It used to be that anime series would be licensed without a whiff of possibility of our ever getting the source manga or light novels to read, to say nothing of the visual novels. But now we've come to the point where we're likely to get at least one version in English. The Villainess Is Adored by the Prince of the Neighbor Kingdom has taken the strangest possible approach to that certainty: rather than the original light novels or the manga, the version that's available pre-anime series is the visual novel adaptation of the first three LNs.

Released for Steam and Nintendo Switch, the game follows the source material with high fidelity. Divided into three books, which must be played in order, the game has three distinct plots that feel like they mimic light novels. The first book covers Tiararose discovering that she's been reborn in an otome game and getting through the basics of a villainess isekai (denunciation, dealing with the heroine, etc.). The second follows her life as the fiancée of Prince Aquasteed of Marinforest, the hero of the sequel otome game, and once again having to figure out a way around the heroine of that game. And finally, the third story pits Tiararose against the fairies of Marinforest and the fact that the water fairies would have rathered that Aquasteed married someone else.

Each book has three variants, which, it's important to note, do not equate to three endings. Tiararose is always going to end up with Aquasteed; there are no other real love interests, although it's obvious who the other romanceable targets would be in the fictional game Tiararose played. Instead, the color-coded variants each offer up different CGs for your viewing pleasure, as well as mild variations in how the endgame unfolds. That color coding makes it remarkably easy to get all of the achievements and unlock the bonus stories (which are from various love interests' points of view), because each time you click one of the dialogue options, a pattern in either pink, blue, or yellow pops up on screen…and the same colors always go with the same choice; clicking the first choice will always get pink, the second blue, etc. A challenging game this is not.

The allure, therefore, is linked to the visuals and voices. The art for this game is spectacular, with rich, vibrant colors, attractive character designs, and a lot of care clearly put into each CG. Backgrounds may be fairly basic, but the sprites have a lot of detail in their clothing and hair, and each has several facial expressions. Even if the story doesn't grab you, it's worth playing each pseudo-route to collect all of the pictures. Voices are similarly excellent, with such luminaries as Hikaru Midorikawa, Mai Fuchigami, and Junichi Suwabe, among others, and early announcements indicate that at least a few of them will be reprising their roles in the upcoming anime version. Voices can be turned on or off, with a separate control for Tiararose's voice, should you wish to just turn hers off.

Alongside pathetically easy gameplay, the other major downside is the localization. The translation is, to put it mildly, not great. As you can see from the three examples below, translation issues range from simple missing articles to improper pluralization to whatever is going on in that third one. It's not really what I'd call a barrier to understanding, but it's definitely not what you want to see in a professionally produced and released game with an MSRP of US$39.99.

What we can't blame the translation for is one of the more unintentionally hilarious elements of the story, which is the names. As the upcoming anime indicates, these are the originals, which I suspect is the light novel author attempting to sound excessively fancy, although it's also possible that they know full well how ridiculous they sound, which is a much more fun idea. But the names do make it a bit hard to take any of this seriously, and there are definitely points in the second and third books where that's a problem.

The Villainess Is Adored by the Prince of the Neighbor Kingdom is the sort of game you buy on sale. It's beautiful, but the gameplay is too simple and the translation shoddy. It does give you a good idea of what the anime will be like (and hopefully look like), and if you like to be familiar with the source material before embarking on a series, this is your only English-language option as of this writing. It's not terrible, but it also isn't quite worth the asking price.