This is a very unique game, i've never seen one that plays quite like this. I think the idea of the cards is really neat, and the way that you get more skills to combine and select cards the further you get is really cool!
However, the card system also makes some checks feel extremely unfair. When I have 5 of a card in my deck, its really frustrating to not have it come up in a check, which was my only chance to gain favor with someone in an interaction.
Speaking of which, I feel like the beginning when the counsel is introduced, it feels very much like you'll have pretty equal chances of seeing all of them. I'm not sure if I just imagined it, but I feel like there are some of those characters that came up over and over again, and the ones I wanted highest favor with are generally the ones I barely got to see. Plus, for some of them, it literally doesn't matter if you have high scores in some of their skills. Peyton's favor is almost completely reliant on if you draw a white card, for example. And if you dont, every interaction with him is ruined.
Also a lot of the checks you have to pass all three skill checks in order to gain favor. Which also feels kinda unfair. In one interaction with the general i passed every check but the faith check and my favor still went down, even though the other 4 checks I passed. Especially in a game where you have to balance what skills you learn to gain the favor of several different people, I just feel like thats punishing for no reason?
Also I wish we got to see more of the Princess's brother. I would like to see what makes him supposedly more competent than her, other than his y chromosome. But I just think that would be more interesting as well, to see that you actually have a competent opponent here and not just your little bitch of a brother who's only going to win because he's a man.
If you're considering playing this game for the sexual aspect, please don't be fooled by the cover image of a dominant lesbian princess. At least in my run, all the sexual encounters were with men, except for the player character. Which even then, I did not feel like those scenes were as animated or thought out as the ones with the guys. If you want to see her fuck creepy old men, go ahead and level her corruption. But romance and sex options in this game are really difficult to steer because you don't really get to make the decisions.
If there is a way to get more girl on girl content, somebody please let me know, because watching her suck the vizirs dick isn't exactly the ideal of sexy to me.
Overall the game is really good and really interesting, but a little too difficult for me. Of course I didn't expect to win on my first try, but to have favor with basically nobody because I need all their skills leveled AND to by chance draw the right card- well, that just didn't really feel balanced to me.