Review
Release Date: 07.30.2009
Platform:
PlayStation NetworkDeveloper:
Titan StudiosPublisher:
Sony Computer Entertainment AmericaReviewed by
Richard Brownell on 9.29.2009
When I think back to all the games I've played over the years, the ones that stick out are the ones that are very good, unique, or are dripping with style. Fat Princess, though it falls short of total excellence, fits nicely into all three categories. It's a fun multiplayer experience that is unlike any game I've played before nicely wrapped up in this cute medieval package that keeps me coming back for more.
Fat Princess puts you in the role of a medieval villager who is in charge of rescuing your princess from the neighboring kingdom. The reason it's called "fat" princess is that the enemy will feed your princess loads of cake to keep her fat. That way it will be harder for you and your fellow villagers to carry her away. Of course, you are doing the same to their princess. At its core, Fat Princess is a variant on capture the flag. It's a top-down perspective team-based game where you and your buddies must steal the enemy princess and rescue your princess. In the regular mode, you win by rescuing your princess and keeping her on the throne for a certain amount of time.
When you start the game, your villager is just that, a villager. You can run fast, but you aren't any good at combat, nor can you build anything. But that's because you aren't wearing a hat. In Fat Princess, the hat makes the man (or woman who looks like a man). By putting on one of the hats that comes out of one of the five hat machines, you take on that hat's class, including warrior, wizard, priest, ranger, and worker. The warrior is good at hand to hand combat. The wizard can do ranged and blast attacks. The priest is good at healing and cursing. The ranger is good at ranged attacks. And the worker is good at building things and tossing bombs around. Each class's hat machine can be upgraded by the worker, giving them new abilities.
The classes are very well balanced. This isn't just a numbers balance though. The fun level of the classes is also balanced. In most games, I will pick a class and stick with it. This is either because that class is the most effective or most fun (or both). In Fat Princess, I thought I thought the warrior would be that class because of their initial effectiveness, but in the end I enjoy playing as all classes. Because the worker is crucial in the beginning, many players start as the worker and then move on to play the other classes as needed.
The workers are needed in the beginning because there are lots of things to be built. Fat Princess has a very simple resource system. There is wood and ore. Workers are the only ones that chop wood and mine ore (though anybody can carry it). Once resources are gathered, there are many things for workers to do. In every map, its crucial to build your castle doors and upgrade the hat machines. But depending on the map, workers might need to build bridges or build sneaky ways into the enemy's castle. One of the most important things to build is the catapult, allowing you to send a team of troops flying over the map into the enemy's castle.
If Fat Princess is your thing, this probably sounds pretty fun so far. But if this game were made with a realistic style or was too generic, it would lose its appeal fast. Thankfully, it's got this crazy sense of humor and style. It's somewhat reminiscent of Behemoth's
Castle Crashers. All the troops are colorful and cute looking blocky characters. The maps are fun with trees and castles and pirate ships that are all very fun feeling, like they belong in a children's cartoon. But Fat Princess is full of brutality. Characters get chopped up, burned, frozen, and generally destroyed by their enemies.
The one thing that is most likely to frustrate you when playing Fat Princess is your teammates. Winning a match requires teamwork. I did have a few matches during the week it came out where we were able to win with only a guy or three working together to steal the princess, but most of the time it takes an effort of five or six people to win. A proper squad might consist of a couple warriors to pick off the defending enemies, a priest to keep them healed up, a wizard to do some blast damage, and a worker just in case. But if nobody is using a microphone to communicate, these strategies need to happen instinctively. I've played many games where this did happen that way, but many others have found the game frustrating when it ends in stalemate.
With all the abilities of the five classes and villager, the game could be considered complete. But just to mix things up, developer Titan included two extra items that appear in your castle. One is a magical potion. Dropping it causes a blast attack that turns everybody in the blast into chickens. As a chicken you can peck at people, but most likely you will simply die. The other item is a bomb. This bomb is unlike the worker's bombs. It does a huge amount of damage and used properly can pick off lots of enemies or break a hole in their defenses.
Two of the options in the Fat Princess menu are simply to enhance the game. "Why I'm Awesome" tells you a slew of stats all about your play time. "Get Fabulous" lets you customize your character. There are hair styles, beard styles, etc. You unlock extra options by playing the game, though it isn't exactly apparent how to unlock everything.
But unlocking confusion doesn't compare to the confusion surrounding ranks. The Fat Princess ranking system is broken. Your rank increases based on the points you've earned in recent games. You earn points for everything you do. This includes attacking people, rescuing the princess, chopping down trees, etc. The problem is that a well played match doesn't necessarily have you earning more points. On the contrary, the best played matches are over quickly meaning you won't earn many points at all; there simply isn't enough time. So the best way to increase your rank is to try not to win until long into the match. Hopefully, Titan will code a new ranking system to replace this one.
One half of the style of Fat Princess is the look of the characters and the combat. The other half is just as important though, which is the levels. The levels are their own characters. The basic level contains two ordinary castles with some woods between them. It's a ton of fun to play but the levels just get crazy from there. There's a level with two pirate ships serving as the castles. There's even one with rising and falling lava. Players learn the layout of each level to find the best paths for making attacks and rescuing princesses. And each map has sneaky ways of getting into the opposing castle.
Rescuing the princess is the standard mode of play, but there are others. In snatch 'n grab, you have to capture the princess and hold her three times to win. In invasion, you have to control 50% of the outposts that are scattered around each map to win the game. And team deathmatch is exactly what it says and is also the least fun of the modes. There's one last mode, though the only way to get to it is by selecting it as a map, which is soccer. The soccer map feels like something thrown together at the last minute, possibly not with the intention of including it in the game. But that's a good thing in this case. It's a regular soccer field with the same red and blue teams you always have in Fat Princess. You have to get the soccer ball into the enemy's goal. No princesses, no outposts, no hat machines. Hats show up from time to time giving certain players a distinct advantage. It's basically total mayhem as both teams beehive around the ball and you typically win by luck. It's not going to dethrone FIFA as the soccer game of choice, but it's definitely fun.
The last mode of the game is the single player mode. It's basically a set of levels meant as a tutorial to prepare you for multiplayer. It does a fairly good job of teaching you the game but it has a couple faults. It doesn't explicitly tell you every aspect of the game, for instance how to give commands to your AI teammates. And it just isn't as fun as playing with other humans. It's worth playing for the story that goes along with it alone.
It seems like many of the most memorable games of this generation are downloadable games. From the tranquility of Flower to the mayhem of Castle Crashers, these cheap alternatives to retail games are clearly the work of passionate developers. Fat Princess sits right alongside those games and has carved its own niche in the PSN download library. Titan has already announced upcoming content, so we can expect for it to be played for quite some time.
