Plump and Pleasurable- Fat Princess Reviewed

DesertEagle’s Take: The requisite showground for hosting competitive, online, multiplayer matches continues to be the first or third person shooter. It seems designers have exhausted nearly every last permutation from the genre. We’ve fragged through the ages- from the old west, through World War II, present day, and into the imagined future. Clearly, the designers of Fat Princess were aware of this trite trend, and wisely developed their title to support a spacious, overhead perspective common to RTS players.

Players fearing the loss of volatile, twitch-based gameplay need not worry. While the Titan Studios-developed title incorporates a healthy dose of strategy, its mechanics are still seeped in Castle Crashers-like carnage. Each of the game’s five classes is skillfully balanced and upgradeable. Swordsmen have brawn but their armament means these brawlers move slowly. Archers and wizards offer ranged combat, but each is woefully week to enemy attack. Priests have the ability to heal nearby friends, while cursing adjacent foe. Finally, builders have the ability to advance each class and rebuild battered castle defenses.  Fat Princess’s strength is the freedom it gives players. Just want to casually slay a few foes? Don a battle helmet and kick butt; the game never forces a balance in its player classes. Obviously, gamers seeking conquest over the opposing team will have to apply a broader, cooperative tactic- While construction with a builder forgoes the enjoyment of combat, it can be beneficial to all in the kingdom. 

In execution, the synergistic combination of the game’s gratifying combat, diverse class system, and ability to upgrade both structures and characters delivers a compelling experience. Yet, some omissions exist- A deeper skill tree for characters would have been welcomed. Converting a ranger into a musketeer gives a team a temporary advantage, but the benefit is lost once the other squad powers up. These design decisions mean games tend to be either short, sudden blitzes, or long, drawn out quagmires.

Some of Fat Princess’s behaviors show signs of advanced schizophrenia. While online play is relatively lag-free once within a session, joining a match can be a major tribulation. Consecutive attempts to find or connect to a game were unsuccessful; I’ve spent extended durations looking at the match-making screens, instead of spilling blood in the honor of my corpulent queen. Issues were not limited to connectivity; instructions to a single-player mission were sometimes obscured as text was superimposed on top of itself.  If Titan can fix can quickly fix these issues with a patch, both princesses and hours of frustration might be saved. 

SeanNOLA’s Take: “Capture the flag” and “save the princess” are two terms that gamers have become very familiar with.  In retrospect, combining the concepts seems like such a natural move that I am genuinely surprised that no one had done it before now.  If replacing a flag with a princess was the only innovation that this game had to offer, then it would hardly be worth noting, however Fat Princess manages to use the theme to rethink competitive online multiplayer.

Fat Princess’s game play is pretty straight forward: pick a job, cooperate with your teammates to rescue the princess and return her to the throne.  Comparisons to Team Fortress and Enemy Territories come easily when discussing the teamwork-based competition.  However, the “hat system” as well as the isometric hack-n-slash style of Fat Princess makes it a much less obstructive game for new comers, while offering plenty of depth for the seasoned adventurer. 

Unlike the flag-capturing games of old, Fat Princess offers a wide variety of strategies for keeping your prisoner safe while rescuing your maiden.  You can build siege weapons and ladders to storm the enemy, you can run in and grab the princess while before the enemy builds up their defenses, you can ignore the princess all together and just concentrate on kills or checkpoint and of course, you can fatten up your prisoner to slow down would-be heroes.

Each round is action packed, and can take anywhere between 5 minutes to several hours depending on how well matched the teams are.  Teamwork is important, but those who are worried about the lack of headset-wearing players on PSN need not fret: The bright colors and exaggerated characters make it easy to quickly survey your surroundings and see what your teammates are doing.  This really comes in handy when you have a team of 6 people with no headsets; you can swiftly make decisions on where you would be best suited based on the number of pointy blue hats you see running around near your base.