If you grew up in the 80s, you might remember the small collection of books available right at the supermarket register. These were usually things like Reader’s Digest or TV Guide, but there was also a small collection of harlequin novels. These borderline trashy tales of swashbuckling heroes and women with HEAVING bosoms would get nonchalantly picked up, usually by women, as they grab a box of Fruity Pebbles for their kids. These books were short, repetitive, and pretty cookie cutter: woman has boring life, woman meets unknown man, torrid lovemaking occurs, woman goes off to have spectacular life. It wasn’t stellar writing, and you wouldn’t do a book report on them, but it was a bit of escapism for a few days. Temirana: The Lucky Princess and the Tragic Knights, contains this sort of formula with two big exceptions: no spice and no drive.

Eric thinks Krazy Salt is top shelf spicy, dude has the palette of a kindergartener.

Temirana is the name of the kingdom where some extreme form of astrology determines everything, including if a princess should be raised in the woods, far away from her family. Cecelia, our protagonist, is the “Cursed Princess” due to her birth month, and so she has to live separately from everyone else. However, it turns out she has a magic power to know when danger is approaching and to make the right choice for her and everyone’s safety. This is cool, especially with war on the horizon and civil unrest bubbling left and right. Her powers show her five men in a tournament who could be dangerous, but could also be the key to saving everyone and everything. She invites them to join her knighthood, and thus a tale of training, honor, determination and, of course, romance, begins!

Temirana: The Lucky Princess and the Tragic Knights is a bit of a bigger ask when it comes to visual novels, and I’m not talking about length. While the game is a sizable read, it’s more about the layout and presentation that makes it a harder investment for folk less attuned to otome games. First and foremost, you’ll be doing five chapters before branches start to show up within the game, at least obvious ones. In the meantime, there are a series of dividing moments of dialogue that can, conceivably, lead to the pathway designed for the man of your choice. The choices that our protagonist makes are clearly outlined with a bit of a sparkle flourish when you make the “right” choice, so quick save/load can be your friend if you’re looking to get on the love interest tunnel that you most desire.

Wow, when your potential love interests include “Next,” you know this is true love.

The chunks of dialogue and exposition do feel a little clunky, and it’s something I can never quite enumerate when it comes to a problem like this in visual novel games. Sometimes a developer will choose walls of text and it’ll feel appropriate, and sometimes two sentences will seem like rambling instead of telling. This extends to anyone who’s picked up a book and immediately sank into it or bounced off. The cadence of Temirana was a tad unnatural to me, with a bit too much left unsaid while overstating some obvious points. Much like most books, this will probably feel perfectly natural or appropriate to some readers, but, for me, it just never quite gelled.

One thing I like about otome games is that they tend to be pretty unique, even when they’re reaching into the same playbook. While Birushana and Homura draw from a similar well, you end up with totally different approaches as different flavors of badass female assassin. Bustafellows is a bizarre concept of mental powers, inviting in notes of Inception while surrounding the main character with caring (if sometimes brash) potential partners. With Temirana: The Lucky Princess and the Tragic Knights, we sort of stay in this safe circle, as far as the game’s innovation and invention is concerned. We have a young woman who is a princess (yay!) is scorned by her family (boo) and then is selected by fate to be awesome and hand pick the dudes she might fall in love with (okay?). The people who like her are nice, the people who don’t are truly evil, on a nearly comical level.

For example, her supporters are a talking dog/bear thing in a snappy suit and her nursemaid who is deadpan, a perfect foil for the overly excited aforementioned animal. These two are unflappable and wildly enthusiastic about everything. We live in exile, yay! We’re moving into the palace, yay! You’ve picked five men at random to live and die for you, yay! Cass Coogan (one of the better names) is pretty anti-establishment but is in your corner because let’s burn down the patriarchy. Everyone who isn’t directly connected to the royal family is cool. But there is only one person who exists in the court who doesn’t openly, brazenly despise you, and that only gets more and more apparent the further you get into the game. By the time we reach the endgame and certain plot twists are revealed, they aren’t that shocking or even unexpected.

You’d think stakes this major would have been disclosed way earlier in the game.

