Temirana: The Lucky Princess and the Tragic Knights Review

Temirana: The Lucky Princess and the Tragic Knights is an otome visual novel developed by Ichicolumn Inc and published by Idea Factory. For those unfamiliar with otome games, it’s where you play as a young woman and you can choose between different male love interests in the form of branching storylines. And of course, they’re pretty much always visual novels. In this regard, Temirana has the general format that fans of the genre will be used to.

The first thing you do is name your princess, but I chose to stick with the default name: Cecilia — Ces for short — Farias Temirana. She’s the third princess of the kingdom and about to come of age, thus claiming her official title. She lives alone on an estate with only her ladies in waiting, Nilda and Ino, and her guard, Daryls. The first route that all players need to go through is the Common Route. But what does the Common Route entail? Well, Ces needs to establish her Holy Knight Order.

Ces believes that anyone can become a knight, and in her first royal engagement, meets her prospective candidates… whom she doesn’t realise they are until she decides upon it herself. See, Ces has a mysterious power: the Light of Good Fortune, where a bright light will lead her to a choice, mostly from danger, but it also leads her to her knights. These knights are:

• Josephy, a prince from the former kingdom of Zondarig, who seeks an audience with the King.
• Kiya, an orphaned peasant who suffers from memory loss.
• Tobias, an ill noble, and friend and employer of Kiya.
• Adel, a peasant who dreams of becoming a knight despite his class.
• Milan, an ornamental blacksmith who lives for his craft.

All five of these characters are reluctant to become knights at first, but Ces is able to convince them. Unfortunately, she’s also unaware of just how horrible Temirana’s class system is. Peasants and Commoners are amongst the lowest classes, and even Josephy, a prince, is seen as a Commoner due to his being from another country. So, Ces’s sisters (who hate her guts, on account of their belief that Ces is cursed) do everything in their power to change the rules to stop her from choosing her own Order.

It’s narrative-heavy, but I enjoyed the Japanese voice acting and the background soundtrack. Each character has a distinct personality, and by choosing the correct answer when interacting with your knight out of two choices, you’ll find that their relationship will grow, and by the end of the Common Route, you will move onto a specific route that focuses on your chosen captain of the order. During my first playthrough, I ended up with Kiya as my captain.

There are only five chapters in the Common Route, and it only takes a few hours to play. You can go back to specific points on your Route by pressing the X button on your Switch and navigating to the Chart option of the Menu. In this Menu, you’ll also find a Dictionary of terms, an Affection meter to see how your relationships are going, and ways to go back and look at dialogue. By all accounts, it is pretty comprehensive.

In all, there are five official routes, and one Secret Route that you’ll need to unlock all the other ones — getting the True Endings for all of them — first, to play through. When you finish one narrative branch, you’ll find that there are scenes that you won’t have seen before unlocked in the Common Route. I did like this, and I also appreciated how you could specifically skip dialogue that you’ve seen before by adjusting your settings to Read. It meant that you could go through the Common more quickly, and so I then moved onto the next Route.

There are two different endings that you can get for each character: the Normal and True Endings. The main way to unlock the True Ending is by ensuring you specifically click the better option for one integral choice. Considering there are only two choice options per chapter? It’s not hard to do. Plus, you’ll know the important decisions because there will be a crystal around the options instead of just the choices.

If you’re going through the routes, it can take a while to go through each character’s story. It’s a few hours of your time, but at least each story is shorter than the Common Route. Each one also has a distinct storyline. For example, Josephy’s is all about his goals of rebuilding his kingdom and helping his people. While Kiya’s is all about regaining his memories and learning about magic? It’s interesting, and I have to admit, I was gripped by each one. While the overarching story is the same for each character, where they have to enter the Idol Duelm, and inevitably deal with the oncoming Calamity, they have their own distinct plotlines.

Overall, when it comes to the art direction, it can be a little bit generic. However, this is made up for by the expansive world-building. You learn about the Gods, Voltuhng and Kalmunt, and about the overall culture of Temirana. Plus, we even learn more about the traditions of other countries, such as Josephy’s former kingdom of Zondarig.

It’s interesting, and while it can get repetitive, and there are a few typos, they don’t detract from the overall experience of Temirana: The Lucky Princess and the Tragic Knights.