Game Review: Lair Land Story

By Al

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC

Raising sim games in the style of Princess Maker are something of a rarity in the Western gaming world. The already small niche of a genre sees very few games translated for English-speaking players, so when a title is made available, it's worth looking into. Enter Lair Land Story, a remake/re-release of a PSP/PC game released back in 2007 that is now available on the Nintendo Switch and PC. It comes to us by way of Chinese developer Circle Entertainment, and it's published by PQube. We're going to be taking a look at the Steam release today and see if this game satisfies that rarely scratched itch, and also look at what makes it unique within its relatively small genre. We have a lot to cover today, so let's get right into it!

Lair Land Story put you into the role of Herol, a young noble who takes in a mysterious girl named Chilia into his modest household. Herol found Chilia during an intense battle that ultimately ended a long, devastating war. Though said battle was won thanks to Chilia's magic, she doesn't recall what powers she called upon to stop the fighting. Actually, she doesn't remember anything of her past and it's up to Herol to take over as her guardian and hopefully steer her towards a bright and prosperous future. Though the core tale of Lair Land Story revolves around Chilia discovering who she is as a person as far as her future is concerned, there are a lot of other plot elements that manage to sneak their way in. Along the way we reveal the mysteries surrounding Chilia's past, the political intrigue that continues to plague the kingdom, and also the trials and tribulations of simply rebuilding a city that was practically left in ruins after the war. There's more mundane activities like studying, getting a job, and falling in love to contend, but it's the other bits that really lift this game above other titles in the genre. I'm not really going to get into the main plot of the game in this review as I frankly found it mildly distracting to the core gameplay, but I must admit that it's there if you want to experience it. My indifference to the bigger picture aside, Lair Land Story does a good job fleshing out its characters and providing a lot of background to the game's world. Though it's never really told to you in the course of the game, your time raising Chilia is limited to just four years. Within that short time you'll be guiding her to a goal that is pretty much set by you. To me that's the most important aspect of the game, and the bigger situations that take away several in-game weeks feel like the deviation to that goal. I'll circle back around to this when we discuss gameplay, but I wanted to get my thoughts regarding the story out early.

Gameplay in Lair Land Story is quite the complicated topic, so I'll try to keep things simple. I already mentioned that you have four years with Chilia, and each of those years is broken down into months. Months in the game are not named individually, but are instead just references to the seasons they're a part of. For example you have Early Summer, Summer, and Late Summer. Each month is broken down into two fifteen-day cycles and it's this unit of time where each chapter of the game takes place. The most important aspect of the game is probably Chilia's schedule, so we'll cover that first. You're able to choose three activities for her to perform for five days each cycle. These include studying various topics, working at a job, rebuilding the city, or other activities like resting and exploration. How well you perform any activity is mostly up to chance, but can be greatly affected by Chilia's levels of exhaustion and tension. Exhaustion goes up per every activity, and can only be brought down by resting or visiting the public bathhouse. Tension is a confusing stat that I'm going to assume is a victim of odd translation. Though it may sound like a negative stat, you actually want tension to always be as high as possible. Low tension means that Chilia is bored and will often skip studying or work. In you're wondering, the only for sure way to raise tension is to go exploring. No matter what activities you choose to perform, Chilia's stats will increase or decrease based on which ones you've chosen. Humanity raises by studying philosophy, charm raises by working at the local item shop, blessings go up if you become a deacon at the Church, popularity goes down if you become a street cleaner, and so on. You'll quickly realize that you don't have anywhere near enough time to make Chilia a master of all jobs and skills. Instead, you're going to have to make tough choices early on regarding which activities you're going to focus on. This is especially important as the best stat gains are only achieved by keeping at one task until you reach its highest levels. This means getting promoted at jobs, take higher level courses at school, and similar boosts are what you're really after. This is also the part of the discussion where I mention that you also have to maintain a study/work balance early on as going to school costs lots of money. Who would've thought that a game like this would be so tuned to realism that it would include going into student debt! Besides affecting things like contest placement and events, the stats and skills you raise are what determines which ending you get, so be sure to keep an eye on all of them.

