It’s not very often that I feel as undecided about a title as I have with Fat Princess Adventures. Having not played it’s predecessor, I had no bias on the game and after playing through it left me not sure on my total feelings for the experience. On one hand there is plenty to appreciate, but it has a number of detractors cooked into the raw gameplay elements that never truly reach their full potential.<\/p>\n
I’ll start with the presentation, which is easily the best part of the game. While graphically not the most powerful or groundbreaking, it has a rather unique and cartoon like style. Everything in Fat Princess is colourful and bold in it’s stylistic appeal, from architecture of buildings, to the wide open forests full of strange creatures and bustling (sometimes dangerous) plant life, to its characters having an almost chibi appearance, with large heads and beady eyes and short stumpy bodies. This is juxtaposed against the copious amounts of blood you will spill as you carve your way to victory, which to those unaware of this games gory nature, such as myself, it is quite the surprise seeing these cute little figures dying in pools of their own crimson liquid life source. This is a positive in the presentation department.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n The population that inhabits Great Bitten (one of many of the games silly puns) and beyond, be it good or bad are practically bursting with personality. They stand out for the background and while you may encounter hordes of similar enemies, their cutesy and interesting design aid in keeping the game from feeling stale at times, particularly with Bosses. The large titular figures often break up sections of the story and at times have an actual threatening presence, due to their large size and twisting of mechanics to defeat them. Again not groundbreaking by any means, but it certainly keeps you entertained and on your feet when an enormous, seemingly unbeatable creature comes thundering towards your minuscule fighter in a pinned area.<\/p>\n The writing here also works both tremendously well as a strength and a somewhat hindrance against the game. When creating your character, there is several voice options available, each of which has its own quirk and a fully voiced script of dialogue for every single voice and the cast itself includes some big voice acting names such as Nolan North and Tara Strong, which adds a good bit of charm to the game, especially what feels like quite an a large amount of riffing being done by the actors. Numerous times throughout the game spoken lines are a lot longer than the words given in the dialogue box, really giving the impression they were having fun with their roles. However, that’s the problem, they never shut up.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n No one is more guilty of this than your character, spouting out one liners at an alarmingly infuriating rate and often repeating the same thing over and over, taking any amount of joy you might have gotten from the phrase initially. It almost becomes a blessing every time you happen upon a cut-scene when they finally have something more to utter instead of, “OH MAMMY, I SMASHED A THING.” It’s actually quite a shame to as the performance, (at least from my evil voiced protagonist) was actually great and I found plenty of joy in hearing him yell out things for the first few hours of play.<\/p>\n As for the story itself, there really isn’t anything much to it. You play as the hero of this tale as you venture out to protect the (Pleasantly Plump) Princess of Great Bitten and beyond from the evil Bitter Queen in her plot to take over the world. Really nothing we haven’t seen before and mostly serving as some sort of justification for murdering goblins and various other creatures, the story never really grips you with anything particularly interesting, save for a reason to hear odd jokes that either hit the nail worthy of a chuckle or completely fall flat in their execution and allow us to hear the cast just play around with their craft. It’s not spectacular but it still has a quality of enjoyment to it.<\/p>\n