The Princess Guide Reviews
The role as a teacher that ties the stories together held some promise, but the messy mechanics made me feel distanced from my pupils and in the end my actions were completely inconsequential.
While The Princess Guide has an interesting concept, and the systems meshed rather nicely when I got used to them, there are some points that need a more in-depth tutorial, or at least an accessible tutorial after you’ve seen it, instead of having to start a new game to re-read something you missed. It may not be anything that’s redefining the genre, but I certainly wasn’t disappointed either.
It’s the repetition that truly hampers The Princess Guide however. Aside from new traps to use and increasingly larger and more dangerous foes to fight, very little changes throughout the game. Beat up monsters. Move on to next area. Beat up Monsters. Repeat Ad infinitum. Because the mechanics are either poorly explained or shallowly implemented, the sheen of this game wears thin very quickly and without the unique aspects of its predecessor Penny-Punching Princess, it becomes a slog very quickly.
WORTH CONSIDERING - The Princess Guide is fun at first, overwhelmingly complicated overall, and a little weird to be scolding or praising princesses in their training. It has some great points like crazy button mashing combat, but also has clunky menus and severely repetitive gameplay.
Here’s the deal. I have an intense love for all things Japanese, and companies like Nippon Ichi Software tend to release games that speak to my soul. I’ve loved so many things they’re developed as a team and published as a studio, and they’re willing to take risks which I appreciate more than anything. Every now and then, a game comes along that makes me question that, as the disconnect is just too high.
The premise turns out being a rather shallow veneer on top of an enjoyable but underwhelming mission-based action RPG that bizarrely decides to try and hide its deeper elements.
The core mechanics deliver on all fronts, upgrade system is not convoluted, nor cumbersome which is great, the game looks beautiful for the genre it’s settles in, it does not try to over-deliver, nor does it under-utilise anything it brings with it. It’s hours of nonsense, that will have any fans of the JRPG genre loving this title.
So at the end of it all, this is really only a game I can recommend if you don’t mind a typical action romp with a bit of strategy to it, and if you don’t mind the very, very repetitive nature you’ll be dealing with along the way. Some aspects of the management portions definitely remind me a bit of some older games such as the Princess Maker series, but otherwise Princess Guide ended up being rather uninteresting.
The Princess Guide presents players with four great princesses and some enjoyable storytelling but be prepared for its decent combat system to become monotonous due to the necessary grind.
You’ll be playing the part of a veteran warrior whose job is to take a Princess under his wing...
The Princess Guide is undoubtedly exciting and fun. It's not so long, but since it has several endings, they make the gameplay interesting. I felt that something didn't seem right, because of the speed of the dialogue animations, which disturbed my concentration on the lines, and ended up skipping several dialogues and just doing the missions. However, it is a nice game, with well defined strategies and good combat features.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
The pacey, stylish, and colourful action, complemented with the neat strategy elements and interesting - albeit high-energy narrative, combine to make The Princess Guide quite unlike the other JRPGs out there.
For fans of NISA/NIS games in general, this is a complete let-down. None of the systems work well or are even that interesting. The story is bland, the combat unnecessarily complex and unfulfilling, and the lack of conventional progression against scaling difficulty results in an experience infuriating all the way around. Nearly everything is far more complex than it needs to be, from issuing battle commands, to simply trying to know what is being equipped or what effect is has. If one had to choose between one word to describe the whole experience this would be a battle between 'frustrating' and 'disappointing.'
Overall, it's an enjoyable action-focused romp, but everything feels a little scattershot. This is a game that packs in a lot but doesn't stick the landing on all that much. The Princess Guide offers up a pleasant little brawler that overcomplicates at every turn and is never truly satisfying.
The Princess Guide is an uninspired dungeon crawler with a strategic twist, that sorely miss a good loot system and a clever level design. Still, can be entertaining in short bursts for fanatics of the genre.
Review in Italian | Read full review
The Princess Guide could be considered a diamond in the rough... although there's a lot of rough and not many diamonds
Inconceivably bland.
Regardless of how simple The Princess Guide might appear, it's fun enough to enjoy. In a lot of ways, it seems like the perfect game for the Switch. Players can pick it up and have fun, change up their tactic or see what different units have to offer. The only real downside is the story, though the dialogue is often fun enough to get past it. Combine that with a fair amount of challenges, cute monsters and more and it's easy to have a blast with The Princess Guide.
The Princess Guide fails to execute on its good ideas, and the result is a game that feels like it was released before it had time to be raised properly.
The Princess Guide feels like a mishmash of ideas that involves some creative concepts, characters with a good deal of personality and visually appealing, but the game mechanics are not properly explained, there's several examples of incoherence in the plot development and the combat is rather repetitive. Overall, this experience ends up becoming disappointing.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review