Some of my opinion is clearly nostalgia for the old version. Obviously there's some issues here, it's a little dated in several ways that should have been refined for the steam release. Pacing could be better, as could some control and interface issues, this translation has a few embarassing slip ups here and there, and the graphics can be best decribed as 'nostalgic'. But at the end of the day I still recommend this, both historically and in it's own right. It's an excellent life sim that still holds up and is still a lot of fun to try in different ways to try and get different things. Finding and figuring out all the little tricks and secrets can be tricky but fun and satisfying to figure out. If you're unsure it might be a good idea to wait for a steam sale but I have no complaints about my purchase.

pros: Cute stat raising sim with a shocking wealth of content, especially if you enjoyed the beta version as a youth. New art, new music, new translation, full voice acting!
cons: Got some creepy stuff in it which they made no attempt to remove. This translation is a bit ramshackle. No fast forward button that I'm aware of.

My narrative is the same as a lot of people: got the unfinished DOS version as a child, played it extensively, rediscovered it later. It's a very cute game that I think ended up having a large female fanbase on accident, kind of like Harvest Moon. I hold it very close to my heart and would recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in this kind of game because I think it's one of the best raising sims out there, but it's not without its flaws.

The story goes as follows: you're a wandering swordsman, you save a kingdom from demons, God rewards you with a child. You get to raise her however you want, but you don't have a lot of money.

Each month is divided into 3 segments. For each of these, you can either:
Send her to work - babysitting, church volunteer, farmwork, etc. more jobs unlock as you get older (raises stats, lowers others, gives money)
Send her to school - dance lessons, Science, etc. (only raises stats, but takes money)
Send her adventuring, a sort of RPG overworld minigame (Yes, you can send your 10 year old into a frozen tundra with no weapons or armor if you really want to)
Give her some free time (Work and school will both accumulate stress that needs to be relieved or she will fall ill)

Throughout your play, your daughter's stats will gradually shape into something that determines the final ending she gets. Will she become a member of the nobility? A child of the arts? A great warrior? Or something more sinister?

The game's most prominent feature, I think, is its replayability. Notably, there are 74 endings, and several possible marriages on top of that. Something as simple as your daughter's birthday and blood type might result in a different starting layout for your stats. There are a lot of hidden secrets, and you might find some of the stats have surprising uses (or consequences).

You can play the game in a lot of different ways and the game doesn't penalize you for it - maybe you want to be a magical girl and adventure every other week, paying your way through Theology and Magic classes with loot, or maybe you never want to touch adventuring and work her way through Poetry classes by working at a hair salon. Neither of these are wrong ways to play!

Now, for the bad:

This translation, as others have stated, is not as coherent as the original beta one. Fortunately and unfortunately, it's the worst at the start of the game and the end of the game, meaning that for the most part the translation is very serviceable, but you get dialogue like "From there, it would seem she made an excellent turn." during your ending. Uh, what? I only knew it meant "Your daughter was excellent at her job." thanks to having played the original.

And then, of course, there's the untranslated ending voiceover, which is amusing but kind of inexcusable. Also, there's inexplicable bits of missing dialogue? My daughter says "It's a handmade ! I hope you like it." for every birthday present she gives me. Like I said, it's playable, but they definitely needed a proofreader to go through it and iron out some of the typos.

The achievements are partially broken for a lot of people. I've talked to the bishop a nauseating amount of times, I don't have an achievement for doing so. There are partial fixes for some of them, but not all.

Also, for those of you hoping they removed the creepier parts of this game: Nope. You can still:

1. MARRY YOUR DAUGHTER (it's not incest if it's not blood related, apparently!), something that from the lack of an achievement for it I'd hoped they had removed for the Steam release
2. see your underage daughter naked in several vacation CGs, even if the beta version made attempts to remove this
3. hear your daughter talk to her FATHER about how she wishes her chest was bigger (please stop, oh my God)
4. buy pills that increase chest size from a shady salesman

These are gross and I wish they'd been removed. Unlike something like the shadier venues you can work at when you get older which you can argue serve a gameplay purpose, increasing your 12 year old's bust size serves no real purpose except being extremely creepy!

In summation, if you love this kind of game or played it as a kid and are willing to overlook creepiness and translation errors, get it, it's a hidden gem with a lot of heart. If you think you'd enjoy it but you're not sure you want to spend $20 on it, wait for a sale or perhaps try the DOS version first to see if it's the kind of game you like before coming back to buy it.

You play the part of a hero that was granted a child by the gods. A pure, innocent little girl who has been sheltered from the world in ways only the gods can shelter. Or at least, only the gods could get away with such treatment of a child. It comes across as being similar to keeping a newborn in the basement for the first ten years of her life, only interacting with her on a basic level and not allowing any contact with the world outside. Someone call heavenly child services!

You have to raise her from that tender age of ten, arranging for everything from her diet, to her clothes, to her education. Raising a child and giving her a good education isn't cheap, either. How can a single adoptive father, on a stipend from the kindgom of a meager 500 gold per year, afford it? On a normal diet, the girl eats 360 gold per year, and the other 140 isn't nearly enough for all the little things a child needs, or anything resembling an education. Well, the answer is obvious. Put her to work!

