My Vow to My Liege -- No Spoiler Review
My Vow to My Liege
System: PC
Price: $9.99
Voice Acting: Yes (Chinese)
ESRB Rating: Not Rated, Reviewer Suggests: T (13+)
Overall Rating: Stole 7/10 ♥s
Pre-Game Perception: Dress like a man and gay-bait other men, probably with a big Mulan reveal. I just hope it doesn’t make the MC decide to be more feminine in the end for ♥love♥.
Morning-After Reflection: Ancient Chinese war-drama with mysticism and large-scale combat. Romance takes a backseat to saving the world, and no one important cares that MC is a woman.
Story: “In the last years of the dynasty, during the Spring and Autumn Period (approximately between 771 - 476BC), the Liege of a certain nation struggles of hegemony, and wars seemed endless.The Kingdom of Ng defeated their old enemy, the Kingdom of Yue. In the course of the war, the King of Ng, HéLǘ, sustained fatal injuries as he passed the throne to the new king "FuChai", a girl.
To fulfil the secret and long-standing wish of their ancestors of breaking their sacred vow with the Dragon God, she is forced to live a lie. Faced with countless bloody battles to seal the Dragon God, there suddenly appears a reprieve…
Amid the chaos, who will loyally sacrifice their life and who will plot a scheme of betrayal——
Will they choose the man over the country? Love over hate? Who will they finally end up with?”
Interest Rating: 8/10. I was ready for an MC that competently runs a country and deals with bloody battles to seal away a Dragon God, it all sounded awesome. The art was lovely as well. And the price! I jumped on this on release.
MC: The MC’s name is TengYu, which is alterable along with her nickname AhYu. This is nice, but also doesn’t matter a whole lot through the common route because as you can see in the description above, the MC goes by FuChai, which is not able to be changed. Her nickname comes up several times in the common route, so I suppose if you wanted to have that changed it would make a difference, but you’re playing at least ⅔ of the game before MC is referred to as TengYu. Keep that in mind when you’re considering what you want to be called, putting it in as the nickname might be best. The name reverts back to TengYu and AhYu everytime you select a New Game.
TengYu is never onscreen, and only seen in CGs - practically 90% of them. She is the only unvoiced character in the game. TengYu is possibly a tall woman - the only LI who overshadows her is depicted as rather large himself - everyone else is taller, but not enough for the standard 8”-12” we get with Japanese otome. She has long black hair, and looks rather feminine in frame despite it coming up a few times that she has a masculine or warrior’s build. The story starts with her at 14, but quickly moves to TengYu being 19 for the main story. Okay, okay, we know what she looks like and all the mechanics associated with her, but you’re wondering what type of woman this warrior king is, aren’t you? Let me tell you, she’s exactly the type of person you’d expect to be King of Ng.
TengYu fits the role, not flawlessly, but well. She has been instructed on battle tactics to run her armies. She has learned the political maneuvering required to handle court and the tenuous friendships with neighboring kingdoms. It doesn’t stop with just learning, TengYu literally fights her battles. She learned fighting arts in order to lead her men into squirmishes. She is a strong woman that has grown from her hardships. TengYu is also vulnerable at times, which I think adds to the completeness of her character. She’s the type of MC I’d want to see in a game; not just depending on the men around her, but leading and following, as they are more experienced in certain areas than she is, and she is more experienced in others.
My only complaint comes from something that might not bother many people. There are times when TengYu refers to herself as a freak or monster because she is “neither man nor woman” since she is a woman that has masqueraded as a man for so long that she thinks she lacks any feminine features any longer. Sometimes it is gentle bemoaning about wanting to be more like a woman, and sometimes it’s severe in nature making me believe she hates pretending to be a man despite her determination and dedication to wanting to run her kingdom. It bothered me the times it came up because I wasn’t sure if TengYu was making a character statement, or if the writers or translators were throwing in some slights against the gender non-conforming populace. I was further confused when TengYu rebuked her duty of providing an heir, not wanting to be used for her womanhood. It seems she doesn’t want to be either male nor female in the roles that they had at the time.
Likability Rating: Shu. TengYu is a stronk, capable woman. She uses the men in her charge to further her agenda, but also depends on their expertise, making a well-balanced character. I do enjoy that she isn’t afraid to murder some peeps, and I like her quick-thinking. Very believable character.
