Review: Princess Waltz
Hey everyone.
Ever since I played Fate/Stay Night I have been hooked on bishoujo games. Since I am always on the lookout for some good and translated ones, I figured that others might be in the same situation - so I thought I'd just post a little review of games that piqued my interest here from time to time.
Except for forum posts this is the first time I am posting something just for the sake of a review, so please bear with me - suggestions on how to improve are welcome of course :)
Let's start with Princess Waltz. I just recently finished the game (all-nighter °_°), although the english version has already been released back in late 2008 by Peach Princess.
This little video gives you a good overview over the main heroes and heroines. We have a nice selection varying between all the favourite stereotypes, such as the energetic type or the diligent type - there are more (6 of them), but naming them all would be spoiling parts of the story, so I only picked some of the more obvious ones.
Speaking about the heroines: Both their character sprites and their CG are exceptionally well-drawn. There are no perspective or deformation issues (i.E. Higurashi) and even the side characters have been designed with great care and detail.
The transitions between the images are another thing to point out: The designers worked with many different filters and effects to create a dynamic feeling, especially for the battle scenes.
Sadly there are no animated faces (eyes, mouth) in this game, but the good transitioning work makes up for that in this regard aswell.
At the beginning the story is quite similar to Fate: The main character Arata is your average student who suddenly gets dragged into a large-scale otherworldly tournament, which just happens to take place in his hometown. In this tournament, the "Princess Waltz", the warrior princesses of six countries fight each other for glory, the crown and - by marrying the prince - rule over their home nation Eldhiland.
Of course there is much more going on behind the scenes and Arata, the prince and the princesses soon find themselves facing a much more powerful opponent than just the contestants of the waltz.
Although the story is quite intriguing and has some interesting plot-twists, it is also strictly linear for about 90% of the game. You follow the set storyline which branches out near the end for each of the princesses. The story is well-told and leaves no questions unanswered (using flashbacks, perspective changes and the infamous "Meanwhile, somewhere else..."), but maybe more elaborate routes would have added to the depth and made the experience even better.
And, as usual, 100% completers will be rewarded with a little extra ;)
[little spoiler inc!] Also the game likes to confuse the player at a certain point - so here's a little warning (and a very minor spoiler): There is no bad end ;)
Princess Waltz' gameplay offers more than just the usual clicking and decision-making:
Battles are simulated with a card-game. The rules are quite simple once you get used to them:
The card colours have a rock-paper-scissor effect, while the numbers indicate the strength. There are 3 phases: Initiative (whoever wins this phase, becomes the attacker) and Offensive/Defensive (Deal damage if you won the initiative, defend if you lost).
The strength of your cards can be modified with both special abilities and your character's stats.
After each successful battle you get some experience, which you can spend either on your statistics (phase strength), card strength or the aforementioned special abilites.
All in all the card-battles are a nice addition to the usual clicking, but become a bit annoying if you are going for 100% completion, since they cannot be skipped.
The voice-acting is well done and adds to the overall story experience. Lun Lun's seiyuu also does an exceptional job of making her look like the goofball she is :P
The background music is solidly integrated into the flow and doesn't stand out, which is a good point for me.
The game also features a theme song by NANA, "Dissonant Chord":
You might know NANA already from "Ashberry", Edelweiss' theme song.
Yes, I'll also review a little bit of that ;)
The fully voiced H-scenes themselves are exceptionally long and during a full playthrough you will see three of these - two set ones and one for your princess of choice. The CG art here is also very well-drawn and features several multi-staged images for each scene.
There is no all-ages version of Princess Waltz.
If you liked Fate/Stay Night, give Princess Waltz a try. The game doesn't offer as much depth as its big brother, but entertains nevertheless. All I can say is that I enjoyed it because of the nice graphics, the story and the likeable heroines.
8/10!
I already played this game. One of my favorite Eroge. XD
I played this too, was interesting but I slowly lost interest over time, although at the end it made me feel a little bit sad^^"
Wasn't a big fan of the battle system, found it quite boring after a while
but nonetheless, cured my boredom~
anyways good review~
tyvm :)
Hmm strange I've never heard of this before. I like interactive visual novels like this rather than you standard bore and snore which is completely linear and tiring. Makes reading it a chore sometimes. Ofcourse there are exceptions.
If you like interactive like that you should try the first arc of Little Busters. The English translation is completely finished but the first arc (which is about 50% of the game) will leave you dying for more. There are a lot of interactive bits like flinging the characters into rooms with a timing game, battle ranking fights which each person picks up a random item around them to fight, baseball practice as well as a baseball tournament.
Its those little things that make certain visual novels worth playing.
I had Little Busters on my radar for quite some time now - I'm just afraid that the translators might lose interest in the project some day and I'd be stuck with only half the story.
Well, it could be the perfect excuse to start learning some japanese :P
yup the translations is pretty much dead......its taking way too long already >.<
Hmm I wouldn't say its dead, i guess their going really slow. Cause it was only about a month ago they finish one of the other main routes and fixed a few glitches in the battle ranking system.
I also already played this, and i truly loved it, one of my fav eroge's to!
very good review, you already cover every necessary thing
I am a bit disagree with the score though, I give 6.5/10
reason :
1. I beat the game in around 6 hours
2. the story is too stereotypical, many times I already know what happen before I read the next scene
3. there's almost nothing about what you called *puzzle*, once I get one of the girls, I already figure out how to get the rest (easy ending choices as short term)
4. the card battle isn't really hard, 10-15 mins is all you need to understand the basic, another 5 mins to master it
5. nevertheless, the graphic is really beautifully done, though I love the background/scenery drawing better than the girls
Thank you :)
I totally agree with you that you can see some of the twists coming from miles away (6th Princess for example), but to me it's still a well-told story and I enjoyed it (plus I'm also a sucker for all that emotional stuff) :)
Also the card system is easy indeed (unless you spend XP in the wrong place at the beginning like I did ><), but it's still a nice distraction from the usual flow of these games and makes Princess Waltz stand out in the crowd.
I can relate to your score, but for me the positive things outweighed the negative ones in this case - meh, tastes differ ;)
well I'm more to story - type of a guy
so far personally nothing can beat ever 17 from me
story wise and puzzle, it leaves me 4 whole days to get 100% completion (without walkthrough, walkthrough kill the fun)
For me Princess Waltz was a short sweet journey. Though it was painfully predictable. And yes VN players/any other jap subculture fan should pick up at least basic jap to use a dictionary. You will appreciate the media better.
and here i thought it was an anime review
9/10 for me. It took me a couple months, I only played an hour or 2 a week. Would have been a 10/10 if it wasn't for the card system, not I hate it or it was hard but I would have preferred something more...interesting.
Also if you like VNs then you should definitely learn Japanese. The basics are really, really easy. You can learn the basics in a month or 2. It's the kanji, sentence structure and vocabulary that will take some time.
I am sure you can do it, I started reading Japanese VNs at mid-15. Now I am 17. I haven't played any in 10 months though...I wonder if my Japanese deteriorated...