From the age of 10, your adoptive daughter can do work as a babysitter, watching over other children barely any younger than her and keeping them out of trouble. Or she could work on a farm, buiding up her strength and destroying her appearance. Or, for a penny a day, she could work at the church... she'll even get sundays off! Wait... what?

Doing jobs and taking classes will raise some of the girl's stats and lower others, and the fun of the game is all the different ways your daughter can turn out. A dancer! A painter! A poet! She can become loved by high society, and leave her mark on the world through her arts. Or... an Archmage! A Hero! She can learn to wield might and magic, and even challenge the very god of war in her adventures! Or... A hunter! A... concubine? The demon queen?!?! You can hopelessly corrupt your child, and offend the gods with how bad of a father you have been.

The game is an interesting take on the life simulation genre, and offers dozens of endings for great replayability. Highly recommended for those that like stat management/micro management games.

Godly game with perfect balance of normal life and battles

game pace is also enjoyable. it doesnt take too long to make you feel bored but long enough to enjoy myriad of different events

seems to be some problem with modernizing the game but overall it is definitly worth it

Pretty entertaining old school-type game. The inability to skip repetitive cut scenes (like the intro) and the horrible translation really take away from it, though.

Played the Dos version and felt like I had to get this version the next day. Hopefully the other are brought to steam eventually but if you're looking for a weird game that's different than what you're used to I would recommend this, if you already know about these types of games you don't have a reason to not get it.

Gets a weeb/10 for me

NEGATIVE REVIEW BUT NOT BECAUSE I DIDN'T ENJOY, SOME MAY LIKE IT SOME MAY NOT, READ ON TO FIGURE OUT:

Okay, so if you enjoy "Long Live the Queen" you will probably enjoy this. However, you'll have to play through it a bit before you actually understand how any of it works. The rest of my review will be set up into sections so you can just read what you care about.

Actual Writing of the Story/Dialogue/World:
-cons-
While I enjoy this game, be warned: this game body-shames like nobodies business. It's incredibly hard for her to keep weight off, and the game will constantly criticize her for being "fat" when she honestly isn't. I was able to take it in humor because I just found it ridiculous but for those of you who have struggled with eating disorders/body image, I would probably say that you should not play this. Also, if she doesn't get married at the end, the game will criticize you. BECAUSE HOW WILL SHE GIVE BIRTH?? A WOMAN CAN'T BE WORTH ANYTHING IF SHE AIN'T POPPING OUT BABIES, AMIRITE? Again, I laughed at it and found it funny.
-pros-
I'm pretty sure the game isn't supposed to be taken all that seriously, so you can kinda forgive the ridiculousness of its expectations. Also, at the beginning they explain that she's meant to be a child from the heavens and she's sorta supposed to be humanities salvation so it does kinda make sense that she's supposed a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ saint or some nonsense.

Gameplay:
-cons-
Oh Jesus.... this took me a while to even feel like this game was playable BUT LORD DID I GET THERE. It will feel IMPOSSIBLE at first. My friends got to hear me screaming, "I'm in so much debt and I need to work to get money but I'm too stressed to work!" and, of course, their response was, "is this a game or just college?" Once you realize what skills to beef up first though, it gets a lot more managable. Also, this may have just been me, but I was unable to find any walkthroughs so man was I going in blind.
-pros-
Look, I LOVE Long Live the Queen but it is so refreshing to actually feel like I know what the skill checks are going to be on BEFORE the actual check. Whereas in Long Live the Queen there's basically always going to be situations where you fail, you can navigate through Princess Maker so that nothing really negative happens.

Art:
Eeh, it feels very old-school anime, like Detective Conan or something so it just really depends on whether or not you like that style.

Music:
Very basic video game music, I mostly forgot it was there because I kind of just tuned it out, but it wasn't particularly annoying or bad or anything.

Voice Acting:
It's in Japanese, I took four years of Japanese and it's been a while so I actually enjoyed trying to understand as much as I could, but from just a sound perspective... some of the voices are great, others are fine and some make me want to put the game on mute. Luckily, none of the big characters have particularly grating voices, just a few minor ones that you don't even have to run into.

So I'm putting this as a negative review, but I did genuinely enjoy it and I'm sure many others would to, I just want people to have an idea of what's in store because some of the aspects are atrocious and I don't want anyone being upset over spending their money.

And old DOS classic brought to steam. The original Refine version is in japanese, and there are still several translation errors in this release. Some of the ending dialogue scenes are not even translated, so keep that in mind.

In essence this is a management game with RPG and adventure elements. Train your daughter by choosing her monthly schedule with part-time work, classes, free time and adventure. If you don't balance her stress levels with her stats, she may become ill or delinquent which takes precious time and resources. There's a limited 8 years time for upbringing, after which the ending is decided by her stats and your choices during the playthrough.

Let me be frank here and say I LOVE Princess Maker 2, But for the improvments made in its english release is very disapointing. Buggy acheivment support, No end game text, and worse yet, typography issues that clutter the screen (I'm looking at you magic milk). Untill this game becomes fixed with an ending and better translation with achivments, I sadly can not reccomend it in its current state.

An all around wonderful remake of the classic game. All art re-done while remaining true to the original. Nothing was cut out. A real nostalgia candy.