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Why, yes, that *is* our lead character in a magical girl outfit. It's also our title screen. "Checklist" is actually a checklist of some of the accomplishments you can do in this game; if you'd like to see mine, just ask.
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Meet our dad. It seems that Nova, our country, doesn't really allow much special power to the spouse of the inhereting monarch, so with our mother sadly passed, he's stepping back once we become legally of age in about a year. We technically rule but we're not actually queen. Or maybe we are. The game's sense of his is slightly wonky, maybe because all writing instinct says that a princess shouldn't become a queen; queens just sort of pop up.
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Meet our dad's profile! I do find it a little funny that his portrait's crown is so tall that, since you can only bring this box up while he's speaking, you can't not see his crown intruding into his own profile.
Dad's actually pretty young, for having a 14-year old daughter. I think this must be a country where royalty does its marrying and heir-having young. Which makes sense, what with death lurking around every corner.
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Our main character, everybody! What sort of girl Elodie is is largely detemined by our choices...But right now, she's just a sad little girl whose mom just died.
And now everyone's out to murder her, just as soon as they determine their plan of attack. Someone's going to do the rest of her growing up very quickly, or not at all.
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In a bit more detail. I'm not sure why it lists her uncles, but it's handy.
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And by tutors, I guess he means you guys! Deciding what she learns and stuff.
"You'll have to work hard this year to prepare yourself before your fifteenth birthday, but I know you can do it. You'll learn quickly and you'll make a wonderful queen. It's what your mother would have wanted."
Yeah, but we could also become some sort of avenger. Or a previously friendly neighbor could suddenly attack us, and we could become the main character of a Fire Emblem game. Think of the possibilities!
...By the way, explain to me again why a videogame can almost never allow a princess to become a queen? I mean, we're sort of, like, half-queen now, which is at least a step in the right direction...
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See, Elodie's behind me on this! Go forth and avenge your momma, sweetie!
"She wouldn't have wanted to die and leave me."
...
...
Awww...
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"All of Nova depends on us. On you."
Just so we know. No pressure, or anything.
"*sigh*"
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What this means is that when we screw up, Dad's just gonna go "Very well" and let the consequences land, often fatally, on our own head.
"Come, your maids are waiting."
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Welcome to the meat of Long Live the Queen! Raising up our nervous-looking princess right up in there.
Let's start the big explanation by explaining this screen. You won't have to ever see it again, but let's just talk our options, since most of the week-to-week voting is about stuff on this screen.
Skills is a big list of our skills. It keeps track of the skills, the skill groups, their levels, and any modifiers to learning skills we may have. We'll be getting back to this.
Mood is, of course, the mood of our fair princess. Mood is divided into several continuums, divided in half to make several "moods." Each mood gives bonuses and penalties to the rate at which we learn skills. Mood can be modified by weekend activities and in-game events.
*mood planning can be essential.*
Since it's less complicated than skills, let's take a look-see right now.
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As you can see, our mood is depressed, since "depressed" is the most extreme point on the chart. We're a little bit afraid, but it's less extreme, so it's not the dominant mood. In general, you want to keep your mood close to -- but not at -- equilibrium, so you can change moods very quickly to snag your preffered bonuses.
Now, a note about moods. The priority of equal levels of a mood (IE, let's say... We have Afraid two away from center, like it is, and Depressed two away from center. Afraid is to the left of depressed, so it takes our priority, and Elodie's mood would be Afraid. Moods to the left take priority over equal moods to the right. You could say the same even if the moods are equally extreme, but on the opposite ends of their respective spectrum: my example works equally well if I had used Afraid and Cheerful, or Angry and Yielding, or what have you.
In my playthroughs, working the Willful-Yielding spectrum has been most important. But this is just me.
Outfit Is what outfit we're wearing. If you get 25 or more points in all three skills in a Skill Group (I promise that will make sense later), you get an outfit for that Skill Group that offers a bonus to all three skills. These outfits can be very handy, and have saved Elodie's life in my playthroughs more than once.
Right now, we just have the Boarding School Uniform Elodie's got on here. Did they burn her clothes when she went, or something?
Classes Is our big voting opportunity during the week. Basically, we have two classes in a skill, morning and evening, that we take all week. While the screenshot I'm about to show you doesn't show it, there is a class for each individual skill, and not just the skill groups you see here, so please vote by Skill Name.
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Now, taking a class for a week, without any learning modifiers from our mood, earns us about 10 points in that skill: 2 per class, with 5 morning and 5 evening classes per week. When you reach 50 in one skill in a group, that skill can't be advanced until the other 2 skills in a group are at least 25. So that's a thing. We can also, if I didn't mention it earlier (I forget what I'm typing the moment it goes offscreen), double up on a skill, making it both our morning and our evening class, for twice the points. Yaaaay, numbers going up!
The rest of the basic menu is not yours to worry about, it's saving and datalogs and junk. I'll be saving once a week, so when the time comes that we die, we can pick exactly when we want to go back to to try and avoid it.