I mentioned having to spend money on school, so let's next discuss how one gets money. The only sure way to get money in-game is an allowance given to Chilia at the start of each season. It actually took me a while to realize that it was Chilia's money we were spending, not Herol's. The other main way to get money in-game is by working at various jobs. Not all jobs are created equal though, and some pay far more than others. Once your stats are high enough, you can apply them in various contests that are held at certain points in the year, but this probably the least sure way to make money. If you choose to go an academic route, you may find it hard to balance a budget for much of the game. Going that route, the only way to get money besides occasionally taking a month or two off studying to work, is to work on research projects. These research projects can be various things like discovering new items, creating potions, working on academic papers, and other things like that. These projects usually have a start-up cost involved with taking them on, and they all take several in-game cycles to complete. Though success isn't always guaranteed, this is one of the best ways to get large chunks of money into Chilia's pockets. Though you can also choose to keep or donate the results of research for no money gained. Spending money is just as important as making it, and there are a lot of things you spend money on besides general living expenses. Lair Land's town has an item and tailor shop where you can purchase stat boosting items, decorations for your room, and even new outfits and swimsuits. Just like everything else in-game, these alter Chilia's stats and skills, so it's best to pick them accordingly. You'll want Chilia to always look her best though, as you can also get money by way of your fan club. That's right, if Chilia's popularity is high enough, her fans will simply send her money and gifts. There's probably more I can discuss regarding making and spending money, but I think I'll the rest for you to discover yourself.

It's not just schedules and money though, there's an entire visual novel side to Lair Land Story that works to both move the plot along, and to find potential love interests for Chilia and Herol. You're allowed to visit three town locations each cycle of the game, with that being reduced to two in the Winter. Each area has certain events and characters that you can potentially run into, and that includes the shops if you choose to visit them simply to talk to the people who run them. It can be a bit tricky to find particular characters, but they usually have places you're most likely to find them. For example, if you're looking to run into Fay or Grana for the sake of Herol, you'll want to go to the Church and City Gates respectively. If you want to run into Mirol for Chilia then you might want to hit the Streets, or you could check out the Plaza to see if they're running any of those aforementioned contests. While it's fairly likely that you'll get a cutscene or two that progresses whatever storyline you're in the middle of, not every location has a scene for you each and every time. Occasionally you'll get a random cutscene that doesn't affect the plot at all, or sometimes you'll only find an NPC that gives you a generic line or two before sending you on your way. This can actually be one of the more annoying aspects of the game, as it's left very much up to chance what scenes you're able to see at any given time. I did a bit of research into non-English versions of the game that claim that characters have a schedule, but I haven't been able to confirm any of it. Besides, even if they did it would require so much work figuring it out that you might as well leave it up to chance. There's also an entire discussion to be had regarding how uncovering more of the plot can sometimes be detrimental to progress, as it's these story scenes that have the possibility to stall the game for several in-game cycles. I found myself wanting to scream every time I had to waste a month figuring out why the Dark Mages keep stopping me on the street rather than furthering Chilia's growth. This is made the more annoying when you factor in that you're given bonuses if you hit certain stat milestones within a single season, something that is hard to do when you lose part of that season to a handful of cutscenes. It's not the worst thing in the world by any means, but it can really throw you for a loop your first time through the game.

