The 1993 original is, for a certain audience, a cult classic. In that as in this modernised remake you play a famed warrior who’s gifted a naked 10-year-old girl by the gods, and must raise her to adulthood. Will you up her combat skills and send her adventuring, make her the best cook in the land or, uh, force her to work in a sleazy bar and become a teen hooker? It’s your call!
Creepy child sexualization is par for the course across anime, but is usually just a background hum of unpleasantness you learn to tune out. I mean, things are different in Japan, right? It’s awkward, but there are plenty of anime out there I love that has moments in it I wouldn’t want to have to justify to anyone. But with Princess Maker 2, it’s baked so fundamentally into the game that it’s less background hum and more wailing guitar solo.
It’s perhaps worth pointing out that Sony reviewed Princess Maker 2: Regeneration and concluded that it didn’t meet their “ethical standards” for release. The game is still coming out on PlayStation 4 and 5, albeit with the “Buxomizer Pill” removed and deletion of the ending in which your daughter falls in romantic love with you (her dad!) and you get married.
The fanbase for this garbage was up in arms at the news, describing Sony’s refusal to let you raise a big-titted incest bride on PlayStation as “despicable, “sad” and “woke”. Fortunately, Nintendo has no such scruples, so let’s slap this thing up with an all-ages rating and rake in those perv bucks. The only concession on all platforms is the removal of the secret costume the “Un-Dress”, which lets you see your daughter in the nude (this was met with howling fanbase arguments that the naked kid is a drawing so what does it matter?).
You could argue that it’s perfectly possible to have a relatively innocent playthrough. After all, if you send your daughter to church and increase her morality she can finish the game as an Arch Bishop. And, to be as fair as possible, ending up as a harlot (or a “refined harlot” if she ends up in a brothel rather than on the streets) is intended as a fail ending.
But we can get some insight into how people are actually playing this game with a peek at the Steam Achievements for the 2016 Refine edition, which indicates that one of the most popular endings (of the 74 on offer) is turning your daughter into a “bondage queen” (which unlocks the “It Hurts So Good!” achievement). And yes, you don’t have to see this content, but if I picked up a Choose Your Own Adventure book that was sprinkled with this material I’d still feel pretty damn gross.
At this point getting into the gameplay feels redundant - this could be up there with Bloodborne and I wouldn’t recommend it. Anyway, the game itself is effectively a spreadsheet with a GUI laid over the top. You schedule three activities for each month of your daughter’s life, generally between work, study, leisure, and adventuring, and watch her many stats go up and down.
Given everything else going on in Princess Maker 2, it’s silly to quietly point out that playing a man micromanaging his daughter’s life, deciding her future job, and scolding her for thinking for herself is maybe a teeny bit sexist. But this aspect negatively impacts the gameplay as you spend the majority of the game passively watching your daughter cycle through repetitive animations. Why not just let us play as the daughter and turn the jobs into minigames?
There are 2D RPG sequences where you directly control her, though this wretched 2D engine feels like it’s been yanked straight out of 1993. This is supposed to be a modernization, could we at least have smooth scrolling backgrounds and more than two frames of walking animation?
So no, I did not have much with Princess Maker 2: Regeneration. But, as I grasp for a silver lining research indicates that future Princess Maker entries realized they’d make more money if they appealed to women rather than perverted men and, judging by what I’ve seen of Princess Maker 5, the franchise moved past the creep show content that poisons this entry.
SUMMARY
In summary, do not buy this game.
0/10
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