So, this popped into my Steam recommendations, and I gave it a shot.
I have always loved Ancient Japan and China, and have done a fair amount of reading so it seemed a great suggestion. I had a game in the end of the 90s called Qin Tomb of the Middle Kingdom that was sort of like this. one needed to know a butt ton of Chinese history and culture.
It sort of helps to think of the game as a version of a choose your own adventure book with film clips and cutscenes. The costuming is wonderful, and the story lines functional but sometimes the translations of dialog are subtly off [a sign that it is not made in an english speaking company]
I played it through the first time to ‘win’ [make it through the intricate plots of the Imperial Harem without dying, being thrown into prison or mutilated and thrown out of the palace] and am now going through exploring every option, listening to all the voice clips and watching all the video clips. THere are a whole bunch of accomplishments one can do for in game rewards of ‘money’ and flowers that one uses to ‘vote’ for various characters. One of these is to change clothing 10 times before the first banquet =)
I am very much enjoying it - and at $9US, inexpensive and will sit in my Steam account comfortably with Civ V, Halo and a few other games I have bought and played over the decade or so I have had a steam account =) I can recommend buying it, it is no where near as hard as Qin, and they are coming out with a part 2 sometime soon.