The PSN title Fat Princess was announced over a year ago at E3 2008, and was immediately met with both hype from gamers, and hate from feminists around the country. The game was expected to be released in early Summer this year, but was quickly delayed by Titan Studios. Thankfully, this new and exciting title is finally here, but was the wait worth it?
Fat Princess is a class-based action game that takes some elements from other class-based games and molds them together into a team-based RTS environment. Fat Princess is a 32-player online game played from a top-down camera perspective. Each of the two teams are given a base with several buildings, which serve as an access point for class changing. Whenever you want to switch classes, all you have to do is walk up to one of the designated buildings and pick up a hat. The hats change your character’s costume, which in turn alters your character class. The classes range from the Warrior to the Mage, and each class has two mechanics.
At the beginning of a game, each class only has one special ability, such as fire for the Mage or healing for the Priest. However, once resources are gathered and allocated to upgrading a particular class’s building, the class gains a second mode of play. For the Warrior this means a big polearm with a charge attack, while the Priest gains the ability to play as a life-draining Dark Priest. Whether or not you choose a class is optional, and the default class is the Villager, who is able to move quickly but lacks a proper means of attack. The most interesting class is the Worker, which is responsible for resource gathering, as well as maintaining and upgrading the base, which is essential to winning.
For the most part, each class is interesting and unique, and all classes are essential to winning in the easy-going, yet competitive, game environment. Teamwork is required, and since the maps are very defensively disproportionate, a proper plan of attack (as well as voice chat) is a must in many cases. And often times, there are long stalemates which only seem to end when the timer finally expires. At first, this seems to make the game feel more like a slaughterhouse of endless killing. But once you learn the ropes and get the hang of the battle tactics, the brilliance of this title really starts to take shape. In two of the four game modes, the base serves as a defense for your Princess, whom the enemy is trying to capture.
