Gamertell

So, as you’ve all probably gathered, I’m a bit of a Princess Maker fan. Princess Maker is basically a glorified virtual pet, except instead of raising an animal, you’re raising a kid. (Sure, you can assert that people are basically animals, but let’s not get into that now.)

Up until now, you’ve probably seen my earnest recommendations of the games and series and perhaps brushed them aside. The game may be good, but is it really that good? Yes. Yes it is. And to illustrate that, I have put together some of the reasons why I love the Princess Maker games so much.

Since I’ve only had the opportunity to play Princess Maker 2 and Princess Maker 4 Portable, most of my reasons for loving the series stem from those entries. Almost every Princess Maker game possesses the same basic principles, so there shouldn’t be too many discrepancies with the other entries.

1: It’s not your typical pet sim.

Not many games give a random warrior a young girl to raise. No one asks about the main character’s background, or even if he wants a child. He’s just given a kid and asked to raise her properly until she’s 18.

So he’s expected to retire, drop everything and raise a brat who will abandon him the second she comes of age. She won’t even stick around to say goodbye. Instead, she’ll just leave a note saying, “Thanks for everything. Now that I’m successful and married, I don’t need you any more. Toodles.”

Its a great game for people who have god-complexes. You get to dictate practically every aspect of her life. Of course she may occasionally run away if she gets too rebellious and you don’t keep an eye on her morality, but she’ll be back. She’s an orphan with nowhere else to go after all.

2: It is unintentionally funny.

In what other game is child labor treated as a positive rather than a negative? You send your daughter off to work. She learns skills and such, and you get to pocket her earnings. If you feel like it, you can share some of that money with her (as an allowance), or you can keep it all for yourself. She doesn’t care. Or you can use it to pay for her classes - like you should be expected to pay for a kid that isn’t even yours.

Plus you get to play a deadbeat dad. In the introductions he’s always introduced as some mighty warrior. Apparently blood-thirsty, warrior heroes make the best daddies, because they always end up with a little girl to raise. He then abandons the warrior lifestyle and lives off a royal stipend for the rest of his days.

Then there are the starvation diets. Some clothes only fit emaciated girls, which means it’s time to cut back on her food. Your butler, Cube (he appears in both games) will warn that it isn’t health for the girl, but no-one ever said being fashionable was healthy. If you still can’t get her to slim down enough, Princess Maker 2 has a special sour milk item which instantly makes the girl lose weight. Yum!

Not to mention the questionable jobs and locations. In both Princess Maker 2 and 4, the daughter can be sent to work in sleazy bars and casinos once she’s old enough (usually 14, then 16). In Princess Maker 4 she can also visit the dark alleys and demon world during her free time.

Did I mention her father’s a marriage candidate? No? Well he is. If you play in a certain way, you can make the daughter fall in love with the father, and in the end they’ll get married.

3: Dragon princes are adorable.

I love the Princess Maker dragon princes. See, one of the goals in Princess Maker is to marry the girl off to a prince. There’s usually the stereotypical human prince charming dude, a demon prince and, my favorite, a dragon prince.

The dragon princes have two forms, dragon and human. In Princess Maker 2, the girl first meets the dragon prince while exploring the desert castle ruins. If she beats him in battle, she’ll shame him. If she returns and gets the Dragon Tights outfit from his grandfather, then at the end the dragon will come by in his human form asking to marry her. In Princess Maker 4 the dragon prince Lee is almost always encountered in his human form - the girl only sees him as a dragon if she visits the demon world.

I don’t know why, but I just find both of them adorable. Both the unnamed dragon youth and Lee have such cute personalities, as opposed to the stereotypical ones of the other princes. Plus they can change into dragons!

4: Multiple endings = replayability.

It seriously isn’t a stretch to say that each game of Princess Maker will be different. There are over 70 different endings in Princess Maker 2, and almost 40 different endings in Princess Maker 4 Portable. Every action taken in the game affects the daughter’s disposition and statistics.

Unless you specifically write down every single action you make your “daughter” go through from the ages of 10-18, it is unlikely that each playthrough will be the same. There are too many different classes, events and possibilities to get the same result each time.

Plus the endings can be hilarious. Your princess could be a ruling queen, a gravekeeper, a heroine, a lumberjack, a concubine, a crime boss, a lord of darkness or really anything you could think of. In Princess Maker 2, the gods who gave you the baby rank your parenting abilities based on how she turned out. Imagine the disapproving responses a father who marries the princess of darkness daughter gets.

COMING NEXT WEEK: Next week I’ll hopefully review Pump It Up Zero for the PSP.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Last week Important Importables looked at PSP games the US won’t get.

Site [KitKat’s Princess Maker Corner] Site [Nuriko’s Princess Maker Nexus] Site [Play-Asia] Site [YesAsia] Site [NCSX] Site [Himeya Shop] Site [JBox]