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Review: Fat Princess | PSNStores

Review: Fat Princess

Posted by on November 29th, 2009 | 1 Comment | Tags:

Developer: Titan Studios
Release Date: July 30th, 2009
Price: $14.99
Demo: Yes
Players: 1-32 (Online only)

What I liked:

  • Excellent art style and great sound effects.
  • Unique 32 player combat with a good amount of maps and modes.
  • Zero load times between maps and menus.
  • Still a good amount of players to battle online four months after release.
  • New 1.03 patch and free map adds some balance and variety to the game.

What I disliked:

  • Aside from the fantastic credits, the music is somewhat bland, and can be grating in the main menu.
  • Frantic gameplay works well on some maps, not so much on others.
  • Teamwork can demolish the opposing team if they’re not communicating…not so fun if you are on the losing end.
  • Still a bit laggy at times, with some strange glitches here and there.

Fat Princess is the kind of game I love to look at in concept/promotional art and trailers, but the love doesn’t quite carry over as I’m actually playing it. It’s a solid concept whose sole dependence on multiplayer teamwork can make for some of the most entertaining online gameplay on the PS3. But it can also be completely frustrating if you’re playing with non-helpful strangers or bots.

The objective varies from mode to mode, but essentially you’re trying to steal the other team’s princess and bring them back to your castle. To do this, you have an assortment of hats you can wear that transform you to different classes, from offensive (soldier, archer, mage) to defensive (worker, priest, townsfolk) that perform different tasks on the field. The worker can chop down trees and mine ore to fuel development for upgrading class types, building castle doors, ladders and catapults, etc. Priests can heal other players, archers can attack with long range weapons, and so on. Each class is fun to mess around with, though personally I like being on the defensive side of things.

This game’s core focuses on teamwork. Some levels actually force that, such as one that only has three different paths to the enemy castle. In the middle of the level is a path that is sometimes blocked with lava; as players wait for the lava to subside, more and more teammates join the cluster waiting to storm the castle as the lava goes away. It’s in these maps that I found it to be the most enjoyable. Others can be too big and encourage players to branch off and do their own thing; not a wise idea as a single offensive player can do very little on their own.

The new map that was added for free recently (New Pork) is a bit big for my tastes, but it seems that Titan Studios is listening to feedback and has balanced the game quite nicely in the last few months. Despite this holiday season of huge new releases, I always got into 22-30 player multiplayer matches with little effort, so the community is still very active (but the lack of a server browser prevents me from solidly confirming that). If you plan to buy, make sure and get a few friends to go with you on it and play with them, because otherwise your experience will likely be a coin toss every time you play.

Click Here to purchase Fat Princess from Amazon.com

This game was purchased for review purposes.