Video Game / Cute Knight

Cute Knight is a game series that's mainly a Raising Sim, in spirit of Princess Maker, with a bit of Dating Sim, and Western RPG by Hanako Games, where the player roleplays as a girl the player can name, who just turned 18, and has 3 years to make something of herself, with those choices leading to one of Multiple Endings. Some of them are romance-based endings, which is why it's a bit of a Dating Sim.

The Western RPG sections come in because there's some Character Customization, like a Hello, [Insert Name Here] with Character Name Limits, a Cap of 8 characters. Hit Points, Mana Points, combat, and so on.

The entries in the main series are:

• Cute Knight (2005, Updated Re Release, 2009)
• Cute Knight Kingdom (2009)

Spinoff:

• Cute Bite (2021)

• While the name and certain mechanics are clearly connected, this title is set in the modern era and features a little vampire girl being raised by a butler instead of an 18-21 protagonist raising herself. It also doesn't use the main series' magic or dressup systems.

---

Tropes present within the Cute Knight series in general:

• Alliterative Title: For each game.
  • The first game, Cute Knight, calls itself with the subtitle, Kishi Kawaii (きし かわいい), on the Hanako Games page, about the game, and in the ending summary screen.
  • Cute Knight Kingdom
• Animal Lover: Shown in multiple ways.
  • During Character Customization in each game, a birth month is chosen which has a description which generalizes its effects on the protagonist's stats. Frost (a.k.a November) is:
    very friendly and love children and animals, but hate to fight
• Character Name Limits:
  • The main games have protagonist's name limited to being 8 characters long.
  • Cute Bite has it at 10 characters max.
• Cutting Off the Branches: For the "Prime Minister" ending of Cute Knight Kingdom, mentions that Prince Alaric will marry a Princess Michiko, whom Word of God has revealed is the daughter of the previous game's protagonist who shares her mother's name... So that cuts off all endings of said previous game where its protagonist can't have a princess for a child.
• Elemental Powers: The foundation of the magic system, all spells being various combinations of the 9 elements of: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Nature, Emotion, Holy, Light, and Darkness.
• Flavor Text: For both games, Party Dress's is:
  For dressing up and looking nice; not for fighting.
• Gay Option: Each game implies at least one of these.
• Golden Ending: Each game has one of these, and in both cases it's a Really Royalty Reveal, as the player character is secretly a princess.
• Happily Adopted: Done differently in each game.
  • In the mage ending of the first game, the player is adopted by her instructor Orchid, and becomes Rose's big sister.
  • In the second game, the player is this from the beginning, having been loved and treasured by her adoptive parents since she was a little baby.
  • In Cute Bite, the vampire child can choose to treat the butler as a mother-figure and therefore achieve something of a later-life happy adoption, since her relationship with her vampire "father" was not so good.
• Happily Married: A few of the endings for each game have the player achieve this, depending on interactions with certain characters. Not all characters are options for marriage, but of those who are, the union is indicated to always be a happy one. The endings themselves are not based on the marriages, however, but rather on the occupation the player enters with their new spouse; for example, in the second game, becoming a blacksmith results in marrying Cole, while becoming an innkeeper results in marrying John.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: For the protagonist's name in each game:
  • The first game has a Canon Name of "Michiko" as revealed in the sequel.
  • The second game has its protagonist named "Sorami" if the player doesn't choose a name.
  • Cute Bite: Has a nickname of "Buttercup" used as the default.
• Item Crafting: Differs a bit per game:
  • In the first game, items are created from other items at the University after taking one course on Crafting, and can only fail if the combination of items would've resulted in something.
  • In Cute Knight Kingdom, items are crafted at the protagonist's home, and will fail, resulting in the loss of items, if the protagonist's Crafting skill is too low, or the combination of items does not have a result.
• Multiple Endings: Each game has them:
  • The first game has over 50 endings.
  • Cute Knight Kingdom has about 40 endings.
• Named After First Installment: The series focuses on raising an older teenage girl who's looking for a goal in life. The titles of the series are Alliterative Titles, and the games are Animesque in a Medieval European Fantasy style world, with a combat system, so the series title proves informative.
• Random Event: After jobs, sometimes, certain events will happen, usually the boss talking to the protagonist about something.
• Save-Game Limits: A lot of saves are possible in each game:
  • In the first game. there is effectively an infinite number of saves, being only limited by the player's character set and hard disk space. They can be made, anywhere at any time, even partway through dialogue and jobs, except during initial character creation of birth month selection, the opening cutscene, in combat, and at the screen that displays the ending. If you try to save at an ending, the message is:
    It's a bit late for that now!
  • In Cute Knight Kingdom, save names are restricted in-game to 15 characters or less, but if the player renames the files to have longer names, the game still accepts them, although, they will not display properly.

---