The Princess Guide Reviews
Inconceivably bland.
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.'
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.
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.
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 Princess Guide could be considered a diamond in the rough... although there's a lot of rough and not many diamonds