Lair Land Story is a visual novel that takes place in a life simulation with multiple endings. Conceptually, it’s a mash-up of some of my favorite game genres. There’s just one thing: sometimes, a great concept can’t always nail the execution. Overall, Lair Land Story is a success in what it sets out to do, but certain elements of its story and narrative often feel a bit too unnatural. Despite this, is it worth picking up? Let’s discuss in this review of Lair Land Story for the Nintendo Switch.

In the game’s opening scenes, you play as Herol, a man caught in the middle of a major war taking place in his home city. During the pending doom of his home and everyone he knows and loves, a strange child with magical powers named Chilia saves the day with her, well, powers. After doing so, she has no memory, nor does she seem to have the ability to do anything a normal girl would do. You take her in and raise her, and throughout four years of gameplay, hope to help her make something of her mysterious life.

While you’re raising this magical child, you’re also on the hunt for love yourself. With many characters in the world to romance, you might end up with a childhood sweetheart or a guard who has high aspirations to serve her city. Essentially, everything that is going to happen in this town is up to you to maneuver and decide. There are some great elements to the gameplay, but overall, parts of the story’s details keep it from being a flawless experience.

The main mechanic in the game is a menu screen where you choose how Chilia will spend her day. Here, you can send her on adventures, make her study different subjects, and even work to earn money. With that money, you can buy things for her room, as well as excursions like bathhouse trips and other activities. You also spend time visiting different parts of the city and interacting with others as Herol and Chilia. This is how she makes friends and you plant seeds for love to bloom.

Overall, progressing Chilia through her rediscovery of life is satisfying. A drawback, particularly in your discussions with other townspeople, is the lack of decisive conversation choices in some parts of the game. It’s tough to tell exactly what decision you’re making when vague options don’t seem to point towards one goal you’re striving for or another. The voice work in Japanese was well-done, but there were also typos in the written English translations. These are common for translated games, but still always a bit of a bummer.

As Lair Land Story has numerous outcomes to its four-year in-game cycle, you can sort of meld Chilia into whatever person you want her to be. The dynamic of a seemingly adult man and this girl whose age is questionable does leave you feeling a bit icky. With some conversations implying Chilia’s innocence to adult-type things, there are no overtly sexual moments in the game but there are some winks to Chilia not knowing everything about being a woman. It’s kind of unnecessary.

That said, this game does not lean too heavily into fan service and sexualization of the female characters, apart from some outfits that are a bit revealing. For a game that leans into the anime/visual novel genre, that’s a welcome change of pace. There’s just a bit of an odd dynamic with Chilia that holds it back from being this wholesome, heartwarming experience. As there’s nothing objectively insidious in the game, it’s just more of a sentiment that I’m left with than a flaw to its core mechanics.

Overall, I tried to take Chilia down two different paths and both were fun and diverse. You can play Lair Land Story in a number of different ways depending on how you grow her interests and time spent with various activities. For people who enjoy life management games and visual novels, I think the translation issues and questionable story beats are easy to look past. I’ll probably even play Lair Land Story a couple more times to explore more resolutions, and that’s not something I often do with these types of games.

Let us know if you plan on playing Lair Land story on the Switch after checking out this review in the comments!

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Lair Land Story

$14.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• A great life management experience
• Well-designed characters and world
• Fun option for visual novel fans eager to explore a new adventure

Cons

• A few translation issues
• Dialogue options aren't always clear in their outcomes