Plot: My Vow to My Liege is a game about a woman (TengYu) who takes on the identity of a man (FuChai) in order to inherit a kingdom from her father and continue to allow the Kingdom of Ng to prosper. That’s really the bulk of it. There is also a sacred vow that her ancestors have pledged to a Dragon God that her father attempted to break, and now that falls onto TengYu’s shoulders as the current bearer of the vow’s seal. I honestly thought there would be more at home politics and interactions, but the story spans several kingdoms, which causes a lot of personal relationships to simmer while it becomes more of a war-drama than a political-drama. Basically, I was thinking The Tudors and I got Clone Wars.
The common route is the meat of the game, and largely the same with very few differences based on the choices you are presented with. After ten chapters of the common route - which sounds like a lot, I know, but really isn’t because the game isn’t terribly long - you get onto one of four routes depending on the LI who benefited most from your choices, and there you get between four and seven additional chapters. Each route handles the rest of the game differently, although the story follows the same flow since it is historical fiction, so certain battles crop up in each route. LIs don’t completely disappear in other routes, since they are all rather important to the MC and plot, but they’re not playing central roles with lots of screentime.
Replayability Rating: ★★★★☆ Each route focuses on a different LI, their struggles, and their role in coming to a solid ending to the story. The common route can be skipped after your second playthrough, but if you want to get the most out of the game, play each route.
Love Interests: Do you like men of action? How about warrior men? How about warrior men of action? You’re getting that here! My Vow to My Liege has four handsome hunks you get to choose from because you’re the King. Or maybe it was because you were a princess, I’m not sure, and in the end it doesn’t matter. Point is, you get to sink your teeth into press your lips against entwine your fingers with these guys as if it were fate that brought you there. Each dude has two endings, a good and a bad (with GouJian having 2 bad endings). There is no true route, and all endings can be considered canon, so take your pick of whichever dude you’re interested in.
Normally I go over route order here, but seriously, do whomever you want. Once you get on a guy’s route it becomes more focused on the LI rather than how MC kicks ass and chews bubblegum (and she’s all out of gum), so there really isn’t a “best” option here. ChenFeng seems to run lowest on the popularity polls. And according to the Steam achievement guide, they do ChenFeng > GouJian > YiGuang > ZiXu in order to maximize the use of saves (all two of them shared between three routes…). That’s the order we’ll cover today. Also, I can’t find a picture with all of our men together besides the title screen photo, and I used that for the title photo for this blog, so have one of the Head Priest who is not datable, Zheng Dan.
ChenFeng is the first LI we’re introduced to, so it makes sense that they’d cover him first. I think he’s rather easy on the eyes, and I do enjoy some power dynamics that we’re likely to see here since TengYu is the King that ChenFeng serves. It isn’t explained until his route what sort of relationship he has with TengYu, so I had to cobble together a role for him. He seems to be her attendant - he helps her change and draws her bath - but he also seems to hold a high rank in the Royal Guard and be TengYu’s personal bodyguard. Whatever he is, I find him almost adorable. He’d be more adorable if he eased up a little. He’s very intense. They all are, to be honest. Due to his position, he is well aware that TengYu is a woman, so no surprises there. Also, overall, I liked his route and relationship better in my head, there were many missed opportunities when it came down to how this could have played out.
GouJian sets off all my warning bells every time he’s on screen. He reminds me of a certain character archetype that isn’t “bad”, just much more than what we’re shown. That’s the feeling I get from the first interactions. Translation labels him with the term “slave” but really he’s just a political prisoner atoning for his crime, which I suppose could be considered a slave, but in America those are two distinctly different things. GouJian is the second character to be introduced (though we don’t see his sprite on that meeting), so, yet again, it makes sense on picking him next. He’s a little less intense than ChenFeng, but not much. The relationship between GouJian and TengYu is complicated, but he is also aware that she is a woman and goes by FuChai (the King of Ng).
