Princess Maker 2: Summary and Rating

From the final report.

      

Princess Maker 2

Japan
Gainax Co., Ltd. (developer and publisher), Adventions (English translation)
Released 1991 for PC-98, 1992 for MSX and DOS, 1995 for TurboGrafx CD; English DOS version from 1996
Date Started: 5 May 2024

Date Ended: 8 May 2024

Total Hours: 6

Difficulty: Easy (2.0/5), in the sense there's no way to "lose"; hard (4.0/5) to get the best ending

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

       

As my longtime readers know, I don't have any children of my own. This was mostly a conscious decision that Irene and I made in our 20s. She has never questioned the decision; I find myself questioning it more and more as I get older and reflect that it won't be many years before I have no family at all, and all the things that I treasure will end up in an estate auction or a landfill.

But when I think about such things, I am not missing the presence of a real child. I am missing the presence of a hypothetical happy, healthy child who survived to adulthood and is still speaking to me. I suppose that's the norm, but it's hardly a guarantee. The fact that it's not a guarantee is 50% of why I chose not to have children. It would be nice if raising them were like Princess Maker 2, where certain inputs lead inevitably to certain outcomes. In real life, you never know how a developing human being's psycho-biology is going to react to the most innocuous inputs--or fail to react to the most heartfelt ones. I read this harrowing account of a man's relationship with his son on Reddit four years ago and haven't gone a week without thinking about it since. That is simply not a risk I'm willing to take.

      

I would probably get the sort of daughter who spends $3,000 of my money on a leather dress.

   

Well, for a while, I got to have a virtual child whose accomplishments I could be proud of. What interests me is the qualitative difference between playing your character and playing an unseen, ephemeral character (the father) who in turn directs the action of a "child" character. Functionally, it ought to feel like the same thing. Except for the stupid butler constantly asking how I wanted to set Villainy's schedule for the month, it would be equally accurate to say that I played Villainy, particularly when she went on adventures and I controlled her avatar. But Princess Maker introduces that extra layer, and there's something oddly effective about it. After I finished with the main game, I briefly tried to engineer a "bad" outcome by assigning Villainy to work repeated shifts in a sleazy bar, increasing her "Sin" and decreasing her "Morality." That lasted only as long as she agreed to become the mistress for a middle-aged guy in exchange for a monthly stipend. I could role-play a character who did such a thing, but I didn't want to role-play the father of such a character, and particularly not a father whose own decisions had put his daughter in that kind of a situation. Weird.

        

And I'm done.

      

In my first entry on the game, I covered its basic premise and mechanics. I thought I'd give a year-by-year account of Villainy's life here:

   

Age 10

   

The game began on the girl's 10th birthday. For the first month, not knowing what I was doing, I assigned her to 10 days of combat training, 10 days of farm work, and 10 days of babysitting. The combat training improved her statistics, but it cost so much money that I spent most of the year impoverished. She wasn't strong enough to succeed at farm work. She did all right in babysitting. In subsequent months, I had her try other types of work, but she didn't bring back much money because her skills weren't very high yet.

         

That's nice, but my bank account is not.

       

I prematurely sent her into the wilderness because a video or image that I saw showed the character opening a treasure chest. I thought that might be an easy way to make some money. I had no idea how dangerous the forest was. I don't think she even had any weapons or armor; I couldn't have afforded them. She met one monster, was defeated, and had to be flown back home by Cube.

         

She should have paid attention to the sign.

     

Over the coming months, I tried to make up money by having her work, but I didn't realize how the whole stress/constitution system worked yet, so the experience just made her sick and disobedient. During the "Talk" phase, I gave her a lecture each month ("Scold"), which reduced some of the disobedience but presumably didn't do much for our relationship. She started having days of unpaid work not because she didn't have the skills for the job but because she simply refused.

   

Every October, there's a Harvest Festival in which you can enroll the girl into the combat tournament, the dance party, the art festival, or the cooking contest. I chose cooking, but I hadn't developed any of those skills, and she came in dead last.

      

Villainy goes for Star Baker.

    

As the year came to an end, my finances got worse. I scrimped to buy a club and suit of leather armor and sent Villainy out again to adventure, but she couldn't come close to defeating any enemies. When she turned 11, I didn't have enough money for a present for her. I was going into negative values every month just feeding her (this is the only debt the game lets you accrue).

     

Age 11

   

The year began without promise as a seer visited the house and predicted that Villainy would become "an ordinary housewife." But as the year passed, I got a handle on how work and training affected different skills. I was still primarily interested in getting her into fighting shape, so I had her take combat, dueling, and strategy lessons whenever I could afford it, and kept her working at jobs that built her constitution and strength otherwise.

