Knowledge or Know Lady Review

The story premise is simple; you’re the only man in a women’s university, and so you get attention from six admirers. Straight off the bat, two classmates are infatuated with you. Later, you meet an exchange student that becomes your wingman, the school doctor, a rebellious non-student, and an older bossy student. You join a ghost-hunting club, which is mostly an excuse to bring the admirers together and allows the game to lean into the fantasy side (i.e. Chinese costume drama). The player-character has no real goal, outside studying dutifully, but the various encounters and story flow logically enough. All the admirers have backgrounds and personalities that make sense too.

The game is rather funny, partly because it leans into the absurdity and improbability of every situation. Male comedic relief characters occasionally pop up. Encounters with the admirers can often be amusing, especially if they clash with each other or act love struck. Add in a bit of light slapstick and you have a really humorous adventure.

All of the actresses do a fantastic job, well above the standard level. Most of them offer playful aggressive affection, mixed with modesty and caring actions. The tone is near perfect and it is also consistent for each character, from the motherly doctor to the laid back exchange student. It is probably not fair to call out individuals, because they’re all so good, but the actress playing Serena is insanely good at being the flirty love interest.

Close-up shots really strengthen the interactions. Many circumstances bring the camera right up to the faces of admirers. This might happen because they fell into your arms or because you nearly drowned. There are also hugs and kisses, typically more common in the back half. Considering how easy it would be to mess these up, it is amazing how well they work. Again, the actresses are doing the heavy lifting, but also the camera direction (timing + lighting + focus) helps to bring it together.

Timeline exploration works quite well. One single playthrough (to the final confession) only takes around 2.6 hours, which is a little short. But exploring all side paths will add another 5+ hours. Some paths offer fairly long extra scenes too, on top of the usual affection changes. Several paths reward you with an item to use later, like a hair clip or a book. The cool thing is that these items remain in your inventory even if you change timelines, making the story exploration more of a cumulative process. So you find and item, switch timelines, and use the item to unlock an early positive ending.

There are many endings, including failed romances and perfect endings. The perfect endings require locating all photos of an admirer hidden in the branching paths, but you also need to have high affection too. Also there are dual endings and one group ending, which is a cool way to bring multiple admirers together. Since the mechanics behind the branching paths are visible and the timeline actually shows ending locations, going back through the story to access everything works better than most games.

Knowledge or Know Lady is not perfect. It does have minor translation issues. The video quality could be better. The first run is a little short and the story needed an overall arc to tie everything together. Also while there are good endings, many are abrupt. But despite these issues, what is here is pretty great.