Description :
Angelique Duet is a Role-Playing game, developed and published by Koei, which was released in Japan in 2006.
Take
Age of Empires. Strip it down to the basic idea and dumb the heck out of it. Take
Tokimeki Memorial.
Flip the genders and simplify it past all recognition. Merge the two of
them in a slapdash kind of way and market the result to girls. The
result:
Angelique. And it worked, too. So well that the series
has spawned 4 sequels, several spin-offs, an anime and a manga and is
still going strong. Clearly there's a market for
empire-building-while-bishie-wooing games out there, who'd have thought?
Despite the fancy name,
Angelique Duet
is just a remake of a port of the original Angelique game for SNES. You
play a young girl from a magic academy, selected as a candidate to
replace the Queen of the Universe (no, really). As a test to prove your
worth, you and one other rival are given a continent each to develop. If
you can build enough houses on your continent before your rival does,
you win. In order to do so you need the cooperation of 9 Guardian
bishies, who are there to obey orders and do the real work while looking
pretty.
Wow, a race to develop a whole continent? That sounds
tough! I've gotta think about technology and defences and food and
minerals, and…whoa, slow down, wait a minute. Think simple! You don't
have to worry about any of that stuff. All you have to do it…wait for
this…ASK the Guardians to do it for you! Specifically, every day you go
up to one or the other and ask them to “pour their power” into the land.
You start the game with 4 heart points. When you ask a guardian to pour
a little power into your land, it takes 2 hearts. Pour a lot of power
and it takes 4 hearts. When you're out of hearts there's nothing you can
do but go back to your room and sleep till the next day when you can
repeat the process.
When enough power is poured in, a house
appears on the land and the population of your continent increases.
That's it. No need to worry about food or water or resources or
anything; just ask the Guardians for help then sit back and relax. Every
weekend you visit the continent and speak to the headman. He'll tell
you which Guardian's power the land needs, e.g. we could really use some
of Marcel's Green power. Then you spend the week asking Marcel to pour
in some power and reap the benefits. Easy!
The top screen of the
DS is taken up by Guardian stats and a helpful screen showing what
“nutrients” your continent is lacking, so you really can't go wrong if
you just pay attention. Even though your rival occasionally tries to
hinder your progress, for most of my playthrough she spent her time
doing little else but hanging out with the boys. In any case I
befriended her really quickly by hanging out in her room all the time,
then we had a heart-to-heart late at night with sparkly fairy effects
and stuff and after that she left me alone. I really would have liked a
Hard Mode, or a two-player mode for some real competition.
The
other thing you do in this game is to romance the Guardians till they
like you. If a Guardian likes you enough, he'll help you out or harm
your rival without even being asked to. And if he really, really, really
likes you by the end of the game, you get the choice to abandon your
pursuit of the throne and marry him, in which case your rival gets the
throne and you still get a happily ever after ending. Personally I
decided not to settle for less than full power. You can always have
affairs on the side, right? *wink*
The graphics are decent for an
early DS title. The character designs should be of more concern to
anyone planning to pick this up, but those designs are very dated. Think
early 90s Flower Comic shoujo manga heroes: rainbow hair, long, thin
faces and pale, anorexic bodies. The bishes run the gamut: dark and
brooding, nice guy, jailbait, crossdressing-but-straight, warrior-type,
silly type… you'll find someone to like in there by all means. The
sound? You know what, I'm going to stop rating sound in video games. I
never notice anything anyhow. The quality was bad, but the tunes
themselves I don't remember.
Overall, it's a very short game. I
finished it in one day and have no desire to replay, so I wouldn't call
it good value for money. On the other hand those 10 hours or so were the
most fun I'd had all year so I'm on the fence about a final score. If
you choose to replay there are several endings you can go for, and
there's also the option of playing as your rival Rosalia instead should
you be so inclined. In the end I can only recommend
Angelique Duet
for bored casual players, especially girls and shoujo manga lovers, but
those people, if they do choose to play, will most likely enjoy it a
lot. Take that how you will.
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