Name: Mei-King (82.00% in 5 votes)
Type: STG
Platform: WINDOWS
Company: Nikukyuu
Release date: 1998
Reviewed by: Lamuness
My first impressions of this game is actually pretty good. Nice concept, nice graphics, nice gameplay. However, at the end of the game, I was EXTREMELY EXTREMELY pissed. I will talk more about that later.
This game is sort of like Princess Maker, but a little different. You are given a job to, in 5 years of time, help the king expand his kingdom which basically start off very small with very little population. Along with you are girls with different backgrounds, talents, attributes who can help you with your mission. The stuff you do involves building streets, boost the economy and population, explore frontiers to expand your territory, recruit soldiers to help fight off monsters that invade the kingdom occasionally, and others. Each week you choose what kind of tasks you and your party want to do and on Sundays you can choose to do whatever you want, which includes go see the king and the princess, or go out with the girl you love, etc.
This game has very very nice graphics. The BGM is not bad, and it has voices during most of the important events, and they are very well done. The scenes are nice (except the one I am talking about later) and are often humorous. Also, at the beginning of the game, you are asked several "personality" questions which determine what type of girl to be your first party member, which I think is a good design.
However, this game has a couple of drawbacks. First the game is pretty slow at loading graphics, even when I set the game spd to be the fastest. Also, you have 5 years time to complete your mission, and you set your tasks evey week, so 5x52 = lots of stuff to do, and I can tell you that it gets EXTREMELY medicore and boring by the end of the game that everything is the same. It's nice to see the little village grow, but once you maxed out everything, it gets boring. In addition, the battles are way too simplistic and I find it very tedious and sometimes too difficult and unfair (because I can't figure out the algorithms).
And now, the very very biased part of the review. I don't do this in reviews but I really have to because I am really pissed. This game is extremely unfair at endings, and I have no idea how the game computes stuff! As a general rule, in bring-up simulations, the first time I play it I always do the good things and avoid all bad/immoral stuff so I get a good ending, and then perhaps I get mischevious the second time. This is exactly what I did in Mei-King. I maxed out all the stats, I covered all the land, there is no crime in the city, and the people are very happy with what I do. But at the end of the 5 year period, when I go see the King for the ending, I (person in the game) called my sprite partner to "fetch all soldiers, attack the castle, burn everything, steal all items, abduct all virgins so I can have fun every night, and anyone disobeys me gets killed".....I got a dictator-like ending. When I saw this ending, I literally fall in pieces: WHAT THE HELL DID I DO WRONG???? I did the best I could, I didn't let the kingdom down, I fought off all invaders, WHY??
Sorry about the biased section, but I find the ending (and the game) to be very unfair at judging things. If anyone has a different opinion on this feel free to E-mail me.
Overall, this game at first glance is very attractive with nice gameplay, sounds and graphics. However, as I go into the game, this impression seems to diminish, especially at the ending.
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