Choice of Romance Part 3 - Til Death Do Us Apart - Review and Discussion

@Ramidel for personal reasons i couldn’t stand rapist and pederasty . The rest of sex act with consent i don’t care. I could deal with violence but rape make me feel ill inside its the worst think ever. I prefer being harsh with violence to submit and make me feel so indefensible .

But this game allows to defend ourselves but if i beta this i encourage author to erase that nasty cheap bad develop argument because we never know what happen to him and where power come that’s the only problem to game

The way the story plays fast and loose with the MC’s age was another one of my annoyances with this game. We know that the MC is 16 in part 1, and that 5 years passed between part 1 and part 2, but the game never says how many years have passed between part 2 and part 3. In fact the game goes out of its way to make you feel like age is taking its toll on your character. Nevertheless, Tomas turns 16 in this game, and he was old enough to sit at the dinner table and eat the fancy desert his royal parent sent him in part 1. So he must have been at least two in the original, and thus no more than 14 years have passed between parts 1 and part 3 at most, and quite possibly as few as 6 years. Our character therefore can’t be more than 30 at most, and may be as young as 22.

In the original our character was 16, Mendosa was 25, and Augustin(a) was in his/her 30’s at least, if not 40’s, while Torres was in his/her 40’s at a minimum, and possibly even over 50. Nowhere did it say that either Mendosa or Augustin(a) looked old in the original, so it comes across as a bit sloppy for the authors to say that you’re character is looking old without better justification when so few years have passed.

@P_Tigras I got confused with the times as well. I forgot there was five years between the first and second games. The passage of time between the two games is said in part 2, not part 3. Mendosa shows up when your second son is three months old. There doesn’t appear to be much in the way of time-skipping in the game, the only hint about time I can find is through the age of your son, so it would be 9 months for his birth, then 3 months for Mendosa to show up, so 12 months total. Which places you at 22 at the start of the third game.

But of course the third game has lots of time jumps.

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Well, possibly 30 is old for a woman in the setting - fertility takes quite a dive around that age. Men have a much wider breathing room in that area. A 35 years old woman and a man of the same age have rather different position in society, both modern and middle-ages one.

Also, comparing a 25 year old woman to a 16 years old one, there’s some difference (especially back in the olden days, with with the lack of vitamin pills and such, and especially after a couple of births). So I’d say people could look at a woman in her mid twenties and think she won’t be able to hold her own against a teenager.

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@Ramidel Agreed. As @FairyGodfeather has noted, Vega’s personality undergoes a disconcerting change when he suddenly becomes bi and starts hitting on you. And yes, Tomas is something of a nightmare if you’re not the sort to be turned on by your handsome, but sociopathic 16 year old son-in-law attempting to force you into becoming his sex toy. Meanwhile your formerly “handsome” royal spouse is looking more and more like a slug and acting more and more like the Queen of Hearts. The one potential love interest available to a straight male or gay female MC is Mendosa, who came across as a naive, idealistic twit to me. It’s a pity they didn’t offer straight males and gay females a more savvy alternative to the politically inept Mendosa as they did with Vega for gay males and straight females. Lucia was one possibility, but that lovely young countess was another, as was Juanita, since it would have made sense for you and Juanita to ally against Tomas. He was even more of a threat to her than he was to you since their claims to the throne were roughly equal in strength, and she was older than he was.

@jackrabbit you are forgetting a BIG detail magic two woman could have a baby together also you could heal broken part of body etc… other old woman for me agustina is Agustina game presents her gorgeous despite her age same to Mendoza for me is a women and same she still like new . Queen has more children inside than me so your explanation don’t work

@Jackrabbit That reasoning makes sense if the protagonist is always female, the love interests are always male, and the story takes place in a traditional medieval society. This society isn’t traditional however. And what if both the protagonist and the love interests are all male? or all female? This line of reasoning falls apart when the only character it’s applied to is the MC, regardless of the MC’s gender.

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Overall, a very strong installment. I play CoR for political intrigue, and I found myself angsting over almost every decision. I’m yet to get my optimal ending, but I feel like I know where I went wrong - which is good.

I agree that the de Vega romance seemed a little fanficcy, but as I shut it down hard as soon as it appeared, it wasn’t much of an issue for me. I find the genderswap pretty jarring; partially due to my own preconceptions (het male, before anyone asks) and partly because I don’t find Augustina a convincing female character. Personally, I just sidestep the whole issue by going full Anne Boleyn and playing as a woman.

These are minor quibbles, however, and didn’t detract from my enjoyment of a slick politics game. Nicely done.

@Dreckitt May I ask why you don’t find Augstina convincing as a female character? Is it hard to imagine a woman behaving in that fashion?

@MaraJade Eh, I don’t know how the magical babies work. Tomas is mentioned an infertile, and there was something about Queen Ines too, so I think the ritual doesn’t solve everything. Or the writers did not think it through.

You’re right about the society, @P_Tigras, but I think, considering the fact the 16 is considered of age and 25 is too old to be courted, we can conclude the standards for what constitutes as old are different than ours. Thus, it is possible people over 20 are no longer regarded as young. Especially if the monarch is known for preferring very young partners (like man who won’t date a woman over 21).

I admit, I find it puzzling to imagine a man in his twenties that looks worse than he did in his teens. Maybe the pregnancy took a toll on the male PC body’s too (stretch marks and all). Or maybe the ideal of beauty in that world is awkward, knobbly teens.
You can point to this as another indication the game was written with a female MC in my mind?