I did say that you’d get many warrior men in this game, but YiGuang is the least warrior of the warriors. He’s also the least intense of the intense men. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t fight, he just isn’t a warrior-type, he’s a mage. After seeing YiGuang and Zhang Dan, I’m ready to give myself over to Chinese mysticism. He has a very specific CG that gets reused 20 or so times throughout the game, so I won’t be posting it here today because I’m f*cking tired of seeing it. Anyways, this is the childhood friend route, so he is also aware that TengYu is female. The thing about YiGuang is that he is very different from the other LIs. Not only is he a mage that doesn’t carry a sword, but he’s so laid back that his attitude comes off as flippant most of the time (something I see as a draw, rather than a penalty). He’s also very pretty. So pretty that I originally thought he was the MC since she isn’t shown or advertised on the game at all. Though I’d say his route was better orchestrated than ChenFeng’s, I still enjoy my headcanon better than what I was given.
Save the best biggest for last. ZiXu is the LI I commented on that towers over TengYu. He’s a bear of a man, though still slim in figure because all us thirsty fans like that tapered waist that leads right down to the jun-- Getting off topic! His title is Prime Minister, which… is not thaaaat faaar off the mark. He seems to be in charge of matters of state - though below the King and as more of an advisor - and also appears to command military matters, the Royal Guard, and crime and punishment in lieu of the King. I liked ZiXu and his rough and tumble ways. The moment he was introduced I knew I was going to fall in line with his overall wishes even if some of them are a bit murdery. Okay, most of them are a bit murdery. He has an interesting background that only gets addressed on his route, and because of his loyalty and position, I felt he had the most natural interactions with TengYu. Since he was Prime Minister to the previous King, ZiXu is well aware of TengYu’s sex, which concludes that 4/4 LIs know TengYu is female before romance blossoms.
Boy Crazy Rating: 78%. They’re not bad boys, they’re just ones that I’ll forget because the game as a whole didn’t leave a lasting impression on me. I’m not sure I’ll look back and remember any of these husbandos, so they’re welcome to join my husbando army, but they’re certainly not leading it.
Romance: There is little to no romance in the common route, and I wonder if that is because the writers wanted to allow for the reader to romance whomever they wanted. At the same time, we’re told there is romance from before where the story starts. When I got on my first route, it was suddenly romantic with sudden professing of love and felt a little jarring since the MC didn’t seem to have any sorts of romantic feelings or physical attraction towards the character, she was too busy being a badass MC that ran a kingdom. Then the switch gets flipped and here we are with our romance that appeared out of nowhere. And it gets super romantic.
I don’t like those types of romances. I like the slow burns. I want to see the attraction from the beginning of the game, or at least the build up, not the off then on like we get here. I really feel it could have been developed differently and worked for everyone, especially with MC in the position of power over all the LIs like she was. I’m not saying make her forward and ordering them into bed, quite the opposite, actually. A single thought or two about how important these people are to her in her life as a woman and not as a political weapon would have set at least some precedent for those supposed blossoming feelings. She obviously cares for them, but it doesn’t seem like it’s love, and more like it is that they are her people helping her with her kingdom.
Heart Palpitation Rating: C+. Begrudgingly, because it’s not the type of romance I like, but it is also very romantic for the last ⅓ of each game route. Maybe I’m a monster that wasn’t moved as much as others in this regard.
Spice: I think the real answer here is: No. The answer I want is: Yes. And the answer I’m going to give is a long and drawn out explanation of: Sort of? First off, I don’t buy the whole “it was acceptable for the time” excuses that people give when we’re reading a modern rendition of a story. Even if longing looks were provocative for the time, I’m still going to rate its spice level based on what would be spicy now. Secondly, I don’t have a secondly, or any other points to put up before I get into the reason why I think the spice is mild leading to racy, but I started with a “first off” so I had to keep going with it.
We don’t get any CGs with man nips, but there is a sprite with them. That already makes My Vow to My Liege spicier than 85% of otome games out there. Man nips are sacred. We get our kissing CGs, we get some sexual tension scenes, but the game focuses much more on the emotional love level rather than the tense moments of wanting to bed down the other person. Since the scope of the game is much larger than boinking, the relationships are built in a manner that the spice is lacking. When partial nudity is mentioned, it’s so casual because sex isn’t the focus of the scene, or the tone that is set. I really did enjoy this because that’s how serious matters should be handled: seriously without sexualized thoughts because skin is showing. But I think it also requires the game to give you more naughtiness in order to pass the casual nudity threshold into spicy territory.
