Note:
Just like when I used to put these on youtube, I’ll try to be as vague to not spoil the story and to keep it short so the viewer’s attention span doesn’t die out. However, I can now add a concept piece to kind of give the gist of the story.
Second Note:
This reviews the original Killer Queen, it only has two routes and is supposedly much more basic than the newer one. This is not Secret Game(or sometimes called Killer Queen -depth edition, which I believe has a total of four routes.
Genre:
Killer Queen is, in its most basic form, a Battle Royale Survival Horror visual novel. You can say it’s a much more gruesome 999 with a much lower budget(that you can tell).
Concept:
You’ve been kidnapped and relocated into an abandoned building. Turns out there’s 13 of you, each of them has one PDA and a collar stuck on your neck. Fulfill the PDA’s requirements to unlock the collar in 72 hours, or die. The requirements aren’t all that kind, there are those who will oppose you and those who will gather around you.
Art/Music/VA/Lengthetc
The character sprites are bad.
The ost is hit and miss. There’s a few tracks that do really well with the tone of the novel. However, the mina theme you’ll hear is hard-boiled, and it’s really repetitive. My favorite is track 16, outside of the OP of the novel(the ost from the video).
The scenery is also repetitive, but it was done intelligently as you’re supposed supposed to be inside an abandoned building that was built to be seen as a maze.
VAs are decent, some are irritating, some are quite enjoyable(My favorites are Fumika and Tezuka(the one I dislike is Nagasawa(die little prick))).
The novel is pretty short, you can finish it under 10 hours.
Overall Opinion:
The novel is quite short. Honestly I can’t delve much into it without spoiling it. My favorite part was learning about all the character and what stands they’d choose. If I just say them, then you’ll probably not like the novel as much, when it’s not incredible to begin with.
While there’s two routes, each route is a narration, there’s no choices. After you beat the initial route, you can play the second one through the title screen(there’s a reason for this).
It does character bonding well, you spend enough time with the characters for you to care if they do die, aside from one or two. The villains are another case, they’re normally pieces of shit so you’re quite glad if they end up dying.
The plot twists are quite good, while also quite obvious if you paid attention. I also believe some of these plot twists were meant to be apparent, thus bonding you to the main character via the shock on how stupid he is or how much he tries to deny certain truths. The first sex scene is kind of funny, you might get what I’m talking about(it’s right after the scene).
Now for the fun part; With all the shit I’ve said about this novel, I’d recommend it over Cartagra.
Cartagra is much is longer, better thought out with better plot yet sometimes obvious plot twists, and the CG and scenery are quite beautiful, yet with all the HCG around, it’s watering down a perfectly good mystery horror novel with a shit ton of HCG everywhere(aside from Hatsune route(but then you missed like 60% of the novel)). The H-scenes and the rest of the novel doesn’t transition well(and when it stopped doing that near the end, I found it much more interesting as it stopped breaking the focus away from the mystery sections). While Killer Queen, while ugly for the most part, it melds it’s two main focal points well, Survival and fear induced love.
There’s also a lot more teary moments in Killer Queen than in Cartagra for me(doesn’t help two out of the three characters I liked aren’t routes, lol).
I give it a C(Cartagra is B+ if you ignore HCG(or don’t mind it), lol). Add points if you liked a type of story like 999 without KID’s unnecessary addition of science fiction(while normally interesting and a huge point of reading KID’s novels). Subtract points if you don’t.
Overall, even with the sprites being what it is, it was a fun read. I have no problem recommending it if you want a quick read. It’s a decent intro read to new comers as well.
Mainly a Visual Novel Blog now 