Mr Love: Queen's Choice ~ RIEview

 

Mr Love: Queen’s Choice (referred to as MLQC hereafter in this RIEview) is a Chinese-developed stimulation with a romance genre game. While it may appear as a purely dating game (akin to the Japanese romance-centred otome games like Ayakashi: Romance Reborn), there are other aspects that make players engage in the game even when the story is yet to be translated. The MLQC is the international version of its Chinese counterpart Love & Producer [LianYuZhiZuoRen 恋与制作人], with a SouthEast Asia counterpart Mr Love: Dreamy Date released several months after MLQC. 

Interested? Read on for more details!

Game Plot

You play as the protagonist who just inherited her father’s producing company after your father passed away. Though your father had left behind his great legacy ‘The Miracle Finder’ show, the company is now on the brink of bankruptcy. While juggling to keep the company afloat and build her career as a media producer in her father’s footsteps, 4 men enter into her life suddenly. But what she doesn’t know is that with this meeting, something stirs in the background as the gears of fate turn a step faster...

While the main plot is continued to be translated from its Chinese counterpart, the story is far from over. So in the meantime, players have the chance to read standalone stories in the form of dates with each of the men.

Verdict (5/5)

Really well written story, and pretty solid translation too. As most Chinese games the 4 men are voiced by popular voice actors, and they are available in 2 languages (English and Japanese) for the MLQC version. However the Chinese language is not available, but players can search for them on YouTube should they want to know why many international players have asked the MLQC admins to include the Chinese language in the international version.

Character Diversity & Personality

Aside from the protagonist, there are 4 men that are crucial to the plot: Lucien, a scientist; Victor, the CEO of LFG company; Gavin, a police officer; and Kiro, a rising celebrity. The protagonist (whom you can rename her as you wish) is headstrong, though often times she falls into the typical cliche female character who gets herself in trouble and one of the guys has to come to her rescue. Each guy is also different in their personality, which is meant to cater to the types that each player is interested in. 

Personally I like to think I am neutral and just like all of them, but initially I leaned towards Victor’s and Gavin’s personality. I would say it’s only after certain events that I started to show the same level of affection towards Lucien and Kiro. No spoilers, but just saying. If Lucien and Kiro aren’t your cup of tea in the beginning, well just keep reading because something happens and all of a sudden their personalities become much more interesting from then on.

Aside from the leads, the supporting characters are equally impressive. You have the team that works in the protagonist’s company, but also other characters that pop in and out of the plot, the spotlight dependent mainly on the plot which changes however the writer wishes.

Verdict (5/5)

If I ever have the chance to meet the writers, I really want to sit down with them and ask them how on earth do they do it?? How do they weave so many characters, yet still making sure that everything is coherent and cliffhangers being a major pain in our necks as players who have to wait for the next chapter or installment of chapters.

Game & CG Art

Picturesque backgrounds, beautiful character sprites, and gorgeous CG art! Kudos really to the artists who put their effort in ensuring consistency and quality for the CG, which is important considering there are players who make in-game purchases of limited-edition character cards (referred to as Karma in the game) of their favourite guy.

Verdict (4.5/5)

Note that for CGs, the game doesn’t have a separate gallery where you can save and store your favourite CG into your device. While the CGs for Karma can be saved, CGs that appear in the storyline will have the text box so players that desperately want a particular CG will have to search online to find a good resolution image.

Game Mechanics

While it is without a doubt that the plot is the main focus of the game, MLQC is a strategy card game that requires efforts to level up Karmas to pass levels in order to proceed with the story. The game rewards players’ efforts in getting strong Karmas, where SR and SSR Karmas have their own date stories, and occasionally you can unlock text conversations/phone calls/moments after levelling up or evolving a Karma too. 

Aside from strengthening Karmas, it is also important for players to strengthen their own company too. You can recruit Experts in City News by exchanging points gained from daily rewards, which you can then level up under the Company tab. At the same time you can use course cards earned in City News to level up specific attributes: Decision, Creativity, Affinity and Execution.

To get Karmas, you can obtain shards (and use gold to piece them together) from Footage, try your luck at the Wish Tree, or exchanging points earned in Box Office Contests and 24-Hour Challenge. Obviously, if you are able to play the game with real money, you can get top-up only Karmas for your financial investment in the game. 

Tired from all the strategising? MLQC offers players different immersive ways to spend time with their favourite, like interacting with him bodily in Go See Him, go on a sweet date with your favourite guy, or have a chat with him over text! MLQC even has an interesting feature: Right Beside You, an ASMR content featuring the guys whispering to you seemingly over the phone.

Verdict (4/5)

Overall, when you run out of content to read, MLQC offers plenty of other things to keep players occupied. From levelling up Karmas to enjoying moments with your favourite guy, there’s bound to be something to do everyday. However, I will not be giving this aspect a full point for one reason: Game crashes. A feature called ‘Go Home’ was released in August 2020, where players could choose which character to decorate and share a mini home. 

Unfortunately, there has been a portion of us players who have been unable to login and enjoy this feature, me included. Note that at the point of the release my iPhone 6+ was running on the latest iOS with over two-thirds of available memory, so it seemed odd that I couldn’t access the feature. Other players had the same issue but using different devices, so it seemed that it wasn’t just one series of phone devices that is having the issue.

In-Game Events 

Because the story is far from over (yes, even in the Chinese version it’s not done yet), in the meantime MLQC has to do all they can to keep their players’ interested in the game. Different types of events have appeared since the international release of the game, but despite the different formats the underlying rewards are the same – Limited edition karmas. Only a selected few events reward differently, with items like special avatar frame, gems, etcetera. The frequency of the events are quite high for the international version, so international players don’t have to wait as long as their Chinese counterparts do for something to do in the meantime.

Verdict (4/5)

While I enjoy having many events with limited-edition Karmas to add to the collection, this is also a strain on F2P players that have limited gems. As someone who likes all characters, this is an even bigger issue for me as I would want to have all Karmas. Those that have 1 or 2 favourites will find it slightly easier as they can skip events of other characters while they continue to build their hoard of gems. 

My tips on making full use of gems (AKA the highly sought after in-game currency): 

• Wish Tree events, I will give it a few pulls and see if I’m lucky to get one, but I won’t throw all my gems/tickets because I need to save them for another round; 
• 4 character SSR events, I first calculate the cost (or check the Facebook Official Group to see calculations) on whether I should go all in or just participate for a bit to secure some shards/basic rewards; 
• Do Daily missions (50 gems a day for 120 Activeness points) and complete all City Strolls (100 gems for 150 rounds each character, so 400 gems for 4 characters), you can earn 750 gems per week as City Strolls refresh on a weekly basis;
• And lastly follow MLQC’s official Facebook page, official Facebook Group and also join their Discord server, as MLQC occasionally has giveaways of gems and other fantastic rewards.

MLQC is a game that you can enjoy as F2P player, but to effectively ace through the game, you will need strategy as you have limited gems to spend. While you can choose to collect karmas of your favourite guy, to progress the latest chapters you need a fairly high stats for all 4 characters, so at some point you still need to skill up your less favourite characters. Based on what has been released so far in the Chinese version, international players have much to look forward to in the future.

Will you give this game a chance? Leave your comments below!

Happy Gaming!

~ RieRie