Fat Princess has been a long time coming. As an online-focused, cartoon-like game full of humor and violence, it could realistically be seen as the PSN's answer to Castle Crashers (at least until Castle Crashers was confirmed for PSN). It's quite fitting, then, that a number of overbearing connection issues and lag have managed to rain on Fat Princess' launch parade, as it very much did for The Behemoth's last downloadable title.
Despite the multiplayer problems, I've been persevering with Titan Studios' adorable mix of real-time strategy and hack-n'-slash gameplay in a bid to see if staring at endless loading screens is rewarded with some good old-fashioned fun. Luckily, we've managed to find an absolutely brilliant and addictive game that was certainly worth waiting for. Read on as we review Fat Princess.
Fat Princess (PSN)
Developer: Titan Studios
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Price: $14.99
Released: July 30, 2009
If you haven't heard of Fat Princess before, there's obviously something wrong with you, but let's quickly inform those who haven't been paying attention. The game pits two teams of sixteen players against each other, representing either the Red or the Blue force. Each force has a castle, where the enemy team's princess is held captive. The aim of the game is to keep your prisoner behind bars while rescuing your own princess and seating her on your throne.
The game's main twist is that you can fatten up your captive princess to make it harder for enemies to carry her away. The fatter she gets, the longer it takes for the enemy to make off with her, allowing you a greater chance to kill the rescue party and retrieve the prisoner. It's a genius little gimmick that exemplifies this game's main strength -- the focus on making sure that everybody has something to do.
There are five character classes, and players can change class by picking up hats from special "hat machines" in each castle or from the battlefield. In keeping with the idea of giving everybody something to do, each class has its own distinct purpose, and it will take a versatile team that makes use of every class to win the day. Warriors and Rangers make the bulk of a team's offensive force, while Mages and Priests back them up with devastating area-of-effect spells or crucial healing abilities. Finally, there's the Worker, who can cut down trees and mine for resources, which is essential for building siege weapons and upgrading classes.
Each class can be upgraded by the Worker to obtain new weapons and special abilities. The Priest, for example, can upgrade to a Dark Priest, allowing him the ability to either heal allies or drain enemies. The upgraded Ranger will be able to use either his original crossbow, or a powerful gun that spreads out its shots. The upgraded hat machines for each class also brings its own unique ability. The Worker machine produce devastating bombs, while the Mage machine produces a wonderful potion that can turn its victims into chickens.
Every single class has its use, and while players will invariably find their favorite (Priests FTW!), the game is best played when one switches out classes depending on the situation. If a force is low on offensive power, for example, it makes sense to start picking up Warrior hats. If not enough resources are coming in, it's time to grab the Worker hat and start chopping some wood. While all this is going on, players must also make sure to regularly deliver cake to the captive princess, just in case the enemies breach the castle.
The battlefield is also full of strongholds that are captured simply by standing near them. Strongholds have a number of uses, mainly as convenient places for Workers to stockpile resources, but some can also take you directly into your castle, or the castle of your enemy.
As well as the standard battle mode, players can also take part in regular Deathmatches, where they have to keep killing each other until a limited number of lives run out, or a "best of three" match where players must kidnap the enemy princess three times during a battle to win. Each game type plays fairly similarly, however, with many players able to stick to what they do best in any given match.
Fat Princess is incredible fun. The five classes are all a blast to use, the game's really easy to get into, and the simplistic nature of the combat hides an intense and competitive little multiplayer game. The back-and-forth nature of the matches keeps things consistently interesting, and the fact that any type of player, whether they're good or not, can find a role to perform and help the team, is a fantastic asset that keeps all players feeling useful and ensures that nearly anybody can hop into a match, regardless of their skill level.
Unfortunately, the connection issues I suffered while trying to play this game were still very prevalent, and it's hampered my enjoyment of the game at times. When I got into a game, it was absolutely fantastic, but so much time was spent looking at a loading screen, or just getting booted from the game entirely and forced back into the PS3's XMB, that things got incredibly frustrating. At least in Castle Crashers, the single-player mode alone was enough to justify the purchase, but with Fat Princess, focus is solely on multiplayer and the short, simplistic single-player mode just doesn't cut it, especially with such useless ally AI. Quite how these problems even exist when they were prevalent during the so-called beta, I don't know. I thought betas were meant to fix this kind of stuff.
Despite these problems, however, Fat Princess is just too damn good to stay mad at. Its gameplay is compulsive, which is handy because matches can last an incredibly long time, and the addictive hack-n'-slash is kept appealing with some amazing cel-shaded visuals and a wonderful English commentator who provides helpful status reports like, "They're in our base, killing our dudes!" Extra features like character customization and the rather humorous end credits are just icing on a most delicious cake.
Fat Princess' charm and sense of humor prevails throughout, and it's backed up by a completely honest, simple, and thoroughly fun war game that contains not one pretentious bone in its body. It's a recommended buy, but that recommendation comes with a condition -- wait for the patch, and news that the patch has worked. Once you have that, this is worth your fifteen dollars, without question.
Score: 9.0 -- Superb (9s are a hallmark of excellence. There may be flaws, but they are negligible and won't cause massive damage to what is a supreme title.)
Contest:
6:00 PM on 08.04.2009
| 
Jim, you should join in for FNF.
Yeah, that's because your Toneman.
Yeah, easily worth the purchase price.
'cept for those damn ice mages.
Agreed. The game really pulls you in. Its alot of fun.