Cold Shower Rating: Fail. No real fanservice and no real sexual content leaves this game rather bland in the heat department. You might be warmed from the love, but that doesn’t get the blood pumping. Get yourself a hot shower.
Angst: It certainly isn’t the angstiest game I’ve played, but it’s up there. The entire story is angst-driven, and then war, and demons, and spirits, and all that good shit that makes things extra angsty. Add in a dash entire jar of LI background angst and you’ve got yourself one big angst pie. I wouldn’t eat it if I were you, but it’s mesmerizing to watch it being made. For real real though, the game starts off with attempting to murder a Dragon God and the bloody battle that ensued. This is the opening scene. This is what sets the story. Expect it to continue. There is a lot of violence in this game, and a lot of descriptive scenes of blood, but not gore. There are even some sprites with blood, which isn’t surprising, just that it’s not terribly common in a romance game. There’s no end to the death and drama that My Vow to My Liege has in store for you.
Drama Llama Rating: 8.5/10. The drama llama will trot just fast enough to outrun death chasing you; but sometimes they get tired and slow down - just a little - enough for you to feel that cold presence of despair that could be your demise.
Voice Acting: This is my first Chinese voiced title, so it was an experience. I think I’ve seen maybe four Chinese movies in my lifetime, which is not many, and if I remember, one of them was silent all the way through. All this to say that I don’t really know how to feel about the voice acting in this game. I think it was good, but I don’t understand the nuances of Manderin to know if someone was being rude or formal, or rude while formal. I could glean the strong emotions from the spoken text; when someone was crying, I could hear them crying. Brain puts out: This is supposed to be sad. (Thank you brain.) But I find it very hard to really rate the VA because I have no basis to go off of. I’ve heard it’s really good, but I wasn’t moved as much as I thought I was going to be. Perhaps it was my boredom with the game as a whole as well.
Expression Rating: Ryo. Average rating due to my own inexperience.
Art: If everything else wasn’t already a strong-point for drawing my interest to the game, the art was certainly another that swayed me towards purchasing My Vow to My Liege. I know the types of things I like, and this game gives me at least some of it. The backgrounds are detailed. The sprites are clean with hard lines. Each character is different, so there is no mistaking who is who (at least until you get to the side characters that have no eyes and most use the same model). Each sprite has at least two sets of clothes, a few different expressions, and a few different poses. They dip when bowing to MC, so there is some movement, but not animation. It’s still the sprite, it just goes down half-an-inch on screen to indicate movement in the game, then comes back up. I really liked the style, it may not be top-tier beautiful in my book, but it is something I enjoyed seeing.
Still Picture Rating: ★★★★☆ Many clean. Such coordinated. Very theme.
CGs: Sometimes the CGs for a game are miles better than the sprites and game art, but for My Vow to My Liege that is not the case. The consistency between sprite and CG is really nice, imo. It just makes the game art that much better so when you switch to a CG you’re not reminded of all the details they left out of the sprites. Because the art was so wonderful, I wish we were given more of it. To be fair, there are 26 unique CGs, totalling 57 when you count alterations. So there are not a small number of CGs for this short-length game. It just feels so small because if you break that down, that’s six per character, and with two endings, plus an epilogue, that’s three CGs per character outside of the endings and epilogue CGs. That’s where it gets tiny. Three. There were many moments I wanted to see CGs of what was going on, but there just weren’t enough to go around. It certainly made the game feel less impactful when those scenes were not displayed in all of their glory.
Look at this Photograph Rating: 80%. So few given when there were so many memorable moments in the game. What was given was good quality, but at a certain point quantity matters as well.
UI/Mechanics: There are some neat features with MVtML that really don’t matter when playing the game, but are fun none-the-less. On start-up, there’s a characters section where you can read about the main characters of the game. They even add in likes and strengths for each character, which, unfortunately, do not get put into the game per say, but they’re fun to read and imagine for your best boy or girl (ShaoJiang is included!). There are also links to each voice actor’s individual page, and achievements on Steam for clicking the button to visit them. I thought this was super cool, even if I can’t read any of it. We’ve gone way past the social media age, so finding a way to give the VA further credit is something I was astonished I had never seen before.
