A Little Lily Princess Reviews

This is a charming little yuri vn, and I liked the life that the (very light) management mechanics gave to the gameplay (especially since there's no choices to be made here beyond who you choose to romance) but as a huge fan of the original book, the story left me feeling pretty hollow. One of the great strengths of the book is the emotional connections that Sara forms, which sustain her through some absolutely dreadful experiences. And a lot of what makes this game shine is how it expands upon those relationships--every character in this game is in the original novel, but many of them have a very small role in the story. The devs have turned each of these characters into full, three-dimensional people, each with her own life and story and relationship with Sara. And the first act of the game is full of these lovely friendships--you get to have one event per week with the character of your choice (assuming you have the stats for it), and the game outright advises you to focus on two or three at the most, as you won't have time to befriend everyone. Even taking this advice, you will have an event every week, stats permitting, and you might not finish all the routes. The second half, however, is eerily empty. You'll have an event with everyone you befriended in the first act, and then there will be a well-signposted event whose selection will lock you into a character's romance route. Once you're locked to a romance route, the other characters don't speak to you again, even in the game's main story, even platonically. It's jarring to have these friendships you built evaporate overnight, doubly so for the characters whose routes are explicitly non-romantic. And the act two routes don't have enough events to fill even half the weeks in that act. The game thus gets lonely, grindy, and a hair boring in spite of Sarah's budding romance. It would have greatly benefited from shorter, platonic routes that can be played alongside the romance, even if you can only select one of each.