Chronicles: Fate of a Princess

Hello
Chronicles: Fate of a Princess is a classic fantasy jrpg game that uses Rtp to tell a short but complete story about a Princess that is left alone to defend her kingdom. Uh, ok she's not really alone since she has her party of misfits to help her!
The game starts during a normal day, anyway consider carefully your first choices since you are going to name your character (and later many others too) and also choose her class. I guess that the game should have given a better warrning since this choice is permanent and you have the possiblity to hear only the descriptions of the class, and each at its location. And no, you cannot respec and change class later! Luckily you get to play all classes since every npc belongs to one of them, but this happens after your choice, and the princess is the heroine that cannot be dropped from the party (obvously!).

Ok, so after these simple tasks everything will go to hell and the princess will have to flee from the castle with the help of two servants that will be the first party members. Note that she will start with some pretty good equipment like the royal sword but she'll lose it soon after a sort of prologue or tutorial (don't worry, before the end you can recover it!).


You get to name a bunch of characters (a couple for some odd reasons since they are mentioned one or two times at all!). Be creative!

What happens next is some adventures that sees the princess joining the rebellion against the usurper (that blamed the rebels of the attack to the court). In the meantime she will also fight some monster in an abandoned town and performing and maybe explore a magical tower that is also the game optional dungeon. That's it, the game is short but there are no dull moments, everything happens rapidly... almost too rapidly! Oh and there's also a sort of stealth part, that's not really what it sounds like since there is no chance to be seen, and you just have to follow the mandatory path to the destination.

Besides these activities you will fight a lot, and the game from this point of view is quite easy: not only characters are automatically healed after each encounter, but you can also modify the party during combat (you can switch charactes only if the are alive and you cannot remove the princess from the team, never!). Despite these possibilities mind that the game has some issues that instead make the game harder: the first is that the classes are unbalanced, so some are quite weak compared to others, the second problem is that even the strongest tanks like the fighter and the paladin have a hard time against the bosses that hit really hard, sometimes performing two special attacks in a row, that will one-shot the weaker glass cannons like the rogue or the ranger. Also the ability of the tanks to provoke/taunt did not seem to work most of the times... anyway in the end the game is still manageable without needing to grind at all (I was able to win the final boss with three characters at level 8 and one at level 7, even if they were well equipped but I don't think 100% optimized).


Boss combats are obviously harder and often more interesting: here there's a bard that will support us, but hey, area attacks would hurt her, so be careful!

Anyway, let's speak of the classes, in short:

- Ranger: I choose this class for the princess (I didn't regret my decision since the other ranger is an asshole for most of the game except the ending), and it's a pretty solid choice. A frail but excellent dps. Oddly the abilities can be used even equipping the royal sword (more powerful than any bow)!
- Rogue: another good choice for the princess, maybe the best one. Another powerful dps with many useful skills, more versatile than the Ranger, and can equip two weapons. The companion is also a likeable character.
- Fighter & Paladin: Two similar classes, both tanks, but the first has some nice attack skills and the ability to counterattack, the second is a tank/healer with some damaging spells too. They were both quite useful to me during the entire adventure.
- Cleric: this character is good only in the beginning when you don't have much choice, the cleric has various kind of healing spells and no special attacks. Boring and rather useless compared to some healers like the Bard of the Paladin when he learns a cool ability that bypass the curse used by some later enemies to nullify healing spells. At least he can reflect spells like the fighters counteracts physical damage, but still mediocre, not worth of a place in the party!
- Bard: the ultimate support character, really useful to make turn your party members in combat beasts. Has a special attack that restore all Tp and many nifty useful abilities, except maybe that one that empowers the magical skills... see below why!
- Warlock and Mage: magic in this game is really underpowered, they are physically weak, and they won't ever get the damaging skills and the versatility of the other classes. Plus the Warlock has some abilities that are also a danger for the group. Avoid these two, the companions are also not very interesting in my opinion.

Graphically the game, as mentioned earlier, uses Rtp (and music too) but in a good way. Ok, maps are not great or memorable, but still they are well made and detailed. There are chest scattered around for bonus loot, dungeons are simple and short, and I find them adequate. The best part for me it was the bonus dungeon, since it's the only part where you find puzzles (slidind puzzles, lever puzzles and rock-pulling puzzles that provide some exceptional gear as a reward), also you have to perform a couple of secondary quests to obtain the access. Good!


Considering her behaviour it's unbelivable... well this is also the last time you will see this character!

Verdict
Chronicles: Fate of a Princess is a rather average game. It's not bad at all but the classes unbalance is its greatest problem, and unfortunately not the only one. For example I found the story a bit incoherent, and the last part... ok spoiler time!



It's a pity because if the main story would have been fleshed out (maybe with more subquests, cutscenes and dialogues to characterize more the bland party members, and cut out that unrelated last part that feels like being added later), and the weaker classes fixed, this would have been an interesting little game, because it's still enjoyable in some parts: for example there are some interesting boss encounters that require some strategy (even if the hidden boss is quite similar to one of the earlier bosses), there are some nice optional puzzles, and the automatic party healing makes the random encounters bearable (but also the potion cleric class a bit useless).

I award this game a 3/5 score: not a broken game, but an average one that could have been much better, but the mentioned flaws (unbalanced classes) and problems (coherence of the story) mar an otherwise nice experience.