     

Calm down. I'm still new to this fatherhood thing.

     

I had to buy her summer and winter dresses to replace the "plain dress" she had at the beginning, then remember to change her as the seasons changed, else she'd suffer a "Constitution" penalty. 

 

I upgraded her weapon to a longsword and sent her out on more adventures. She finally scored her first kill against a condor, but otherwise didn't last long in the east forest. When the Harvest Festival rolled around, I enrolled her in the combat tournament, which does this fun bracketing thing, but she lost her fist battle.

    

On the other hand, "Katana Terror" is someone you don't mind losing to.

      

Age 12

      

"Hunter" opened up as a job option, and I wasted a lot of time assigning her to it, since it improves both "Constitution" and "Combat Skill," although it increases sin. She could never make a wage at it, though, no matter how high she got in those skills. I discovered later that success at hunting depends partly on "Intelligence," which I hadn't been building.

   

I continued to send her to martial schools when I had the money. A couple of times during the year, some warlord showed up and decided to humiliate the school by stealing its standard. Villainy challenged the warlord each time, but lost the battles, and the school would get closed for a few months.

     

Wasn't this a plot point in Ultima VII?

    

But as her skills grew, she was visited by Valkyria, "the guardian of all true warriors," who gave her a further boost. 

Age 13

      

"Gravedigger" became a job, and I set her to it a couple of times, as it builds "Magical Defense" and some foes attack with magic. The seer visited again and now predicted that Villainy would become a soldier.

        

She finally started to get successful at adventuring, clearing the east forest and finding several treasure chests, which finally put my account books solidly in the black. She also cleared most of the northern glacier and southern islands. (Once the scale tips on combat, it tips fast.) She came in second in the combat tournament that year, after which random people started challenging her to duels a few times a year. Every successful duel increased her "Fighter Reputation."

     

A random fight in the street.

     

Her "Sin" went up from all the battles, so I had to keep donating to the church and having the girl work church jobs (which pays a pittance) in between her combat trainings.

   

One night while working graveyard duty, a skeleton knight came out of a grave and challenged her to combat. He ran away before she defeated him the first time, but the second time, she defeated him and got 2,539 gold pieces. This is one of several places in the game in which you get a special, large reward for completing a unique encounter. Thanks to this money and other winnings, I was able to buy her a katana and mithril armor, the best items that the store sells.

       

That was an awfully specific amount.

      

A traveling salesperson came to the house offering various artifacts. I bought Villainy the Venus Jewels. From that point, every birthday, one of Venus's minions showed up at the house and gave the girl +15 "Refinement," +15 "Charisma," and +15 "Sensitivity." She mostly squandered these boosts by working jobs that lowered the scores back to 0.

A couple years later.

     

Age 14

      

As the year began, she cleared out the western wastes. There were a couple of odd encounters there:

  

• A demon cave. When she entered, a demon confronted her and said that it "isn't a place for humans" and cast a spell that put her back outside. I'm not sure if there's any way around this.

       

It's nice that he warned me instead of killing me.

     

• A maze guarded by a dragon. He offered to let her pass for 200 gold pieces, but she chose to fight. She won easily, after which the dragon confessed he was only 13--a baby as dragons go. He slinked away. A commenter said that one of the endings has the girl marrying a young dragon; I imagine this is the one, though I don't know how it happens. She fought a couple of regular dragons in the maze and met an ancient one in the final chamber, but he was too old and tired to fight. A treasure chest held a Dragon's Fang, which increased "Fighter Reputation" by 20. 

       

I'm through doing what I'm told.

      

Back at home, a duelist named Anita Cassandra showed up at the house and proclaimed herself to be Villainy's archnemesis. "Don't come to the next Combat Tournament," she warned. "You'll only embarrass yourself." Villainy didn't take that well. 

       

A fateful meeting? She came to my house!

     

I explored the wilderness area some more and found a few things I  missed the first time. When the Harvest Festival rolled around, Villainy won the combat tournament, defeating Anita in the first round. The king gave her a Royal Sword and 3,000 gold pieces.

    

Age 15

      
Both I and Villainy were pretty pleased as to her martial accomplishments by now. I decided it was time to train her in some other areas and started enrolling her in dancing, poetry, theology, science, and particularly protocol classes, which increased her more courtly attributes like "Refinement," "Decorum," "Intelligence," and "Art." 

    

Villainy is getting a little arrogant.

