Royal Alchemist

I think this game is really enjoyable!

I am not sure how effective it would be upon replay, due to the nature of it being a stat building game. I know I was tiring a bit of all the finessing by the end of my Serin playthrough. Honestly though the characters are really enjoyable, I remember when I played this game a few years ago I romanced Aurelius before there was any in depth guides and was lost on how to get a good ending. If I plan to replay this game in the future, I am definitely going to find a way to just change all the stats to max so I can just see what I missed since I am mostly interested in the story/characters and I haven't played Nazir's route.

I think it's a solid 8/10, I'd recommend it if the stat building aspect isn't a deterrent, the characters are some of the better written within the 'otome' game genre and I had a lot of fun being able to identify as nonbinary! That is a rare treat with this kind of game, so I don't want to under-appreciate that!

MILD SPOILERS [for romantic pacing]

My one major complaint is that it feels this story is a little TOO slow burn, at least in Serin's route. The game happens over 60 weeks, that's a year and 2 months. Despite that length, the romance isn't really explicitly 'romantic' until week 58 [and I'm talking about literally just holding hands]. I feel like considering the scale and amount of opportunities this would have been more satisfying if the relationship was more explicit by week 40 and it gave more time for you to stew in the romance. Either way, the ending was sweet.

Brutal stat raiser with beautiful art and interesting fantasy narrative.

Soon to leave a review on Royal Order with some similar points, so, if you see me over there, at least I warned you.

SO

Firstly, I just want to say: Do NOT let the price point fool you. You get SO much content, the value for it is absolutely insane.
My current playtime is almost entirely indicative of a SINGLE route with no deaths (no guide -- I played on the higher difficulty and had to save scum a fair bit for failed checks and bad skill building rolls (will touch on this later)) with an exception of maybe 1-2 hours dedicated to the other version of that character's route (the skip feature for seen content + lower difficulty + guide is what trimmed it down so much). Which, honestly, that's kind of insane how many extra core scenes there are between two positive routes for the same character. I didn't even explore everything I could have within those, either. What I'm trying to say is this game is HEFTY.

That said, the narrative doesn't feel like it's bogged down, either. There was never really moment where I wanted to just get past a section because it was needlessly dragging on or was boring or anything like that.

The world they created (and built upon in the sequel) is great, the writing was fun, the CGs I've unlocked are nice.

My only real complaints are:
The king was the hottest character and really should have somehow been an option IMO

THE STUPID ROLLS FOR SKILL BUILDING OH MY GOD It was literally the cause for like 98% of save scumming. It was SO frustrating to fool with. The amount you get raises randomly by 2-6 points per slot per week you choose to skill build. Doesn't seem that big of a deal late game, but early to mid, it can literally make or break entire parts. Like, it's such a fickle system that even if you follow a guide, you might still have to go back on a decently older save to try and get a few better rolls to make sure you can pass essential checks. Because of this is not the kind of game where you can just have like... 1-3 save files. You want to make a save before you lock in your weekly activity, and it's probably gonna be more just for rerolling on the skills than actual different choices. Unless the RNG gods just decide to bless you, you WILL have to go back -- and likely further than just your most recent save or two.

Despite the fairly minimal gripes, this game is lovely and I highly rec for anyone who gets the same itch for a skill building/time management/VN sort of game where the wrong misstep can kill you and choices feel like they matter.

Quick summary: I really enjoyed this visual novel and especially the characters, but only because there is a fantastic steam guide for it.

Positives:
+ The characters are fantastic. I enjoyed the day-to-day interactions with them even more than the main story.
+ The worldbuilding is a great combination of a magical world and palace politics. The magic system is simple enough to understand, but still offers a lot of depth and possible combinations. There are also mentions of other kingdoms and visiting ambassadors, so it doesn't feel like the world is reduced to the palace.
+ The player character has enough personality to make them likeable, but also leaves enough room to shape them a bit.
+ The game features a lot of artworks. The chibi mission arts are really cute!
+ Good replayability. The story focuses on the prince you choose and mainly revolves around him. So each of the three story arcs feels really distinct and offers a lot of new scenes. Of course, there are some repeats regarding the main story, but besides that everything else is different.

Mixed feelings:
o The pacing of the story. It spends the first third of the story building a mystery and intrigue, but then just forgets about that from time to time. Like, in the first weeks you have this big, dramatic scene escaping from assassins and in the next scene everyone acts like nothing happened and you just go out to town and have tea parties until the next thing happens weeks later. The threat didn't build up constantly, but felt very sporadic. You really felt the difference between main-story-danger-weeks and the ~10 weeks of downtime in between.
o The resolution of the story. There are two main mysteries to unveil in the story and while I think one of them has a great setup and resolution, the other one kinda came out of nowhere. I initially thought maybe that's because I chose the wrong route, but none of the three really set the twist up. To be fair, that gave it a really good shock factor. But I wished it would have been set up a bit more.