The glossary is unlocked before you begin the game. Unfortunately, when glossary terms are highlighted while playing, you cannot click them to open the glossary. However, you can go into the quick menu and open the glossary from the game. There is a short rundown on how to save, load, and advance the story with the mouse, no keyboard buttons are given even though some of them work to control the game instead of using the mouse. This is probably because keyboards are different between countries and translation time and effort wasn’t given to this section.
Otherwise, it’s your pretty standard UI/Mechanics. Normal visual novel format with no special mechanics for the game. Small configuration menu, but it covers the basics including turning voices and background music on or off. I found it interesting that sound effects were linked with voice audio, not BGM. Plenty of save slots are offered. And the UI itself was lovely, not as stunning as I’ve seen, but better than most, imo.
What’s this button do? Rating: B. Covers what’s needed, could use a few extra tweeks, but also provides a few extras that were neat.
Errors: Let’s start with the first thing people are going to notice: the translation. It is very good. Super good. Possibly too good. I think it’s a matter of the way Chinese language is, though I’m not certain; but this is the second Chinese original game I’ve played, and I noticed only afterwards that the writing for both can get very metaphorical and flowery instead of being direct about what is happening in a scene. They’re not written by the same scenario writer or even published by the same company, so I can only imagine it is the way story-telling works in Chinese. Don’t quote me on that. Just because I noticed a similarity doesn’t mean that all games are like this, or that the language is also like this. Anyways, funny thing to be putting in an error, right? Well, I meant to just say that the game is translated well and got off on my own tangent. There are text errors, and quite a few of them, but most of them are minor errors that do nothing but annoy the punctuation gods out there. The amount of misspellings is minimal. There are some missing words. And I found only a handful of text wrapping issues. Aaaand that’s it for translation! Good stuff.
But… (there’s always a but…) I found two other errors that were more than a minor nuisance. The biggest is the skip read text feature. In the config menu there is a button that you can check to force skip unread text; the game starts with it unchecked for obvious reasons. I had not checked this box, yet when I went through for my second playthrough, the game decided not only to skip my read text but to keep zooming through anything I hadn’t seen yet as well. I was headed towards my second route, and before I knew it the chapter change had zipped past along with 15-20 seconds of story. That doesn’t sound like much if we’re talking normal speed, but their skip feature is fast. Luckily I could read the log, but even then I was left not knowing where the common path branched because I’m sure it is before you hit the first LI chapter. Others have complained of the opposite, that the skip read text feature refuses to work despite the text being read before. Basically, it’s broken.
The second feature I noticed that didn’t work properly was the BGM resetting. Not a big deal since I rather liked the BGM, but every time you finished a route, it would reset itself to being on, even if the menu still had it checked as muted. You can uncheck, then recheck the box to get the BGM to silence itself once again, but the point is that it isn’t working as intended™. That’s it. Two mechanical errors and many tiny text issues. Certainly doesn’t help the quality of enjoyment from the game, especially if you want to skip the text to pick new choices, but I doubt these are big enough to ruin someone’s experience.
Here there be Bugs Rating: Fail. Though the translation passes, the fact that you can’t successfully skip read text - a feature offered and often used being broken - hits this with a fail. You’re not going to see detrimental creepy crawlies here, but you know the head of the colony has made its home in your house.
Background Music: It’s so good, guys! It’s soooo good. I wanted to buy the OST, but it’s as much as the game; which makes sense because music isn’t cheap, but still… Do I really want to pay that much? Would I be asking this if the game was $20 and the original soundtrack was still $9? Probably not. I’m probably buying it. It’s on my wishlist at least, but this year has so many otome goodies coming out that I have to be strategic with my spending in order to get everything. :sigh: The sad life of a fan.
The BGM is really suitable for the majority of the game. There were some portions that the BGM would cut out, and it was odd to me to the point I thought that it had broken, but then it would come back in after a stretch so it must just be how it was coded. I really enjoyed the mood it set, and could just listen to it on its own for extended periods of time. Or, I suppose I could just run the game non-stop with strategic saves so I can hear the music whenever I want… Hmmm...
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