    

I tried to help her out by buying a silk dress, but Cube said that--at 4'11" and 97 pounds--she was too heavy for it. I put her on a restricted diet, but it kept saying she was still too fat at 95 pounds, and the restricted diet took a toll on her constitution. I eventually gave up and put her back on normal rations.

     

Ah, yes. This happened at some point. I thought we'd encountered a "Paimon" in some previous game, but I couldn't find it.

       

As "Decorum" increased, she could visit higher and higher-ranked people at the castle, which in turn gave her boosts to reputation. I had neglected this for the first half of the game, so she struggled to catch up. I didn't want to sacrifice her strength, constitution, and martial skills, so every time they started to slip, I had her work a farm or sent her back for combat training. There wasn't much point to more adventuring, but I occasionally sent her out for money. She won the Combat Tournament again, easily.

   

Ages 16 and 17

       

I give her a book on her 16th birthday.

      

By now, she had job options to work at a sleazy bar or a cabaret. These jobs paid well and increased her "Charisma," but they lowered "Faith," "Morality," "Refinement," and "Temperament," and they increased "Sin." I only tried them once or twice. 

       

What good is sitting alone in your room?

        

Her "Decorum" got high enough that she could visit the king. 

 

All anyone wants to talk about is my father!

      

I threw myself at the War God in the northern glacier a few times, but I couldn't come close to defeating him even with my combat skill at maximum. My constitution and strength never got higher than 50% of maximum, so perhaps that was the solution.

         

I kept up the training and had her work a variety of jobs she hadn't done in the past to try to diversify her skill set. She won both combat tournaments in her final two years. I tried to enroll her in other things, but she begged to fight the tournament because of her rivalry with Anita Cassandra, and I capitulated.

   

The End

      

The endgame commenced when Villainy turned 18. The first thing I got was a letter from her tailored to the priorities that I set for her. Phrases included: "I've grown up so healthy"; "You must have been trying to make me strong in mind and body"; "I ended up becoming very good at farming."

     

I don't know why she felt compelled to write me a letter.

     

The king offered to make her a general in his army, but she declined: "I want to go out on my own into the wide world and test my strength." General Kruger (who runs the strategy school as well as the combat tournaments) made her promise to come home and tell of her adventures.

       

General Kruger might be hinting at some unresolved feelings.

     

The endgame text revealed that she had many adventures and eventually met a "kind knight" and married him and had her own daughter. Her travels took her to an eastern capital, where she destroyed a demon that was leading an army of bandits. She eventually came home, and we held a banquet in her honor.

     

She'd look relatively heroic here if her eyes weren't as large as tennis balls.

    

Finally, I was contacted by the angel who gave me the girl in the first place. She congratulated me and thanked me on fine parenting skills and ran through the final outcome:

• Villainy had become a hero.
• She performed well at her work.
• She found a good husband.
• Her maternal instincts leave something to be desired.
• The angel had planned to recall the girl to the heavens, but has decided to let her live a mortal life.

           

Maybe give her the choice? Or would that be too revolutionary for this game?

    

I then got a final score sheet that recapped her endgame attributes but also had a bunch of statistics I hadn't seen before showing that she had a very low maternal instinct, a very low "relationship with father," a high "relationship with butler," and absolutely no "relationship with Prince," who I didn't even know existed. To be fair, I didn't take her on many vacations, take her out to many meals, buy her many presents, or even talk to her very often. I mostly let "time off" handle stress-reduction instead of those other possibilities.

   

And I think I'm going to leave it there. I know some commenters wanted to see me run through it again, maybe more than once, but a full game takes at least 4 hours, even if you're quick about it. I don't want to spend that much more time on a game that's not really an RPG; it just weirdly has an RPG embedded in it as an option. I wonder if there are any other games like this, like if Fallout 4 wasn't an RPG, but I still felt I had to play and rate it because of the Grognak game you can play on the Pip-Boy.

       

Call us a bunch of Victorian prudes, but I'm glad this wouldn't fly in the U.S.

     

I can tell from online sources that there are 74 potential endings depending on your morality score, sin score, and various reputations. If you didn't get any reputation very high, I guess you end up working for the rest of your life at whatever job you worked most. If you got any of your attributes high enough but not any of the reputations, you can be anything from a maid to a ruling queen.

   

If you got a reputation high like I did with "Fighter Reputation," you end up with a job that reflects that reputation as well as some other attributes. "Hero" was the highest possible job I could have gotten on the warrior track, so that was pretty good for my first time out. But it's because I took lessons that brought my "Sensitivity" high. If I hadn't done that, I would have ended up as a general or a lower position like a knight or soldier. "Bounty Hunter" is the lowest you can go on the fighter track, and that's only if your morality is low.

