found online. And they bring each scene's emotion so well, especially those long-gone nostalgia, unspoken sorrow and angst, even fleeting happiness. [b]Artwork[/b] Serious guys, the art, the CG and the characters sprite are so consistently beautiful. It's unfortunate that the developers seemed to run on tight budget and had to sacrifice the amount of CG they could produce. (Seriously how much did they spend for game production??? The overall quality is so good.). But when you do see them are so good so beautifully drawn. I would stare long hours of the CG I earned in the Gallery Section. All in all, this is a really great game. They had earned the spot along with Cinderella Phenomenon as one of the best Otomes I ever played. By the way, [b]YETU Game[/b], are you planning to do any DLC? I would pay [i]big money[/i] for the following: 1. Shaojiang’s Route 2. Slice of Life Expansion 3. CGs expansion (More Sprites, with Protagonist getting her own portraits, I really wanna see more of her expressions when she argues or fooling around, she always looks so serious and sad in the CG). 4. Even better if there is a Premium Edition, with all above are in one package. I really need some CGs during Protagonist Childhood. She is so pretty and so good looking, especially when she’s in male guise. *Swoon. ------------ [strike]Nitpick:Translation I'm really thankful for the English version. I finished the entire game (all Routes along with its Bad End & Happy End), and got the gist of the overall story, but the details elude me as So i replayed them all in Mandarin. My Vernacular Mandarin is okayish, but when it comes to a more archaic Mandarin that sometimes depicted in the story, i had a hard time understanding it, luckily, I just need to reconcile what I remember the English was talking about along with the Chinese character I read. But God, the mandarin prose, they are so poetically beautiful. It’s like reading an epic poem, the words chosen are careful and bring out so much meaning. Even the Ending Poems, English can’t do them justice on how wrenchingly heartbreak in the way they are written. [h1]路难行！路难行![/h1] Plus, I really need to know what are the characters when each name is spoken, i cannot not knowing, cause like Xian, which Xian??? Yang, which yang??? Han City? Which Han City, there are so many Han Cities, and I kept reading Helü as Helu. I know it isn’t easy to translate a language, let alone from Chinese to English, where the chasm is not just wide, do you know how hard to There so many things and experience that I think English players are missing out. The histo-cultural aspect of the Autumn Spring Period, the poetic prose and some if its double even triple meaning of words lost in translation. [/strike] I hope this is still an ongoing effort. Let me know if translation team needs any extra/free help.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 24, 2020

  At its heart, My Vow to My Liege is an enthralling historical fantasy centered around the legend of King Fu Chai and the downfall of the Kingdom of Wu near the end of China's Spring and Autumn Period. ...Just add a touch of genderbent historical figures, play around with interesting/more sympathetic versions of those historical figures, spice it up with mages making pacts with monsters, and of course sprinkle in an ample helping of handsome dudes. And yes, this particular combination of tropes is exactly up my alley <3 Still, while this is definitely an otome game, the plot is clearly the writers' main focus. The actual romantic elements show themselves fairly late in the story, and are of course accompanied by delicious, delicious tragedy. (For other otome lovers, the general vibe is similar to Nightshade or Hakuouki. Especially Hakuouki.) Pros: -ART - First and foremost, the artwork in this VN is flat-out gorgeous, from the character models to the CGs. Just look at the art in the screenshots. The main character designs are super awesome (I can't speak about their historical accuracy, but they sure look cool.) -CHARACTERS - While I still have 1 route left to complete at the time of this review, I love how all the main characters have properly fleshed out motivations, character flaws, and dynamic interactions with each other. All the guys have their own unique personalities and story arcs, including conflicts with each other that make perfect sense within the story. Also special shout-out to best girl ShaoJiang <3 Even the MC was quite good--while I didn't fall in love with her or anything (my attachment was more than a little hampered by how she doesn't have a voice actress or portrait on screen when she speaks), her character arcs were cool especially when comparing her development between routes. -PLOT - this VN definitely put in sooooo much work building an epic and beautiful world with its own twists on history as well as creatures and elements from Chinese mythology. I applaud how well woven some of the conspiracies and twists are--though keep in mind I'm not a 200 IQ detective or anything. I loved the atmosphere of terrifying suspense and wondrous mystery hanging over the story. There were definitely some scenes that made me tear up a little. -VOICE ACTING - this game is fully voiced in Chinese (well, everyone but the main character) and the VAs all do a wonderful job. GouJian's VA in particular acts his freaking heart out lolllll (and he's apparently the voice acting director, so well done dude!) -MUSIC - the music is wonderful, fitting each scene really well. There are tense drums for battle scenes, majestic tracks when the main character holds imperial court, swelling epic music when the main character finally triumph... I have no complaints here. However, that's not to say this is a perfect work. It has its fair share of flaws, especially in its current state. Cons: -TRANSLATION (obviously specific to English speakers): As someone who can read and understand Chinese on a moderate level, I really do sympathize with the translators since this VN uses a bunch of rather archaic and generally hard-to-translate terms, including lots of beautiful poetry. However, this doesn't change the cruel truth that the translation needed much, much more work. Basically... while it is certainly understandable in its current state, there are quite a few grammar/spelling mistakes in everything from dialogue to the menus. And in general, a lot of the beautiful wordplay is lost. Poor Wu ZiXu in particular gets a little screwed over since he speaks in such formal Chinese. EDIT: Of note, it does seem like the dev team has a proofreader who's currently going through the script, so hopefully translation quality isn't as much of an issue down the line!! -PLOT/PACING - for all the wonderful ideas and amazing potential brought to the table by this VN, not all that potential gets fulfilled. The writers definitely bit off more than they could chew. I will note that this VN has a very LONG COMMON ROUTE in particular, so the individual character routes aren't that long. (Gou Jian gets off fairly easy since he has quite a few scenes in the common route, but IIRC Chen Feng got a little screwed over.) The character endings in particular are rather rushed--the final battle is over really fast, the main story effectively ends right after that at the climax, and the epilogues are super short. Don't get me wrong, the good endings are very satisfying and the bad endings appropriately heartwrenching, but it just left me wanting more