Queen At Arms
When a young woman is forced to lead a mad king’s army, can she do what it takes to survive? A genre-defying fantasy visual novel.
As a young girl, Marcus Cordale was rescued from a violent political coup and taken away from the country of her birth. To protect her identity, she was raised as a boy. On her eighteenth birthday she joins the army of Orthera, in search of her elder brother. But when war breaks out, the Ortheran army is thrown into turmoil, and the young recruit is catapulted through the ranks. Can she step up to lead, and wage a battle against the kingdom that she once called home?
A story of political intrigue, love, and war: Navigate a world rife with political intrigue, bloodshed, and uncertainty as a young soldier still seeking her place in the world. Form strong bonds with others to survive.
Every choice counts: Player agency is everything, and you can act as you please. But be aware—each time you make a decision, it has the potential to affect everything from battle outcomes to your relationships with other characters. And you may lose a friend or two before the war is over!
Prepare for battle: Before major battle sequences, the player has the opportunity to hone many different skills, including swordplay, medicine, and magic. What you take the time to learn can make all the difference in a future skirmish!
Relationships with others: The player’s relationships with NPCs are more than just dry statistics—each character has a story to tell and secrets to uncover. Acting in a certain way towards one person may jeopardize or strengthen your relationship with another.
Steam User 45
When one buys a visual novel, it can be a really mixed bag as to the quality, however I really enjoyed the quality of Queen at Arms.
While not ground-breaking in its story or details, I did enjoy the writing and the inclusion of timed-events, and failure states varied up the action.
Additionally, I liked how they handled some of the battles where you are a commander, and your choices can affect how devastated your soldiers can be. I haven't played through long enough to know whether this will ultimately affect the ending, but it gives me incentive to play again, and make choices to decimate my army to see what happens.
For those interested in romances, this game has several to offer of both genders.
The biggest complaint I can give is that I would have liked to see more battle scenarios, and a little more time devoted to the romance interests. This is just a personal desire to see more such things, and not really a complaint at the dev.
The only other minor complaint I have is that some of the CG art is a little rough, especially when compared to the game's character sprites. The dev might have been going for a specific style in the CGs, but it felt a little out of place.
A final sticking point might be the price. At $24.99 (regular listed price), some people might think this is a little high, especially with no demo. While I didn't mind paying that much, I can understand others finding it a sticking point.
However, if you are curious as to whether this might be something you want, there is a demo up at itch.io
Steam User 29
Pros:
Story
Characters
Writing
Sprites & Backgrounds
Music
Battle System
Cons:
No CG or Ending Gallary
CGs are less refined.
A note about the story and characters:
Queen At Arms isn't about any one thing, so much as a great many things. It's about war, family, romance, gender identity, politics, and more. How well are all of these things handled? Brilliantly. Each player has a chance to explore them all or bypass most of them entirely. It just depends on your choices. Each main character has a purpose for existing outside of their romance to you, and are highly developed in their personalities and histories. No two are alike. Personally it's a huge plus that the story doesn't revolve around romance and have something to do aside from waiting for you to romance them.
Characters and story are the most important things to me in a visual novel, and this makes Queen at Arms one of my favorites.
A note about the battles:
Rather than have a battle system like many Winter Wolves games or random chance, the battles in Queen at Arms are choice based. Some are even timed. I adore this set up as it allows the user to actually think about what they're doing and try to puzzle out which is the correct course. Some choices are certainly more forgiving than others!
A note about my time playing this VN:
I supported the Kickstarter and got a hold of this VN before it was on Steam. My playtime is largely based on how fast I could click through most of the dialogue to start getting the achievements. Some of it I reread (again and again). One of the romances were completely new to me. Some of the more negative outcomes and endings I hadn't explored yet. This game isn't kidding when it says you it has over ten hours of playtime. (Which I realized mine says I have. Wow! I do have a habit of getting distracted and wandering away for a bit though.)
10/10
Steam User 14
One of my very favorite western-style visual novels. Queen At Arms is a medium-complexity fantasy adventure otome, with optional (but fairly integral) romance. The art style you can see from the screenshots, but particularly worth noting on a technical level is the original sountrack - I've very rarely had game music a) get stuck in my head or b) get stuck in my head and NOT drive me batshit, but this manages both.
