Developer: Nippon Ichi Software
Publisher: NIS America
Platform: PS4, Switch
Tested on: Switch
The Princess Guide – Review
NIS America has a lot of awesome games made over the past few years. The Princess Guide, One of the newer ones, came out the 29th of March and is a gem to behold. This journey of you guiding four princesses will take you to a world of magic, betrayal, great loss, religion and so much more. This world is in great danger, will your guidance be enough to overcome the great evil that will be thrown your way?
Storyline
You, one of the greatest masters of combat and knowledge who is currently helping with the army protecting the Four Relic lands, will go on a soul searching adventure throughout the land. After the many books you wrote, you are ready for a new adventure and what is better than helping the four princesses of the realm in their search for peace, world domination, their selves and the end of world hunger.
The answer you pick first, from the choices that you are given, will determine which one of the princesses ideals you want to delve in first. You will start your adventure with it and move on to the next three princesses. After playing the start of each storyline you will receive the question: “Which one is the one you are actually going to help.” Because every princess will provide you with a world-threatening danger.
Graphics
Graphically, the game looks much like any other game from NIS America. It is well polished with amazing artwork when we are looking at the characters and mobs we encounter. The maps we are provided with are basic but that doesn’t make it necessarily bad. The mini-dungeons you are thrown in could use a little more work at some points but still are gorgeous to look at.
Sound
The sounds of the game are obviously gorgeous and are fully voice acted, in Japanese. Which you can follow easily by the English subtitles that are provided. Also, the fighting sounds are fun to listen, the grunts and squeaks are adorable! There isn’t much more you can do to enhance the sound of a game, so they did a great job! The music itself isn’t that memorable but it does accompany the game to make it less dull.
Gameplay
The Princess Guide is a strategy action RPG with an amazing storyline that is woven through every move you make in the game. You will be bombarded with loads of quests and sub-quests to aid the princesses of the Four Relic lands to defeat the evil that has risen and is lurking in the shadows. The game makes you choose your favorite princess and lets you aid her in her quest to fulfill her desire and provides you with a second playthrough to make sure you can enjoy each storyline completely.
In-between conversations and all of the stories, you go back to the world map. Here you can dispatch your squads. Those can be put together by an officer, you or one of the princesses and some foot soldiers who are placed around you to give you some kind of protection. You can only have a certain amount of squads and when they need to heal up, you can retire them to rest for a few hours in ‘Home’.
All the quests are based on the storyline and build up to some big boss monster at the end. Besides the main quest for each princess, you have also sub-quests which have something to do with the goal of the princess but aren’t necessarily valuable. Also if you feel like you aren’t strong enough to tackle a main or sub-quest, you can practice with some training quests which allows you to replay a previous quest and gain experience and gold to get better.
The second important thing you witness in the game is the combat system, you are given a certain amount of dungeons where you need to cleave through in order to progress. Each dungeon has a few relics in it, which you can activate and use to your benefit. Be careful because only one relic at a time will be at your aid. Activating more relics will only give you a disadvantage because you lose the powers of all but the last relic you activate.
Last but not least you can train your princesses as the great master of combat and they all seem to fall in love with you. NIS America, please, our hearts can’t bare it to choose just one. Your princesses can learn certain passives which gives them an advantage in combat, but some of them can only be leveled by your direct guidance. Practically this means that you can praise or scold a princess when she is fighting in a dungeon, which also gives some benefits.
Conclusion
The Princess Guide is a fun action adventure games which take you to the world of the Four Relics lands. They made sure you can enjoy each storyline separately by giving you the change to replay the game multiple times. The art is beyond gorgeous and the game is fully voice acted in Japanese, so some of you might not like that. But overall this game is one to watch and certainly we hope to see more great content or games from the developer Nippon Ichi Software because they still don’t cease to amaze with every game they present.
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