The Royal Trap (Review)

The Royal Trap is a visual novel produced by Hanako Games that takes you through an adventure of romance, mystery, thrill, and juicy secret drama with every new and exciting chapter. Now, I personally am not a stickler for Otome games (Dating simulation games where the girl pursues the guy) or visual novel's (games that have a set up story line you follow i which the few choices you make alter your ending) the reason being, because I tend to over-think each step and always end up losing my life or having a bad ending, however in this specific visual novel I was able to get two happy endings and one normal ending.
In This game you play as the witty Madeline Valois, attendant, valet, and companion to Oscar prince of Oceandawyr. Your job all your life has been to protect, train, and groom him into being the perfect prince suitable for marriage with a princess...the only problem is he happens to have fallen in love with you. The two of you attend the giant celebration birthday party of Princess Cassidy, and meet Prince Gaston, Nazagi, and Callum as well as the not so charming duke Pherod, and the servant girl Dolores. Then all of a sudden the princess goes missing, this is where the real story begins and where the demo game ends.
I played for Oscar, Nazagi, and Callum, however if you do get the game in full you have an option to play for Dolores, Gaston, Nazagi, Callum, and Oscar. The only reason I only played for these three is simply because i enjoyed the looks and the effort of artwork put into these characters, as well as the characters themselves.
You can watch the preview here:

As far as the over all artwork the backgrounds, especially outside the castle are kind of Derpy, but other than that the artwork is done well, especially for the end scenes. I also appreciated how the story-line itself slightly changed with the different person you decided to pursue. 

*SPOILER ALERT*
The endings I got were pretty good, as far as the game goes, each route was fairly long and interesting as well.
The first prince I pursued was of course Oscar, his route compared to the others was the shortest and didn't really pry into the mystery of princess Cassidy at all. You end happily with an estate in Gwellinor a small fair of money and you propose to Oscar and the two of you get married:Happy end.

The second prince I chose to pursue was prince Nazagi. With his ending you find out that the "dead" last prince Caspian is actually princess Cassidy, there are a lot of potions involved in this one and Nazagi flirts with you in the most awkward of ways, however in the end, for a Happy End at least, he agree's to publicly marry Caspian/Cassidy in order to preserve peace in the kingdom and you take up the task of becoming his mistress and continuing the royal line.

Lastly I attempted to pursue prince Callum but only got a normal end :(. With Prince Callum you two get married, you enter into the royal family unscathed, you find out Caspian is Cassidy and the two of you inherit some of the kings power. What makes this a "normal end" and not a "happy end" is the fact that Oscar then looks down on you, claims bad things about what is now your kingdom and basically mopes bitterly over the fact that you got together with prince Callum and not him. Nonetheless the artwork is still great.

I greatly enjoyed the game in and of itself, well, for the most part.If you want the demo, there's for mac, PC, and Linux so, here's a link: http://www.hanakogames.com/royaltrap.shtml

The full game is only $19.95, probably has tax too...and if you don't have the money but still want the full version I'm not going to say whether to use a torrent search to find the full pre-cracked torrent download or not...*cough, wink, nudge* But seriously, if we want more foreign products to be translated and sold here in the U.S. modern day pirating is probably not a way to go...unless you don't care, if you don't care I'm not gonna judge.

Anyways, post a comment, grab a link, play a demo, or the full game. Tell me what you think.