        

He says, just before I defeat him.

       

There are separate ranks of jobs for characters who specialized in magic (from sorceress to magician hero), social skills (divorcee to queen by marriage), and art (dancer to jester). There is only one final job for a character who specialized in domestic skills: housewife.

   

There are a variety of "dark" endings if you have a high "Sin" score at the end, from "harlot" to "princess of darkness," with "bandit," "crime boss," and "bondage queen" along the way. 

  

I guess the girl's marriage prospects are quasi-independent of her job. To marry the prince and fulfill the title of the game, she has to meet the "young officer" at the castle every January, get a charisma over 200, and get a high "Refinement" score. She can also end up marrying Cube if she has a high enough charisma and relationship with him, and yes, if her relationship with her father is strong enough, she can (yuck) end up marrying him. The John Jarndyce jokes write themselves.

      

I don't know why the game often depicted her with one eye open and one eye closed.

     

I found the game cute. It's not the sort of game I'm addicted to, and I don't really want to play more of them, but it was an okay diversion for a few hours.

   

For the GIMLET, I decided to rate the totality of the game rather than just the "RPG part" of the game.

     

• 2 points for a generic game world that you don't learn very much about.

• 7 points for character creation and development. It's really the raison d'etre of the entire series. There are many statistics to manage, and together they determine success or failure at a variety of enterprises.

    

I wonder what kind of dance they're doing. I think I've seen that move before.

    

• 2 points for NPC interaction. The NPCs you meet in the wilderness don't really tell you anything interesting, and there isn't much to do with the folks at the castle. I'm regarding everyone else as "encounters."

• 5 points for encounters and foes. The enemies are nothing special, but the game deserves quite a bit of credit for the large variety of non-combat encounters that test the character's mettle.

      

That's a pretty cool dragon.

      

• 2 points for magic and combat. With essentially only one physical attack option, one magical attack option, and no other options, it's hard to give much credit here.

• 4 points for equipment. You have one weapon, one suit of armor, and a decent variety of artifact items that affect your statistics in various ways.

     

Villainy's stuff, around mid-game.

     

• 8 points for the economy. The game has almost everything I like here: Several ways to make money, several ways to spend money, and no point at which money stops being useful.

• 4 points for quests. The only quest is to end the game in as good a position as possible, but there are plenty of options for how to do that, and plenty of endings.

     

It's not a "quest," exactly, but Villainy completes a personal goal.

      

• 5 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics are nice. I wish the girl looked like a real person instead of a cartoon character, but otherwise the monster portraits and other NPC portraits were well-composed, as was the opening and closing artwork. The interface had redundant mouse and keyboard commands and flowed nicely. I give no points for the sound, which I mostly didn't experience because of the incessant, pounding music that couldn't be turned off independently. When I forced myself to leave it on just to listen for effects, there weren't enough to bother talking about.

• 6 points for gameplay. It points for the right difficulty level, just about the right length, and replayability. However, I suspect that successful games of any type look very similar to each other, and thus setting the girl's schedule month after month must get awfully boring after just a couple of games. I couldn't even bring myself to do it twice.

        

I wonder if this number is the same in the original Japanese.

      

That gives us a relatively high 45. If you told me a month ago that something called Princess Maker 2 would end up in the top 10% of games for 1993, I'd have said you were crazy. Again, though, I'm being a little generous. If I had just ranked the adventuring and combat part of the game independently, the score would have come out closer to 25. I don't mean for this entry to set a precedent for how I handle any further games of a different genre that happen to have an embedded RPG. I do hope there are not a lot of them.

   

I say that knowing that there will be at least one more. Gainax followed Princess Maker 2 with Princess Maker: Legend of Another World (1995), Princess Maker: Fairy Tales Come True (1997), Princess Maker: Go!Go! Princess (1999), and Princess Maker 5 (2007). Of these, MobyGames tags only the 1995 and 1997 games as RPGs, and the 1995 one was released only for the SNES. I don't know whether this is a case of different contributors having different standards, or whether the later games really do drop the adventuring/combat/RPG elements. 

   

MobyGames lists a small number of other combinations between "human life simulator" and RPG, including Real Lives (2002), some ports of The Sims 2 (2005), Kudos 2 (2008), Long Live the Queen (2012), and Her. (2018; the period is part of the title, apparently). However, this is a mashing of genres for which I expect personal opinion will create wildly inconsistent results as to RPG status.