Have you ever stopped to consider how your gaming habits have changed over the years? We’re all slaves to our particular time and place (it’s nearly impossible, for example, to fairly judge the merits of a Genesis game with twenty years of acquired gaming experience on top of it), but interest in particular a style is subject to the same shifting trends as any other hobby. Games change. You change. Finding where the two winding courses intersect is viable path for a great game.
Enter Nippon Ichi Software (NIS). Sandwiched somewhere between Atlus and XSEED is a delivery mechanism of games created to embrace role-playing games ripe with anime tropes and tactical combat. In my late teens, as a raging Japanophile with a keen interest in random humor and vicious non-sequitur, NIS games would have been right up my alley. Unfortunately NIS didn’t start publishing games in North America until I had left that phase behind, and while I saw the appeal of Disgaea et al., they weren’t enough to hold my interest. NIS’ time had passed me by, and, as evident by more recent efforts such as The Witch and The Hundred Knight, I had no place in enjoying their suite of games.
Battle Princess of Arcadias, a downloadable PlayStation 3 effort developed by Apollo Software and published by NIS, creates a savage paradox in my supposed tastes. In a time when Dragon’s Crown’s idiotic depiction of women poisons any reasonable interest in its content, Battle Princess of Arcadias positions its troupe of heroines in a much more positive light. Coming from a publishing studio that just issued the worst interactive rape joke of the year, it was the last thing I expected. Putting women at the forefront of the game and making their characters as anything other than sex targets is a way to get my thirty-year-old attention. Keeping pace and backing it with intelligent gameplay decisions would be a way to keep it.
Battle Princess of Arcadias immediately dispenses with any semblance of patriarchy by rendering it’s the ruling King a goose. Literally, the king, for reasons not initially explained, is a goose with a crown on its head and a device that translates honks into language. In his place is the titular battle princess, Plume, whose specialty is annihilating the hoards of cute monsters populating the Schwert Kingdom. Along the way Plume acquires a stable of like-minded cohorts, mostly women and a couple lowly men, to fill out combat roles and obey more traditional character tropes. Battle Princess of Arcadias isn’t going to win in awards for its story (and there’s so much of it peppered between battles), but by virtue of not broadcasting the perv-y sentiment so often a part of NIS’ loud-out, it’s a veritable triumph in its chosen field. Qualified appreciation may seem like faint praise, but when it’s usually my number-one turn-off for games, it goes a long way in Battle Princess of Arcadias’ favor.
Gameplay is divided into three distinct slices. Most common and obvious is the form of a traditional 2D beat ’em up. From Double Dragon to Dragon’s Crown, the need to roam across the land and smack the crap out of dangerous monsters is a call to adventure no one, battle princess notwithstanding, can deny. Battle Princess of Arcadias’ modest attack suite, a light and heavy attack for each character, is confidently basic. Wrinkles arrive by being able to call in one of three different characters at any time, allowing whichever character is presently on the field to gather experience by vanquishing foes. Blocking is also paramount of success in Battle Princess of Arcadias, though the lack of any sort of animation-canceling leaves it feeling less potent than most of its peers. In its purest form as a brawler, Battle Princess of Arcadias prefers to keep combat basic form and minimal in execution.
Rote combat would have made for a tedious slog had Battle Princess of Arcadias not had another two tricks up its sleeve. Sieges are Battle Princess of Arcadias’ code word for boss battles, which pop up on the battle map sporadically. These instances have Plume & company commanding an entire legion of troops against a typically-gigantic monster. In addition to normal combat controls you have the option of placing your troops in offensive or defensive positions, the likes of which change a myriad of times depending on the actions of the aggressor. The literal act of doing this involves holding the circle button and scrolling through a series of options. This seems to be the most unintuitive way to give orders, especially alongside controlling your chosen avatar, and renders Battle Princess of Arcadias‘ initial battles frustrating sessions of trial and error. Coupled with the need to occasionally retreat, the fluctuating morale gauge, and timing your own mega-damaging super move, and siege battles are as much about planning and execution as they are actual combat finesse. Suddenly, Battle Princess of Arcadias simple combat seems like a gift rather than a hindrance.
Skirmish represents Battle Princess of Arcadias’ other lingering twist. While it feels somewhat similar to siege mode, skirmish is more of a strategic rock, paper, scissors affair than its attack-minded brethren. Basically, Plume’s brigade must fight against another similarly-outfitted brigade, each of which is populated by a number of smaller collections of fighters. Different weapon-types are strong or weak against other weapon types and properly managing against and opponent’s brigade is the core of skirmish combat. Equally important is your direct action on the field; while the brigade fights in the background, your character fights in the foreground. Taking down marked leaders builds morale, and morale can be spent swapping out brigades or issuing special moves.
In theory Battle Princess of Arcadias’ divergent spread of modes should coalesce into a fine sauce. In practice there’s really nothing pf substance for the sauce to cover. Repeating 2D battle stages to brute force your way past skirmishes and sieges is kind of a plain way to play Battle Princess of Arcadias’, but, while it’s definitely not required, it feels kind of inevitable given the lengths at which characters must go to properly command brigades. You need to level all of your characters up to strengthen individual brigades, meaning to play Battle Princess of Arcadias is essentially to commit to a few really cool battles and an overbearing number of hours repeating the same content under a vaguely different guise. It’s a grind in the worst way.
Battle Princess of Arcadias’ isn’t necessarily inept or lacking in content, it just doesn’t seem to know what to do with its treasure chest of ideas. All the usual bells and whistles, like buying new weapons, modifying old ones, and taking one-off side-quests at your leisure, exist – but don’t seem to add anything to the grand experience. Likewise, the considerable number of sieges and skirmishes all start to run together in form. At its worst, Battle Princess of Arcadia is a means to an end, an inviting premise that you may as well finish because, well, you’ve already stuck around this long.
From any point of view, Battle Princess of Arcadias’ looks quite nice. Or at, at the very least, it shows well does in screenshots. I’ll never complain about an excess of color, and Battle Princess of Arcadias’ makes use of the full spectrum. It’s also careful to make its characters sweet without feeling saccharine, suggesting an appreciated amount of restraint in the art department. That being said, characters don’t animate particularly well – often times Battle Princess of Arcadias feels like a highly polished browser game – but it’s something you seem to get used to after few hours have passed. It’s also worth mentioning that dialogue is spoken entirely in Japanese, and while the localization is fine, that could serve as a deterrent for some players.
A (mostly) forward-facing narrative, a diverse spread of content, and a lush visual load-out allow Battle Princess of Arcadias to standout amongst its peers. If it allowed these ideas to complement one another, rather than serve as fluctuating means to an end, it may have come off as a stronger package. As it stands Battle Princess of Arcadias is a neat endeavor across divergent styles – and not much else.
