Affairs of the Court

Affairs of the Court is a Kindle bundle from Choice of Games including both Choice of Romance (reviewed here) and its sequel, Choice of Intrigues. (As far as I can see, Choice of Intrigues is not available from the Choice of Games site, though that may be a temporary situation.) The sequel picks up directly with your character from Choice of Romance, so they really belong together as one continuous story. The intrigues portion is considerably darker and more political than the first half, however, and it’s possible to edge your character towards a genuinely villainous personality. The hints of magic, only loosely developed in the first part of the story, also become more central to the plot. Overall, the two pieces taken together are stronger than Choice of Romance on its own, though many of the points in that initial review still hold. Definitely worth a look if you liked the first half, however.

5 thoughts on “Affairs of the Court”

  1. I was given the option to test this in a browser via a beta option (in order to review it for GayGamer). There are plans to release it on multiple platforms (iOS and Android, namely), and later to put it up on the website as well.

    Similaraly to you, I found the two pieces worked together rather well. Looking forward to see how they resolve the plot threads in the third instalment.

  2. I was also given the option to look at this on beta – although I got caught up in moving and so was only able to give it a quick glance.

    I was a bit thrown by it, because it continues your saved Romance game first, and I’d been halfway through a playthrough when I started, which led to me trying to finish part one too quickly, which led to me getting a failure ending for part one, which didn’t lead on to part two at all (not sure how this will work in the final game).

    I tried again and it let me jump straight into part 2, but because it was a sequel I didn’t entirely feel I had ownership of my character, and was a bit out of touch with the politics. It also felt *very* bridgey. It introduces several plotlines, but none of them seem to come anywhere near a resolution – which we’re apparently promised in part 3.

    I can see *why* they’ve released it this way, but it feels a little bit unsatisfying at the moment. Then again, I didn’t really have the opportunity to give it a completely fair shot.

    1. Hm. Possibly I played more evilly than most, but in my first Choice of Intrigues playthrough, I started with a character from Choice of Romance who had initially gotten into politics just as a way to have some influence on the world as a person in her own right. Choice of Intrigues continued her story to a point where she was scheming to have side members of the royal family murdered and making assignations with dark magicians. By the time I was done, I felt like I’d reached a clear end of act 2 twist — the character progression had gotten to a place where my character was pretty bad news. A part 3 might determine whether she was able to redeem herself (or even wanted to redeem herself), but it seemed like a natural breaking point for the story.

      I could see that not working quite as well if my character had been still basically a nice person, though.

      1. I think not carrying forward a character might have been part of the issue – I didn’t want to play through Romance again to get to Intrigues (particularly since I was pretty sure that some endings to one wouldn’t lead to the other) and so I felt like my character was a bit of a cypher.

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