I originally wanted to talk about endings here, but I decided that was far too spoil-y to bring up in a review. I will talk cover the paths you can take Chilia on a bit though. Even though most players will probably raise Chilia to become something like a scholar or a businesswoman, there are some "bad" endings you can run into if you ignore core stats like blessings and magic. I'll admit that I did that my entire first playthrough, and that's why I have very little to say here when it comes to the in-game spells you're able to use to alter growth. While there arguably is a "correct" way to play the game where everything is maximized, I think stumbling around and figuring things out for oneself is half the fun. Raising sim games like this can be very hit or miss when it comes to schedule and skill management, with Princess Maker coming to mind immediately. In that game it is very easy to accidentally fall into the darker side of game outcomes simply by going through a few unlucky cycles, or making one or two bad in-game choices. Lair Land Story is the most beginner-friendly game of this type I've ever seen, and it has a lot of complex mechanics if that's something you're looking. Though I ultimately wished that the more visual novel aspects of the game lightened up their hold over the gameplay, I do understand why they're there. One of the reasons I disliked the visual novel elements is because text seems to be one of the aspects where the gameplay fumbles. Seeing as this game released almost two years ago, and is till on its 1.0 version, I think it's safe to say that we're not going to get an update. That's unfortunate as there are several important in-game choices that are simply broken. I don't mean that they don't work per se, but that you're sometimes given dialogue options that clearly belong to other parts of the game. Then there's the fact that longer dialogue scenes are littered with typos, grammatical errors, and even broken formatting. It makes for an uneven experience, though thankfully none of it is truly game breaking. You'll more than likely begin to ignore everything but the most egregious errors, and the game will most likely charm you to the point where you shrug and move on. That was definitely how things turned out for me at the very least. I guess what I'm trying to say that while I do feel that there are more than a few imperfect aspects of Lair Land Story, it is a fun and rewarding experience for the most part.

Visuals are an interesting topic to discuss, as I had to do some thinking as to what exactly I'd cover when I talked about them. If we were just talking graphics and CG illustrations, then I'd simply praise Lair Land Story for looking fairly impressive despite its clearly lower budgeted feel. The backgrounds are detailed, there's a rather large cast of characters that are all unique and well-designed, and the CG images look incredible too. Obviously special attention has to be mentioned when it comes to Chilia herself, and her design is as customizable as you'd expect. You can give her several outfits, some even featuring color variations, and you can also cut and style her hair. Though that's par for the course, I was surprised to find that same level of variety in other visual aspects of the game. Chilia's room can change over the course of the game, and you're able to decorate and expand it. Also, since rebuilding the city is a key element of the game, each area you visit has several looks to it that change in correlation to how far along the rebuilding process they are. It's the small touches like these that make the game look great. Unfortunately, there are a few negatives I want to point out. Possibly the most egregious of all, and the hardest to explain in a review, is the font choice the game went with. I'm not sure how to explain it, but it looks like a default font you'd find in a cheap mobile game. The fact that there are a lot of text formatting issues throughout doesn't help thing either. Then there's the fact that a lot of scenes in the game have very few visuals to go with them. I'm not sure if this was due to parts of the game being slightly unfinished, but I was surprised that several important scenes were reduced to dialogue-only scenes. There other things too, like how contest results only show numbers and how NPC models are constantly reused, but I think the point has been made. Though the visuals in Lair Land Story are by no means perfect, I do think that the good far outweighs the bad. It's just that when the bad shows up, it can be very jarring when compared to everything that was great up until that point. Then again, I think back to the cute animations that play during the scheduled tasks and I suddenly feel that the game's graphics are as perfect as they can be!

Discussing sound is an even more difficult than discussing the visuals as there are two main aspects of the game's audio that vary greatly in terms of quality. First off I want to say that the music in Lair Land Story is all awesome and suits the game perfectly. This is another of those "visual novel music" type soundtracks that I like to discuss in many of my reviews. What do I mean by "visual novel music"? Well, I use that term to describe music that is as inoffensive and unobtrusive as it is charming and catchy. It fades into the background in a way that's still very much pleasant to the ear, but it also doesn't draw any attention to yourself. While I can't really point out any big positive when it comes to the game's music, I also can't list a single negative. If it were only music we were discussing then this would be an easy topic to cover, but I also have to talk about the game's voice acting. I feel I have to preface everything I'm about to say by mentioning that I think the voice acting is performed beautifully. Every single voice actor puts in a great performance and does an excellent job bringing their respective characters to life. The problem lies in the literal quality of the voice acting itself. By this I mean the process in which it was recorded and/or mastered. I'm not sure if every actor recorded their parts in different studio settings, but it literally sounds like some were in a professional recording studio, and others were recording off their home computers using the worst microphones imaginable. It's really jarring hearing two character's speak to each other whose sound quality is all over the place, something that occurs quite frequently here. Also, perhaps due to poor recordings being used, or maybe just bad mixing in general, some characters come off far louder than others. There were a few times where a character would yell out a line and I'd feel like they were able to blow out my speakers, and other times where they'd be speaking quietly but somehow still sound very tinny and full of peaks. I'm really not sure why the voices are the way they are, but it's something you're going to have to get used to if you plan on playing this game. It's by no means an assault on your ears, but it is disappointing that the developers couldn't stick the landing when it came to the game's audio.

