Games that have a distinctive Japanese flavour can easily fall one of two ways, they can be too Japan and make me want to stop playing or they can be charmingly Japan and demand that I play more and more of it, The Princess Guide fell somewhere right in the middle and that is ok.

The game features four princess’ that you will join and train up and then another story, where all come together, teaming up if you will. You are a silent warrior, who decides after fighting in another battle, that it is time to leave the fight to others and sets off to find something new to do, a challenge for someone who lived for the fight. After deciding to teach, you are here given the choice of one of the four Princess’ to begin with, there is Liliarte, Veronica, Monomaria and Alpana, with each having their very distinct reasons for seeking a tutor and personalities to go along with them. Monomaria is who I first played through as, she is a royal, but broke as can be, so she seeks to restore her families wealth, but also her honour. For my second playthrough I went with Alpana, because she is part dragon and they are wicked cool, just don’t as Liliarte about her views there.

Each of the stories is quite fast paced, with little bogging the story down, there are some moments where things become a little dry, but they are few and far between, most of the time the story is humours. The flip side to that is that nothing ever feels worth investing in, each of the Princess’ are charming and fun, especially if you scold them, more on that in a bit, but they rarely take things seriously, which means you are left with characters that treat the world as a joke. Sadly, as you are silent, apart from a few choices, you can’t dictate anything and the only real way you can influence each of the Princess’ is when you praise or scold them, which is only really effective in battle.

Battles can be handled in one of two ways, you can enter as your own character, taking on the foes that block your path, or you can lead the Princess instead and as they do good or bad, you can react accordingly. The problem with the system is that many of the battles are short and full of lots of things happening, so you will miss a lot of the right chances to praise them and while you can do it whenever you want, it is only really effective if you do it at the right time. The main crux of battles is that you move around the map, which is generated at random, take down all enemies in your way, until you trigger a larger fight and defeat them, rinse and repeat, it is pretty much the same. As the maps are created randomly, there are things like traps and such that will change things up, especially if you accidentally trigger them, well you might not, but your squad will for sure.

Each battle you enter, will see you joined by a squad of six soldiers, each one of them can be customised, giving you control over the type of weapon they use and more, they will generally follow you, or your Princess of choice, but they are sadly not that bright. What this results in, is they getting stuck behind walls, or setting off the aforementioned traps, as some of the battles can be quite tricky, having your support soldiers, which are great at breaking defences, stuck away from the action is a bit of a downer.

Outside of battle, the thing you will spend more time doing than anything is teaching your Princess, ie new skills and such, these happen in a menu, where the Princess sits upon a silly throne and then you look into a book, or their diary to do things. Each skill you unlock is done so in battle, so paying attention in them helps in the long run and while it can take a bit to get them levelled up, it does make some fights easier to complete.

As far as the presentation goes, it does not stray to far from other games of the develops collection, a lot of the action takes place in a top down view, with your character running around and attacking. When you are in the midst of these battles, there are lots of things happening, the game does not have any issues in running, though it is a little hard to see. Outside of battles, most of the game is presented in the 2d cut-out style, where all the characters that speak with you, are 2d cut-outs and while they have some animation, they are not great. A lot of the time, the characters do is bounce up and down and while I am sure seeing some characters, the Princess’, bouncing up and down is great for some, it just highlighted how little happens in these moments.

From an audio point of view, the music is on par with what I expected going in, there is nothing wrong with it, it is just the traditional jrpg music that we have come to know over the years. As far as dialogue goes, it is all presented in Japanese and while I don’t understand a lot of the language, the cast have done a great job of making the characters come alive, from the mains to the random solider, they all sound really well done.

The Princess Guide is a game that is hard to recommend for two reasons, one it is beyond grindy as battles rarely change, there is very little enjoyment to be found there, but in order to reach the fifth story, you need to do it. Two, repeating the same thing four times, is a bit much to ask, there is nothing wrong with doing it twice, but by the third, things seem to drag on and the game has no way of letting you push forward. However, with that in mind, fans of games of the genre, or those looking for one they can play for a bit at a time, will find a lot here to enjoy, it is just hard to suggest for those looking for their first entry into the silent protagonist and

Review code provided by NIS America