This further resonates with the five love interests of Temirana. Of the five, you’ve got one fallen prince, one former noble, one blacksmith, one common dude and one orphan. I get it, the word tragic is in the title, but does it have to be so on the nose? You need to take these five guys (a couple of whom are INCREDIBLY reluctant to become knights) and mold them into your personal defense force. The kingdom is always under attack in some way, there’s light infighting between the boys, and you can never decide who you want to crash at your place until you basically don’t have a choice anymore. Even though they might hem and haw, they basically buckle to do whatever Cecelia asks of them, leading to a pretty straightforward path once you decide whom you’re investing your emotions into.

Now, that’s not to say they’re without charm. Milan is the typical hot and cold type due to him being prideful about his blacksmithing and that extends into how he reacts to you. Josephy has a bit of an ego but it’s kept in check regularly, though he sometimes requires contrarian responses to keep his affection up. Kiya, as a literal orphan with Momento syndrome, is heartbreaking but frustrating as you need to keep replenishing his memories and his resolve at every chance. Adel is that one older brother with nine siblings, so, if you had a thing for Gale from The Hunger Games, I’ve got good news for you. And Tobias, a sickly but optimistic noble, was my clear favorite. A man who loves and hungers for the world he can barely ingest because it’s too rich for him. Delightful.

AND IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-EEEEEEEEEEEEEE-IIIIIIIIIIIIIII, WILL ALLLLLLLWAYYYYYS be sickly and pale.

Cecelia, for her part, is a good main character, I’m not disputing that. She got dealt a bum deal with her birthday dictating that she’s cursed, has lived in semi-isolation for most of her life, and just wants to be a part of the kingdom and its people. When she’s thrust into this prophetic role of possible savior and protector, she’s astonished but not afraid. Cecelia has some great adventures as she dives into conspiracies and rumors, trying desperately to unravel secrets and discover the truth about what the future holds for Temirana. She’s a solid choice in the driver’s seat, and I respect her elements and flair. It’s not her fault that her family are stupid monsters and can’t seem to be decent in spite of having wealth and resources for miles.

Like a lot of Otomate titles, your investment in Temirana: The Lucky Princess and the Tragic Knights will be entirely dependent on how hard you swoon for one of the male love interests. There was never a point where I felt overly connected to Kiya or Milan, and Adel is too much of a big brother for me not to find my connection to him calcifying in a similar way. Josephy is a good choice, and walks the path of what you’d expect from a man sworn to giving up his life to defend you. Only Tobias surprised me, not because his story was so very different, but the way he handled the curve balls that happened in our story arc. There are moments of stronger writing that shine through, and Tobias, in my opinion, was at the center of these epiphany moments.

This looks like Tobais is getting ready to carve up ham, not fight for my life.

While visual novels usually get a good pass for the audio section, the soundtrack for Temirana was really boring for my ears. You know when you walk up to a carnival, there’s a certain degree of calliope music you’re expecting to hear, and you’re almost disappointed when you’re right? That’s the soundtrack for this game. Every note of dramatic fanfare, foreboding strings, dark horns and lone piano felt way too on the nose. It’s like the developers were focused on getting some great voice performances and used a series of placeholder tracks called “generic courtyard A” until they found something better. It’s not grating or unpleasant, but it’s so plain and uninspired that it just sucks the air out of things. If I went to an elementary school Christmas concert and they opened with Jingle Bells, that would still be less typical than how Temirana’s soundtrack came across.  

What does it say about the state of games that something that would have easily been a top shelf product a generation ago is now run-of-the-mill, even blasé? Temirana is a decent enough visual novel, and it probably is quite captivating to the right reader. If you’re a fan of the fantasy setting, one with magic and castles and swordfights, then this is perfect for you. The dudes are noble, the betrayal is palpable, and the world is complex enough to have some grit and surprises. But, for someone who’s done this dance so many times, it was really lacking in polarizing moments of joy or frustration. Instead, it simply led me through the story, offering optional bonus chapters at the end, and sent me on my way. For me, Temirana: The Lucky Princess and the Tragic Knights is a light read on a day off: it’s fun, not memorable, and inoffensively entertaining. Good, but not great.

Temirana: The Lucky Princess and the Tragic Knights is available now on Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2.

A copy of Temirana: The Lucky Princess and the Tragic Knights was provided by the publisher.