Writing-wise, the pacing is excellent - there is solid use of timed-choice events that lend urgency to battle scenes and other, smaller-scale conflicts. The major characters (i.e, the romanceable characters + the MC's brother) are almost all wonderfully-written, with clearly-differentiated personalities and voices. There is some unevenness to the writing quality overall, however; some parts of the game are more polished than others, which makes sense given that it was released in two editions, with quite a bit of new content added in the Deluxe edition. (The only full character storyline that obviously suffers from this is Head Archer Cesca's.)
What really makes QaA stand out to me over other VNs of similar objective quality level is its handling of gender, sexuality, and general identity issues. The MC is female-bodied masquerading as male-bodied for most of the game, but can explicitly identify as male, female, or neither, and depending on the relationships (romantic and otherwise) they choose to pursue, in many cases has conversations about identity that both manage to reflect very different points of view via the NPCs and always handle the topic with thoughtfulness and nuance. The romances themselves also are EXTREMELY well-differentiated in terms of "flavor," which is something I see a lot less often in otome games than I'd like to.
All in all, I wholeheartedly recommend QaA to anyone who enjoys VNs with a lot of meaningful choices involved and highly-divergent potential character paths. (It's probably not going to convert anyone who doesn't generally like VNs to lovers of the genre unless they've only ever played strongly-railroaded examples, but I don't consider that a negative.)
(NB: I've played this game an enormous amount of time off of Steam; please pay no mind to the apparent inexperience in my stats here.)
Steam User 2
I really like this game. I have only gotten two endings so far, and I am glad to say that (even with my limited experience) I don't regret spending my money.
I have only one complaint(maybe two): there is no way outside of achievements to keep track of which endings you've gotten, and there is no CG gallery. While I can live without a CG gallery, the lack of ending gallery is quit annoying. I would like it if this was patched in, but I don't think that will happen.
I don't have any complaints with the ''gameplay'' or with the story (so far), so I recommend this game to everyone who is looking for a good VN to read/play.
Steam User 2
Queen At Arms is one of the better visual novels out there - certainly one I would recommend. However , at the current $27.99CAD price, I would say hold off purchasing this game until it goes on sale. $15 or under is definitely worth your money for this wonderful story. There's nothing stale within this world - every character is unique and the world building is awesome. It feels like a breath of fresh air, having interesting dynamics and every character is wildly different from another, each having its own voice that made me smile from the usual visual novels I play that every character sounds the exact same as one another. It's a unique game that I would say anyone interested in visual novels should play. My biggest problem with this game was the art - I found the style off putting, but that is probably more of a personal preference.
Steam User 3
Do you like choose your own adventure games? Do you like romancing adorable/hot people? Do you like leading an entire army and having the wieght of all of their lifes on your shoulder? At least two of those? THEN THIS GAME IS FOR YOU.
Ok but guys. This game is amazing. 11/10 would go back and buy a second copy for full price.
So mechanically? Very sound. Its got a shit ton of save files for you and if you immediately regret a disction just scroll back with your mouse. There's a few timed events were you have to pick what to do in like 20 seconds which feels refreshing cause its still enough time to read all the options and think but not so much time that you don't feel the importance of thinking quickly.
The romance options? SUPER SOLID. I've only done 2 of the routes right now but hot diggity damn are they good. They've got girls and guys for you to seduce and they're all like super good???
Its got mystery and intrege and your gonna be like 'oh what the what??? What going on???' and then your gonna go 'oh daaaaammmm' No spoilers or nothing but i was very impressed by the writing of this story.
And also like you thought this was just a choose your own adventure? NOPE ITS ALSO A CHOOSE YOUR OWN GENDER. Some of the characters are gender locked. And i do mean gender. Not sex. although you do get to choose who you sex.
I love this game and i suspect you will too. Definitly worth the price.
Steam User 1
i absolutely love this game. the character development is amazing. at first you are this shy and timid person but as you go deeper into the story you slowly become more confident and brave which is pretty cool because i feel that there is rarely any main character development while the other characters slowly grow and become a better version of themselves. i really do like how your character is pretending to be a guy because it gives the story and game a bit of a interesting twist and that your not this really girly and typical main female character. i really like all your companions and romance options. currently im trying to romance the prince because he is one of my favourite characters so far. this game was defintely worth the money i paid, i dont regret buying this game at all. i really do reccomend this game to everyone who wants something a bit different from the usual visual novels