Negatives:
- I think the stat raising aspect is an interesting idea, BUT it's way too unpredictable. You just have to trial-and-error your way through the stats, which I found quite frustrating sometimes. In games like this, I want my story choices to matter, so I tend to play with only one save file. But that's pure suicide in this game. I can live with dying because I trusted the wrong person or made a wrong decision. That's on me. But it's really frustrating to die/not being able to finish missions because the water/darkness-magic guy isn't good enough at light magic in week 40. Like, how was I supposed to know that would become relevant?
- The whole point of the player character is to be a neutral party in the palace. Which makes a lot of sense in-universe, but it causes the story to lack personal stakes. They aren't involved in any of the politics or palace intrigues. They are just reacting to everything happening around them with no own goals besides teaching the princes magic and not dying.
- There are a lot of minor characters, who don't have character art and just get represented with black shapes. I understand why it is this way, but it still feels kinda weird to talk to 3 shadow entities for an entire scene.
- There is no voice acting. To be fair, a lot of visual novels don't have voice acting, but the player character even has speaking animations, so it feels like it was supposed to be there.

Using a guide, I'd give this game 8/10. I have my nitpicks, but definitely had a lot of fun with it and binged through a majority of the story. The characters are lovely and the world feels developed enough for me to start the spin-off/sequel afterwards.

In my opinion, the game is very good and worth the full price. Its story had me in tears at one point, however it only took me 5 to finish it through to one of the endings.

If you do play, I highly suggest making multiple saves in your current play through, as it can be trickier in the combat aspect of the game when it comes to stats. FOCUS on intelligence and combat 😭 .

I wish the game had more in-depth backstories for the Princes, and one of the endings (Ending V) ended pretty abruptly, giving no further information on what happened and little satisfaction, other than that I love this game a lot. The art is very pleasing, it isn’t boring. It’s like a good novel come to life.

Once again, I'm in love.

I admit, when I played "Royal Order", I had no idea that there was "Royal Alchemist", that was happening before, and now we'll never know what my impressions would have been if i played these games in sequence.

And even though I liked the sequel more, the first part was also great, and I don't see the point in comparing these two stories, so I'll only talk about "Royal Alchemist".

The main character in this story is charming, and so are the other characters, although I can't say that I liked everyone, and the betrayals that happened in the course of the plot upset me a lot, but that was it.

In any case, I'm very glad that I got to play this game, and I'm looking forward to even more visual novels about this fascinating world.

Love to all 💖

I've completed one romance route so far. The relationship development felt natural; I didn't expect to love their pairing as much as I did. Caught myself blushing at their interactions several times.

I'm glad there were different gender options for the MC, even a custom name option. Some CGs include your chosen MC as well. The art is pretty good and I like the character designs.

The gameplay and survival aspect wasn't hard to grasp, thankfully. You can find little stat icons in certain places, and these show you which stats you may want to focus on. Even if you raise the wrong stats, it's easy to reload to an earlier save. Side note: I never seemed to run out of save slots.

There are multiple endings to explore, but if you're like me, you may find yourself emotionally attached to one T-T

Overall it was a well-thought-out, enjoyable game. Worth the price and effort.

Though this is a good game, it has one fatal flaw of constantly crashing without reason, which taints the game play or when its loading or crashing before you get a chance to even play. This happens on both Standard and Beta Versions of Steam.

Literally want all visual novels to be like this.

I now understand why this sort of game is so popular. Fantastic experience.

Got my first death within about 30 minutes. Then got my first ending about 10 hours in. It's a fun game and the story is super interesting. I'm looking forward to exploring more storylines!

Very interesting and appealing to me a text lover. What a natural and no intentional plot path (at least for me)! Although some points are easy to see in advance, it is still worth playing to feel the smooth emotions here.
The only unhappy point is that it's difficult for me to control the plot path. As it gives me character development choice every week, it still disturbs me for I don't know when and how much I must prepare for the Points Check or I will receive a death ending.

I'd say the best part of the Royal Alchemist are likeable characters, their interactions with the MC and the overall atmosphere. The MC is well-developed and amiable, which is definetely a huge pro for me. The story is interesting, with a few twists that I have not expected. The core gameplay mechanic of classes and points can get a bit tedious considering its randomness. Personally, I've encountered a few situations when I had to load previous saves. There's also a bug with the protector achievement, as it is obtained not when it is supposed to. Overall, the Royal Alchemist is worth recommending, especially, if you like me, long for more fantasy visual novels where you can choose to play as the LGBT+ character.

What I like is the story and the different routes that I can take. I like that it's challenging and that I have to think. Some things i'm not quite happy with are the lack of pictures in the gallery. This is what I play for, those gallery pics lol. But the game is very fun although I played royal order before this one so the art style is somewhat of a setback but still wonderful. Overall, I would love to have some more games like this, like maybe the royal lady in waiting lol. Kidding, but I genuinely enjoy these games a great deal. Thanks