I never knew how many extraordinarily handsome men Cleopatra had to choose from. If the cast of Crown of the Nile: Cleopatra’s Choice is anything to go by, then I have a newfound admiration for her ability to reel them in.
Story
We begin right at the climax of Cleopatra’s fateful end, unable to prevent her demise.. only to switch, temporarily, into modern day western world where the player character is taking part in a work-based group chat. Initially, this feels like a confusing start, but it soon makes sense as our ancient-Egypt-obsessed heroine is encouraged to take a holiday in the land of her dreams, and as a result of a convenient bit of isekai wish fulfilment, the next time she wakes, she finds herself quite literally the embodiment of a young Cleopatra, joint Pharaoh of historical Egypt.
She shares rule with her younger brother, 13 year old Ptolemy XIII, a naïve child whose mind is continuously poisoned by the chief eunuch Pothinus, the conniving Regent who constantly manoeuvres to undermine her in favour of the young boy whom he can control and ultimately use to claim dominion over the country for himself. Pothinus, however, is no fool, his obsequious behaviour when in audience with the Queen serving to allay any suspicions from the court or wider population, thereby making himself very difficult to call out or remove from his position of authority without a public outcry that Cleopatra herself is scheming to sell out her country to Rome.
Visuals and sound
The game’s store page freely admits to AI usage, and the incredible detail of all graphics in the game are a bit of a giveaway, but it’s difficult to assess the degree to which it is responsible for the spectacle that we are presented with. All characters are displayed with the utmost detail, but also have changing expressions while still looking authentically the same person – I haven’t come across AI able to achieve this combination before which leads me to believe that a huge amount of manual effort has also been put into the game’s final result.
Aurally, we have theme appropriate music which is very good, assorted sound effects and expression voicing (“Oh!” and the like, but no spoken sentences).
Interaction and experience
As with all visual novels, player involvement amounts to making decisions which sway the flow of the story, and in this case, can lead to a whole array of unsuccessful conclusions (50 in total) along with others which will take you right through all 5 chapters to the point of reclaiming your throne following betrayal and exile.
The game is made using the Godot engine, which seems a strange choice despite the immaculate presentation, as this has also resulted in a whole host of familiar user functions not being available, which does have an effect on player QoL.
• The first thing to hit me was the text speed, which is swift but cannot be made to display in full instantly. Yes, it is fast enough to display so that you are not waiting for it to appear while reading, but I find this constant movement during reading to be an unwelcome distraction, and this forced me into having to click every caption twice to move the story on. Such a small point, but it is burdensome and tiring on the player and the absence of “instantly displayed text” is a far-too-common occurrence in games of this genre.
• The next blow was no rollback feature. Just once, I accidentally overtapped my trackpad, and that was the caption gone unless I replayed the whole scene. (There’s also no history log).
• A further failed inclusion is the absence of a skip-read-text feature. This shouldn’t really have an impact on first run through, and for reasons to be explained isn’t quite as frustrating as it might have been, but nonetheless, my excessive click/tap count went up way higher than it needed to.
• There is no button to exit the game! You can choose between fullscreen and windowed display, but the only way out is to click the top-right X in windowed mode, so if you have gone fullscreen and want to end your playing session, you’re going to have to switch to windowed mode first (else switch to your Steam library page and stop it from there.)
• There are a couple of instances of player choices that are timed, and the timer runs down so quickly that it runs out before you get chance to read the accompanying text, making them total pot-luck in taking a guess and selecting one quickly enough. This could be easily resolved by starting the timer after the caption has completed printing out.
• If you want to change any of the Settings options, you have to back right out of gameplay to the front menu, and then you’ll find that there is no “return to where you were” option available.
The “Save” System
OK, let’s be upfront about it: there is no user save function available in-game, and when reloading the game for a new playing session, you can’t continue from exactly where you left off, unless you get lucky.
With what must read like an irreconcilable list of negatives, I want to assure you that it does get better. Much better. So stick with it if you were interested enough to start reading this review.
The story format is that of five substantial chapters, each of those being split into a healthy number of much smaller scenes. These are displayed as you progress in horizontal flow chart form, accessible by using one of the function buttons in the top left while in story mode.
The player cannot save their position from within gameplay, but can, at any point, drop into the flowchart screen (including from the main menu by selecting the “All chapters” option) and click on any previously reached scene to continue from the start of that scene.
This does mean that, if you left the game part of the way through a scene, you will have to replay a number of captions. This is a failing, but it’s not a huge one. After completion, I picked a couple of scenes at random, and counted the number of captions before the next one. One of them, without a player choice, was a mere 19 in length. Another one, with a player choice in the middle, lasted for 35. That can be a fair chunk of extra clicking, but it isn’t deal-breaking. As each scene is also titled, it does make it easy to find exactly where you want to revisit when looking for alternative routes or endings.
A suggestion here for the devs: Add an icon to the screen at each first caption of every new scene. When a player sees this, they would then know that it is safe to back out and be able to return to exactly the same point.
The positives
Alright, that’s enough of highlighting where the game could provide a more comfortable experience.
What you really need to know is whether it’s actually any good and worthy of your time and expenditure.
My answer is a resounding YES.
Where Crown of the Nile excels is in two of its primary attributes.
• Its visuals. Everything is top drawer. And the men are heartthrob quality. If Mark Antony was around and looked like he does in-game today, he’d be the world’s hottest film star.
• More importantly, the story. It’s immersive, enjoyable, has enough little twists to keep you absorbed, always gives you a reason as to why a bad decision went wrong, and when that does happen, the playthrough doesn’t close, it offers you a chance to choose again and just drops you back a few captions.
I’ve tried not to give away too much of what happens so there’s enough mystery left to encourage you to go and find out for yourself. At £9, you’re getting high quality for your outlay, and the English is impeccable, too.
Otome Lovers wishes to thank Butterspire for providing a free review copy of this game.
Please follow our curator page, Otome Lovers, if you’d like to see more reviews like this one!
Leave a Reply