...And now for the meat of the game. Skills. *deep breath*
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This is our skills screen. And you are probably about to panic. I'm about to panic trying to explain all this, so feel free to ask questions. I am not confident in my ability to explain this.
Let me start with this:
You do not need to worry about every skill to have a successful playthrough. You can go a playthrough without ever being asked to use every single skill, and definately not needing to use all of them to survive. This doesn't make some of the skills useless: they're just not all used at once, or on one path, or you might find that having one skill means you won't need another in certain situations -- or the other way around.
As you can see, all skills are divided up -- first into big catagories I never really worry about (IE, "Social," "Intellectual,") but the big catagories do get small learning bonuses as you learn different skills in that catagory, so that's a thing. They're really too small for me to worry about.
Second, they are divided into what I've been calling Skill Groups -- sets of three related things, like how Herbs, Poison (really curing poison, but maaaybe you can poison people? I've never tried) and Battlefield Medicine are all a part of Medicine.
Those yellow or orange -1.00, -2.00, and +1.00 are the bonuses you get to learning these skills. They add whatever they say to the points you earn *per day*, not per week, when you take a class in that skill. So we'd gain 15 points in any of the expression skills if we took one, instead of the normal 10...But we can get no points in a Conversation skill while we're depressed. Now, there are two ways to get these bonuses: The first, and usually more relevant, is our mood.
Each mood has its own sets of bonuses and penalties, though not all skills are boosted by the same number of moods -- Royal Demeanor is penalized by almost every mood (but there are moods that grant a bonus, like yielding), and Economics isn't bonused or penalized by any mood.
The other way to get skill learning bonuses is to learn skills from that group. As you take classes in a skill, a small but permanent and stackable bonus to learning from any skill in that group begins to gather. This eventually can even mean you can get a bonus to learning a skill-group even when your mood says you should have a penalty!
But what are skills good for? Well, this game basically runs off of skill-checks. Don't have a high enough rank in a skill, and you fail. Failure can have consequences from just missing out on things to Elodie's painful death. The right skills literally win you the game.
some skills give you more knowledge about what's going on, often vital clues. Some skills give you new options in a scene, allowing you to take different paths. Some skills make you look better in front of your people and nobles, preventing trouble.
Some skills save your life, simple as that.
So let's talk about what each skill group, generally-speaking, does. Most of them are self-explanatory, and the individual skills especially so.
Royal Demeanor
Generally, how to be Imperious. How to look, move, and CONVINCE like a queen. Composure is holding it together, Royal Presence impressing people that YOU ARE THE QUEEN, GOSHDARNIT, and Elegance looking and moving in a regal way to impress folks.
Conversation
Dealing with people and the atmosphere of court, the non-violent way. Court Manners, in particular, is how to behave in court so as to not make a fool of yourself.
Expression
Arts, basically. Decoration is making things pretty, Instrument and Voice are musical skills. They're not quite as useless as they sound.
Agility
I think these are exactly what they say on the tin.
Weapons
Ditto
Athletics
Yup.
Animal Handling
Horses means horseback-riding. Dogs may help with hunting, but also just being friends with dogs (which isn't as useless as it sounds). Falconry is both a relationship with birds and also the majestic and noble art of falconry, sport of kings.
History
This is a more informational skill, but it'll sometimes help with giving you choices.
Novan is the name of our country, and therefore the history of our country.
When History gives you info, it's about...Well, the past. Though, I should add, this is a fantasy story: the past is closer than you think...
Intrigue
Did anyone call for Skullduggery? Well, you should have. It's a fun word.
Intique is all about plotting, and knowing more about your enemies than they know about you. When an Intrigue-based skill is used to give you information, it's more about the present and near-past: who's related to who, who's next in line for what, how people got into their positions...But that's not the only stuff intrique is good for.
Medicine
Fixing wounds, curing poison (but maybe you can poison people? I've never seen it, but there's a lot I haven't seen), knowing about stuff.
Economics
Running our country into financial stability! Making our 14-year old leader better than the bulk of leaders in the real world!
There's never any bonuses or penalties to economics, making it a stable (and useful) if someone plodding, skill.
Trade and production only occaisonally go out without the other one -- they're like little twins.
Military
You can guess what this is, right? Logistics is the only one you may not know -- it's about moving troops and supplies efficiently and safely.
Faith
These are all skills relating to the spiritual. Lore is about information about legendary, mythic, or magical things. Divination is, in essence, the game offering you an early warning system -- if Elodie is trained well enough at recognizing omens, the omens she understands will always be accurate, so you can get a sense of what's to come.
Lumen
It's magic! Unfortunately, you can't have any yet. There's a sidequest you need to go on to unlock Lumen as a skill (I'll give you guys a hint: Accounting. And/Or Presence).
More on this later.
*pant,pant*
You got all that?