I wish you'd mentioned the Gladiate arena though, as it is flipping solid. I can get to Level 8 or 9, but that's it (not sure on the Level Limit).
It depends how badly the server issues affected overall enjoyment. Fat Princess' problems are annoying, sure, but the sheer fun of the gameplay makes up for it. From what I've heard about 1943, the server issues are absolutely game-destroying.
It's really not hard to see a difference between an annoying problem and a game breaking problem.
The Xbox 360 1943 servers were literally offline for hours at a time: as in, unplayable.
For Fat Princess, you might have to try 3 times to connect, but it always connected, even during the minute of launch.
Also Jim, can multiple people play it on the same console? As in split screen or anything?
"can multiple people play it on the same console? As in split screen or anything?"
No: not at all :-(
Cheers for cliched and lazy writing!
I owned BF: 1943 from day one on the 360, and yes it was a bitch to get into a match at first, but once you did, it worked just fine. So no it wasn't unplayable at any point, and they completely fixed it over that weekend. Is Fat Princess fixed yet? Nope, so how long will its server issues go on for? Hopefully not as long as Castle Crashers! I'm just saying, shouldn't every online game be held to the same standards? Not pick, and choose which ones get punished?
They ARE held to the same standards. The standards are us asking this simple question: "Is this game good enough to rise above any faults it may have? Is this game so fun that the faults are negligible in comparison?"
Just because two games have similar problems, that doesn't make them identical games. It's really easy logic.
You know that is not Stephen Fry right? It's Tom Kane.
Those are your words Jim. I'm just going by what you told me, in your review of the game. That's easy enough logic for me!
So you're telling me that when DICE announced on their twitter that "all 1943 servers are offline for a few hours, bear with us", you were able to connect? No one I knew could, because DICE admitted the servers were completely offline.
If you're speaking from experience with the PS3 version: it didn't have those issues. If you don't own a PS3, and only a 360, I think I can see where these fanboy-esque claims are coming from.
unfortunately, I'm waiting for a few more titles to drop before I make the plunge.
It's the same logic that stopped the game getting a 9.5
please for the sake of the rest of us Canadians stop making us look stupid. It's like Magnalon said, DICE announced that ALL servers were down. how were you playing 1943 at this time. Explain.
Obviously you're more forgiving of these matters, which is realistic considering Sony's claim that a patch is on the way.
But my main problem with you is that you are obviously an Xbox fanboy!! The fact that you gave Fat Princess a good review is proof enough of your bias!
They were down for a few hours, which was that afternoon, they we're back up that night. So yes I played the game quite a lot the first day it came out actually. God I'm not trying to make a big deal about this, but I just think its a bit hypocritical when the same things that were said about BF: 1943 all of sudden gets a free pass with this game. I'm just going by what Jim said in his review, because I obviously haven't played the game.
So that's really all I can go by, is what Jim told us about his online problems with the game! If Jim thinks its still a 9.0, and should of been a 9.5 than that's his prerogative, but when other places like EuroGamer are giving it a 6.0 that makes me question his 9.0 a bit, is all I'm saying. Sorry I questioned something about the precious PS3. I guess you guys just need every game on the system to be great, to justify its worth, or something. So all of a sudden I'm stupid now just for asking a simple fucking question. Great community we got here, I'm so glad I participate in it so much!
Eurogamer usually either completely hates a game or really loves it; there's rarely an in between for them.
IGN gave it a 9.0, and Gamespot a 7.5. The reviews are pretty mixed all around, and GS's main complaint was the balancing, which didn't make a whole lot of sense based on my own experience with FP. Sometimes I think GS just talks out their ass, not entirely unlike Eurogamer. You can usually tell from their previews what a game is going to get, because they've already made up their minds before they've even played the game.
But I wouldn't worry about it too much, it's not coming to haunt Xbox live or anything.
As for the whole BF: 1943 not being playable on its first day of availability, that's BS, because I have two achievements for it on the day it came out. So how the hell could I get those achievements, if I couldn't play it on launch day? So "Steel Brotha" don't tell me that I didn't play it on launch day, because I know I did, and I know what I'm talking about. Why not back up a fellow Canadian, instead of just assuming that I'm wrong!
I found the gameplay to be repetitive and dull, and you're never rewarded with a sense of accomplishment in the game because it's impossible to co-ordinate your team - and any time you DO kidnap the princess from the opposing team (single handedly), it's because the AI is letting you do it: there's actually no way you could do it legitimately.
I am really disappointed. I like the premise and the presentation of the game but the classes are poorly balanced (a Worker can kill a Warrior in melee combat) and ultimately the matches get boring long before they finish.
I'm gonna try it online, but I seriously doubt that the problem of co-ordinating your team will be any better, and ultimately who wants to be a cog in the machine if the machine is driving itself? Not me.
"It's a genius little gimmick that exemplifies this game's main strength -- the focus on making sure that everybody has something to do. "
This could not be more true - no matter which hat I put on, there's something useful I can be doing to further the cause of my team. I *love* that - everybody can contribute.
@PEICanada7: "Sorry I questioned something about the precious PS3."
Are you implying that Jim inflates his PS3 reviews because of some fanboyism for the system? Honestly, I think you need to lurk more then. There is no harsher critic of Sony on this site than Mr. Sterling. Believe me, I've nerd-raged over his articles many times in the past, but one thing he has never done is white-wash his opinions; he has integrity.
Give it a spin.
<sigh>