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I wouldn’t say that Vega suddenly becomes bi. One of the aspects of Choice of Romance is that everyone is bi. There’s not a single character in the game who seems to be heterosexual. I presume that Vega was always bi, but being monogomous, and married to a woman, it just didn’t come up.

That said, I did find his personality changed. Now, it’s understandable that after losing his wife, and watching the Monarch go insane he may change somewhat. But it changed an awful lot.

Henry the 8th at least had a reason for why he put on a significant amount of weight in his later years. I did wish that Agustin had something similar as an excuse.

I’d have liked to have known Juanita better, the endings with her are some of my favourites. I think since we did play (or tried to play) a somewhat parental role in her life in the second game that would have been wrong. Still, I can see how it could be made to work. There’s not much of an age difference between you, the endings with Juanita were some of my favourites, and I had wanted to befriend her in the second game. She does seem like a good ally against him too, and she likely knew him better than we did.

I didn’t think that Tomas was forcing you to have sex, was he? I missed that part if it’s there. Does he try to be

I loved Agustina as a female character. In fact I prefer Agustina far more than I like Augustin. I think she’s fantastic.

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@FairyGodfeather each sexual practice doing without consent is rape period. The game says that you couldn’t remember what he did to you but implies he do something and he does something whatever he likes. Something like about the night weeding it wasn’t so passionate like agustina but i couldn’t remember well what he did to me and with time i couldn’t ever think about all he do to me" it was something like that it was so horrible to read

@Jackrabbit Our standards are fairly new, and constantly evolving. A reliable birth control pill didn’t become available until 1963. And so for most of human history if you didn’t want to engage in infanticide when there were too many mouths to feed, it was considered wisest to marry young girls at around 16 (and sometimes even earlier) to ensure that any children produced would have a father with sufficient resources to care for them. And unless they were from wealthy families, 16 year old boys didn’t generally yet have the resources to support a family, so the 16 year old girls usually married men who were older, sometimes way older.

And it wasn’t like young gals in a medieval society were giving up a career to become wives and mothers. There were no careers open to them at the time, unless they wanted to be nuns.

None of this holds for this game’s world which is a crazy contradictory mismash where outdated paternalistic restrictions exist non-sensically in a supposedly egalitarian and gender inclusive world. Nevertheless it’s certainly possible to enjoy the story without thinking about how the world doesn’t make sense.

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@Marajade I know. I just didn’t think that he did actually do anything sexual with the main character. I presumed that we were just married in order to secure his claim to the throne and not because he actually had any attraction. Tomas seemed rather sexless to me.

“Your wedding is a blur not in the romantic sense of excitement and emotion overwhelming you, but because Tomas’s control over your mind leaves you unable to perceive much, unable to think much other than what he tells you.”

I think it could be read your way as well though.

@FairyGodfeather he does something whatever he does is rape. I believe he is like many psycho impotent so i believe he makes something to her husband wife beyond that lines. I studies criminology in college and what psycho do in bed is nothing about talking here.
For them dominate and pain is only pleasure that’s way all the change in characters could be caused by him. even Vega suddenly sex behavior your baby comentary even your strange behavior i love no commentary about night wedding feel so wrong.

@FairyGodfeather “One of the aspects of Choice of Romance is that everyone is bi. There’s not a single character in the game who seems to be heterosexual.”

Bingo. As I mentioned earlier, that’s one of the aspects I find to be most stupid in the game.

Anatomical sex developed, but psychological gender mysteriously didn’t ,- and even anatomy seems to be somewhat redundant for the wealthy nobles with their hippie fairy magic. Presumably the poor have to abide by anatomy still, but there has been little indication of that affecting the social order. No social constructs, no gender, and limited biological sex… Which leads to rampant directionless bisexuality. It’s just silly. Absolutely unbelievable hand-waving.

@FairyGodfeather, @MaraJade According to the story, Tomas is infertile. It never says that he is impotent as far as I can recall. And yes the first night is vague enough that it could be read either way, but I think in this case it needed to be vague. A forced rape scene would have generated A LOT of complaints, and run afoul of Apple’s censors.

@Drazen I’m with you on the unbelievable hand-waving.

@Jackrabbit I forgot to add earlier, that yes, I think it fairly obvious that the game was written first and foremost with a female protagonist from a traditional medieval society in mind, a traditional society where hers was the disadvantaged sex bound by a multitude of paternalistic restrictions. Then they got rid of the traditional society without thinking through whether those paternalistic restrictions would make sense in an egalitarian, gender-inclusive, non-homophobic society. They further bent the world around to give gay males a very similar experience. Finally, they thoughtlessly changed the pronouns around so that you could play a gay female or straight male too, without giving any real thought to how those experiences don’t work quite as well. So this game works best if you play a straight female who is comfortable behaving in the traditional Victorian manner.

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@P_Tigras i prefer no commentary in game about night weeding. If that’s show its for suggest bad things. So i recommend wipe all commentary in that sense

@MaraJAde I agree that a physical rape description wouldn’t be appropriate for this particular game, this late in the series. People are too invested in their characters at this point. Being forced to read through a rape scene this late in the series would be too much of a violation for a lot of readers. I didn’t like the mind rape as it was either. My character with a 99 magic score should have been able to splatter him like a bug…

I just want to clarify, for the record, that sex with Tomás is not even implied if you’re not married to him, and that the MC never marries Tomás unless the player chooses to marry him. (If anyone has a counterexample, that’s a bug.)

@P_Tigras totally agree feel forced like writer what to say look i could do nasty thinks like game of thrones and worst . Don’t go with series if he was a murderer like a necromancer ok but the game treat to put a nasty rape erotic vibes that don’t go with the good written well tailored game. Feels cheap and less the go