This is the part of the review where I discuss a game's overall content and replayabilitiy compared to its price, and I can literally double the review right here if I'm not careful. Saying that I feel that Lair Land Story is an infinitely replayable game might sound like hyperbole, but it's truly how I feel. Players who only go through a single game are doing themselves a disservice by not trying out different things on subsequent playthroughs, especially when it comes to picking choices they normally wouldn't just to see how it affects story progression and gameplay. By its very nature, you're only able to see a small sampling of what the game has to offer any single time you play it. There's no way to make an all-around perfectly molded Chilia, and you're going to have to always focus on a handful of things in each playthrough. If you find that you wish you had Chilia study more and become something akin to a scholar, then go back and do it! The game has so many options available to you that I don't think I've done it justice explaining even a small handful of them. I'm not exactly sure how long it takes to see/unlock everything available, but I'm positive that it's calculated in the hundreds of hours. Finding the right path for Chilia, the right partners for both her and Herol, and just having a good time along the way is so much fun that I wish I had more hours in the day so I can spend them solely on this one game. Even if you choose to go through just a single cycle of the game, it offers a well-rounded experience that is more than worth the price of admission. Speaking of which, the game is currently priced at a very reasonable $14.99, and I think it's an absolute steal at that price. Only because I feel I'm being overly positive, I do want to point out that I found it slightly annoying that you can't outright skip parts of the game you've already seen via previous playthroughs, but that's a rather small gripe in the grand scheme of things. All I know for sure is that my current playthrough is what I consider my first "real" one as I now have several strategies I didn't have earlier in regards to how best min/max the gameplay. If you get the game soon, then maybe you can catch up with my progress!

I honestly can't recommend Lair Land Story enough. It has a lot of issues when it comes to text and gameplay choices, but it's a great example of a genre you don't often see released in the West. There are other big titles out there, like the Princess Maker games, but I honestly prefer Lair Land Story over the games I've played in that series. It's a must-buy for fans of visual novels, simulation games, the aforementioned Princess Maker series, and anyone just looking for something completely different to add to their collection. Its low price also means that it won't break the bank either, so grab it now and thank me later. It's one of my current favorite games and we all need to make sure that Chilia stays out of trouble!

Check Out Lair Land Story on Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/lair-land-story-switch/

---

Story: B
Gameplay: B
Graphics: B+
Music/Sound: B-
Value: A+

Overall: B+

Pros:
+ A great example of a raising sim that can be played in many different ways.
+ The amount of endings, viewable cutscenes, and more make this game infinitely replayable.
+ Though the options available to you may seem overwhelming at times, the gameplay loop can be very satisfying once you fall into it.
+ Every character is well-written and fleshed out, and you'll find yourself wanting to know more about the game's world.
+ The graphics and character designs are all amazing, and I literally want stickers of all the weekly activity animations.
+ Even though there are some issues with the quality of the audio, the music and voice acting are both on point.
+ Picking it up is pretty much a no-brainer since it's currently priced at an insanely low $14.99.

Cons:
- The voiced dialogue sounds very bad at times with lots of peaks, distortion, and volume issues.
- Though the story is good for what it is, there are several points in the game where it interrupts the core gameplay loop.
- Typos and grammatical errors are scattered all throughout the game's script.
- There are several points where the dialogue options shown on-screen are simply incorrect. (As in they clearly belong to another conversation.)

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

---

She knows me so well!

#LairLandStory