Road To Empress Reviews

I wouldn't have bought and played this if the genAI use had been properly disclosed. It's in some of the extras in this one, but I don't want to support ANY use of genAI. Really sad, because I was loving the gameplay and the way the story was going, and had been looking forward to seeing how the Li Tai AU would go in II.

i love this game so much. my husband and i play it. surprisingly educational and fun. the actors and costuming is AMAZING and beautiful. the comedy is well done.

Sadly so far the game pretends to offer meaningful decisions and branching paths, but in reality there seems to be only one correct route. If you choose anything the game considers wrong, you simply get a bad ending. There is no true interactions with anyone and after two hours i quickly grew bored with all the nonsense. If you ignore all of that tho its an okay movie to watch to waste some time.

This game is a banger and everyone should play it. If i wasn't poor I would buy 1000000000 eggs to throw at Liu Xi Also this doesn't work on steam deck properly.

Would you like some doomed yaoi? Palace drama? Camp characters you can throw in-game eggs and roses at to put them on the faves leaderboard? Countless deaths (so much poisoned soup, man)? Tiny mistakes that get you sliced in half at every twist and turn? Tragedy over 9000? Then you're in luck! Have fun, enjoy the scheming, let's see if you survive the climb to the top :p I do wish they hadn't used gen-AI for the illustrations in certain scenes (mostly side content). We would've gladly accepted paying a bit more for the game had you just recorded the scenes or hired an artist to draw those clips out.

I cannot recommend this game as it contains undisclosed generative-AI scenes. I would not have purchased it if I had known that generative-AI was used in its making. It's a shame, considering the fact that the production quality is incredibly high otherwise. Rather than resorting to using generative-AI, it would have made much more sense to extend the game's production time to include more filmed scenes (and raise the base price of the game, which would have been extremely reasonable), or simply used white text over a black background, which is already used throughout the game. Shame.

If you've ever watched a historic K-drama or C-drama about ladies in the rear palace, then you know what you're in for. It's the rear palace, pretty women (and men!) are around, ambitions run high, betrayal is afoot, and staying alive depends on how well you can interpret the goals of those around you and find allies while fending off enemies. Think Jewel in the Palace, The Empress of China (which is also about Wu Zetian, our protagonist here) or The Apothecary Diaries if you will. To be completely honest, I find myself wondering if this game wasn't going to be just a TV series until plans changed at some point. The actors are very good and the sets are absolutely gorgeous and high quality, not quite what you'd expect from an FMV game. The plot is pretty standard and loosely follows the story of Wu Zetian, the only Chinese Empress-Regnant in history, as she maneuvers the many, many, many... MANY death flags that she comes across while she's doing her best to stay alive and avoid eating too much soup. I swear, I never knew how terrifying soup can be until this game. Also hairpins. Do note that a lot of what is adapted here, while not historically accurate, is based on historic writings about the period and the game will actually give you a bit of a history lesson, when relevant, about what records say actually happened in some situations. It's enough to possibly make people interested in looking this stuff up which is always a nice bonus, but it's not intrusive to the point of turning into a lecture. "But what's the gameplay?" you may ask. Like with most FMV games, you're tasked with watching Cairen Wu's journey while making choices at specific times during the narrative. Some choices will allow you to move forward and progress the story, whereas others will... mostly kill you, if not torture, disfigure, cripple or just outright allow you to . Basically, prepare to see more death screens than a Souls game if you aren't familiar with how court intrigue stories go. But that is actually what makes this game really fun. The deaths are exaggerated to an honestly hilarious degree and the normal endings they put in at some points can be more hilarious than those. There's an ending where you leave the palace and become a football manager and lead your team to victory after victory, for example. Bit anachronistic, but I appreciated the laugh. What you should not expect from this game is the opportunity to see a varied and branching storyline that takes all of your choices into consideration. Most bad choices lead to an immediate bad end and you're able to pick up from the choice immediately and make the right call. Since this is an FMV game, there are only so many scenes they could've filmed so don't ask or expect for too much on that front. There are also microtransactions in the game that do not affect your gameplay. The flowers and eggs that you get from playing and can also buy from the store (for real money and also fake free currency) are there for you to give likes or dislikes to the characters in the game on the Leaderboard. It's weird, you don't have to do it, don't freak out if you see it, you can safely ignore that part. So what about the story? Well, it's pretty light for the most part, even if you do die a lot, but there are some actually good moments that can take you by surprise or even make you feel things. As a strong tip, if you are into the story and characters of the work, please make sure you always check out the extra videos at the end of a chapter. Some of them really go way harder than they needed to. Should you buy this? Well it's pretty cheap and a lot of passion definitely went into it, from the set designs to the actual acting, it feels like they did work hard to make this thing. Just the temperatures they worked in (you can see the pretty thinly dressed cast's breath multiple times in the videos) shows they put work in and were probably freezing every second they're on screen. I'm happy none of them froze to death. So if you like these types of shows, it's definitely a recommendation. I absolutely loved my 8 hours spent playing it and am looking forward for the sequel. There is one thing to mention and that is that some AI "art" (quotes are there because AI doesn't make art) was used in this so if you're adamantly against it, here's your warning. Personally I am against AI "art" being used in anything really, but not so much that I'm ready to ignore all the actual work that did get put into making this. I can only hope that the devs and creatives involved in making it have taken the criticism to heart and will not be using it in the sequel/part 2. Or anywhere else, really.

This game is like all those ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ads you see for those goofy choice games but actually really really good. The plot and different characters are honestly really good. The acting can be a little cheesy overdramatic (as seen in cdramas pretty often) but I honestly dgaf.

Writing this after I noticed other people mention it in their reviews for Road to Empress II, but this game has undisclosed generative AI usage - in particular the extra scene for Consort Yang of Elegance called "Sister's Past" is very obviously AI generated and is also distinct in not being filmed but rather, are generated images based on traditional chinese painting stylistically. Reason I am writing this review now is because I could not find anyone else talking about this when I finished the game, so was unsure about posting it in a review. However, after reading the reviews for Road to Empress II, I saw people discussing that the generative AI usage in that game gets a lot worse, so I thought I should give people a warning on this game as well, since the steam page fails to disclose this fact.