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Sacred Reviews: Princess' Quest and the Royal Secret

Introduction

I'll admit that "Princess' Quest and the Royal Secret" is a game that might be a bit difficult for me to review in some ways. Since, I started my Let's Play for this game over a year ago. And, didn't get around to finishing it until earlier today. Yeah, I just left this game sitting on my computer for over 12 months without touching it. As such, I may not be equipped to review this game entirely fairly, since I'm aware that this game has been updated to address a few mistakes I ran across during my play through of the game. Albeit, I had to change versions around the half-way point, because of a game breaking bug.

With that being said, I should probably say a little bit about the game rather then how long it took me to get around to finishing this one. "Princess' Quest and the Royal Secret" was developed by dnel57 using RPG Maker VX Ace and is currently his/her only game on the site. A sad fact, since I think dnel57 has a lot of room for growth and is open to suggestions on how to improve.

Story
Summary
The story of "Princess' Quest and the Royal Secret" is effectively split into stories. The first half is dedicated to Princess Arle's quest to locate Prince Elwin, her brother whose been missing for several weeks now. Of course, after locating Prince Elwin the game quickly transitions into the second story which revolves around Elwin's mission to get a hold of information about a dark wizard that tried to conquer their country several years back in a bid for power. Apparently the dark lord managed to survive and has been working on breeding the ultimate monster ever since. And of course, it's up to Arle, Elwin, and their friends to save the day.

Strengths
On the positive side of the scale, the game has a simple story that it's easy to follow and doesn't revolve around magic rocks or runes.

Weaknesses
In my opinion, this game really needed to place a heavy emphasis on its characters. After all, at around three hours in length. This game really needs some sort of hook to keep the players attention. And considering how unbalanced and uninteresting combat is in this game. The only reasonable hook open to dnel57 is to place a heavy emphasis on what makes Princess Arle or one of the other characters tick. Or to give one of the starting companions an interesting or sarcastic personality that only exists to twist the nose of everyone we meet. As it stands, the game utilizes a lot of the usual cliches that surround games like this, but doesn't anything particularly unique or interesting with them. So a character that exists to twist everyone's nose or goes against expectations like Princess Pri from "The Kidnapping (and other crimes) of Princess Pri" would really be appreciated here.

Gameplay

"Princess' Quest and the Royal Secret" largely revolves around combat. Combat that is largely driven by Princess Arle locking down enemies with paralysis while your other companions try to crush your enemies with swords, axes, and spells. Sadly, this tactic also applies to the various mid-bosses and bosses as well. As such, combat tends to feel rather stale and uninteresting after a while. After all, you'll be using the same tactics in this game from start to finish. As it stands, I think combat needs a major overhaul.

For the playable cast, I'd suggest giving them more clearly defined roles in combat such as buffer, debuffer, healer, tank, dps, and so on. I'd then expand their skill and spell repertoire in order to make them better fit their new role in combat. After wards, you'd then need to retool the bosses by lowering their offensive power as well as giving them immunity to certain status effects. Though, I would recommend leaving a few open to things like poison, bleed, and so on. That way the player has a solid reason to use those skills outside of random encounters.

Graphics & Music

On the musical side of things the game is simply okay in my opinion. In other words, the game doesn't do anything notable wrong like playing the game over music when you win or contain background music with lyrics like a few other titles I can mention.


That rope on the right side takes you to the floor above this one. And, It really should be hanging against the wall like the vines down here.

On the graphical side of things the game is a bit more messy in my opinion. With the biggest problem being the maps. This is especially true for the initial version of the game, but even the updated versions of the game contain maps that really reek of a developer whose only done this a few times before. I'd suggest looking into some of the guides on this site for mapping. Since, they could definitely use a bit of work.

Conclusion

As it stands, "Princess' Quest and the Royal Secret" is a game that just reeks of all of the usual flaws you'd expect from a first time project. As such, this really isn't a game I'd recommend to anyone else. Especially when there are so many other games you could be playing like "Remnants of Isolation" or "Zoids | Whisper" or "Einherjar". Although that last option does contain a few sections with background music that contains lyrics. At least in the contest version.