I will provide my full thoughts. 

First - sorry to be such a hater with the 1/5 stars. However, I find this story legit impossible to read. I wanted to like it, but I couldn't. 

I wasn't sure whether to leave this as a comment or as a review. In the end, I decided I'd keep it between the developer and myself rather than being too critical in the comment section. Your game is highly rated, so it can take the 1/5 and be relatively unaffected. I just prefer to be totally honest with my rating here rather than lie. 

The main criticism is this - I'm still in the beginning chapters and the protagonist is acting way too casual/forgiving about the 4 lead's complete disrespect and, in some cases, complete incompetence. 

Going over what the 4 leads have done so far- 

One of them chained my protag up and had him dragged around, even after taking money from him. I understand the "excuse" - but the protagonist is legitimately the rightful emperor. That treatment should NEVER be excused, even if there is a rationale to it. The rightful emperor should not be disrespected to such a great extent. This is how real empires are ruled. A punishment even out of formality is necessary IMO. But on top of that, X still acts totally casual and disrespectful, which any reasonable ruler would also punish or at least put to an end. 

Two of the leads left enemy assassins lying around - alloying for a DIRECT ATTEMPT on the protagonist's life, which was only saved by the chance that A managed to get over there quickly enough. 

And then the final lead, A, is too casual. But this can at least be forgiven/overlooked since it isn't as bad as X. 

In a normal historical empire, I don't see how these people would escape punishment. I understand the protag is in a tough position, but that's no excuse to just sit back and let these people walk all over him. It's so unbelievably painful to read, and the fact that another comment was complaining about the protag being "whiny" up to the LATER CHAPTERS makes me entirely discouraged. Like, the choices say I can make the protag assertive - but the protag is NOT assertive. The protag is pathetic, honestly. 

The biggest offense by the leads was the "plan" regarding the assassins. Why would they KNOWINGLY leave assassins around R when the protag HAD to contact R and would already be struggling to do so? What if the protag had no money to hire mercenaries? It would've been legit impossible to contact R. The logical strategy would have been to immediately offer protection to anyone claiming to be the crown, and put them through a screening process like detecting magic or whatnot. Only the most loyal of followers should have been used - and if that couldn't be trusted then R should have honestly screened all of them herself. It should have been made extremely obvious that anyone lying would be immediately found out, and then subsequently executed. That would've cut down on the crowd sizes. But instead, these people decided to inconvenience the protag in every possible way - 10 years after the crown's death and there are tons of people claiming to be the crown still (cause they haven't adequately discouraged the liars), and to top it off there are assassins lying in wait around R, the only person who can validate the protag's existence. Like, are these people actually supposed to protect the protag? They are sabotaging him. They are totally incompetent. And the justification R uses - that keeping the assassins around would keep them off R's back. YO. It is literally R's job to let themselves be inconvenienced if it means creating more convenience for the crown. It is her JOB to eliminate all chances of the crown literally DYING. And the logic that A would stop them - nah, that relied entirely on the chance that A would be around, which clearly could've gone terribly wrong. All R did was spend years and years failing to find the protag. The logical strategy was to make it easier for the protag to find her instead - but nah, apparently no one had that idea.

I feel like everyone in this story is insane or incompetent. X should be kicked out of the group due to past and continued disrespect. R & D should be punished, if not executed, for putting the crown's life at risk and making his problems so much worse. A is the only person remotely sane. 

This empire deserves to go to the gutter, honestly.

I cannot stand the protagonist. The protag is legit spineless. This person does not deserve to be emperor. The very least they can do, the VERY LEAST, is demand a serious apology with true repentance from these leads. And that would be so unbelievably merciful. But instead, the protagonist just brushes everything off cause they legit have no spine.

I tried to give this story a chance, but I can't go on any further. The protag should just be killed off and replaced with someone who will actually LEAD the empire, rather than merely letting everyone do what they want. 

1/10.