Princess Waltz

I'm surprised we don't already have a thread for this...oh well.

Princess Waltz is an eroge about six princesses of a fantasy kingdom fighting for the hand of the prince, and by extension the crown of all six kingdoms—the titular waltz. And for some reason they fight on Earth.

It becomes clear that things are a little bit off, starting with the fact that the prince is actually a girl, and fighting as one of the princesses (I should really spoiler that, but its really obvious).

I really liked this story, especially the end, but I was annoyed that while a lot of backstory was touched upon, we didn't actually get to see much of it. And the gameplay (a card battle system) also had a lot of potential that was left unpolished.

So, anyone else play this?

edited 22nd Dec '11 8:57:02 PM by Discar

Yeah, I did. I felt the resolution to the story was kind of weak, personally. And the card game was so ridiculously simple that I don't even know why they included it. Especially if you actually bother trying to do stuff like get overkill.

A sequel might be nice. I didn't particularly care for Princess Waltz, but a continuation of the story might be interesting, especially if you consider the Shizuna ending the true end.

I've got fond memories of this as one of my first introductions to Visual Novels / Eroge. Seconding that the ending really felt incomplete. Also, it's kinda lame how the different 'routes' only effect which C Gs you get and what your bonuses are in the last boss fight.

I should have been more clear: I liked the overall end, after you've completed all routes, and I even liked the general end, where Iris convinces Shichou to let the new generation have the world.

What I didn't like was the "multiple endings." The only one that had any meaning was Shizuka's. In Liliana's we find out she'd older than she seems and that her mother knows Arata's mother. In Angela's we see her -dere side and...those are about the most important things that happen. When I did Angela's, I was looking forward to more information about the dragon king (or god, I can't remember) that gave her his blessing, and so on.

It seems like a visual novel that's just begging for an anime adaptation.

So, I started playing this in the meantime while recovering from the awesomeness that is Sharin No Kuni. I'll leave my first impressions here for now.

• Graphics are really high quality. The character designs for the high school students bother me a bit, though.
• Really getting an overall Fate Stay Night vibe from it.
• Haha, called the "prince" being a reverse trap from the get go.
• Music's pretty cool. I particularly love the title screen BGM.

Well, I suppose that's all for now. I just reached the first gameplay encounter, but I suppose I'll put it off for tomorrow since it's past midnight here.

I liked this, but it was far too short and the story wasn't very engaging. The fights were suitably epic, the production values were great, and the characters were all likable. It's like FSN if the only route that existed was the Fate route.

And if Shirou really was an idiot.

I agree with this sentiment. So far the atmosphere of Princess Waltz is very much like the Fate route. I'm not exactly complaining since Fate was still really great, just underwhelming compared to the rest of the game.

I'm at the 9th day. Liesel has been taken out and Angela has returned to the plot. Overall, so far I like it as an action-fantasy novel/game, but nothing more than that.

I can't see how the ending doesn't result in a succession crisis or at the very least a massive civil war by opportunistic parties, especially since all the nations (even Soldia) have a legitimate claim to the throne. I put together a few notes for a fan fic based on that exact premise, but there were a lot of details about each country that were in the visual novel itself, requiring me to go back and read. That means having to deal with Reverse Trap Saber, whom I dislike.

I just finished this game, and I have to say that it seriously surpassed my expectations. From the ratings on the VNDB, it seems like people pretty consistently score it as decent, but not great, which was pretty much my assessment until a little while before the beginning of the second chapter. But I think the quality of the game rises pretty consistently from beginning to end.

It's not my absolute favorite visual novel, but once the story gets into its swing, I think it's reliably engaging, cohesive and comprehensible (I liked Fate/Stay Night, but there were a lot of bits where I felt the characters would just toss around some magibabble and pretend that matters had been adequately explained, and it sometimes fell on the wrong side of Sanderson's First Law,) there are a bunch of twists and revelations that are legitimately surprising, and there weren't any characters I couldn't be motivated to care about, which is a big step up from a bunch of the games I've played recently. All in all, I think it's pretty underrated; there are a whole lot of games which have been voted higher up on the VNDB that I'm nowhere near as impressed with.

Arata being a complete dumbass at the beginning is in my opinion the game's biggest weakness. There's a piece of writing advice which holds that you can make the initial setup of a story as improbable as you want, but from there nothing should proceed in an improbable manner if you don't want to piss off the audience. I feel like the writers tried to apply that to the main character's intelligence and decided that they could make him as clueless as necessary to justify the initial premise, even if he wasn't going to be nearly as idiotic in the rest of the game.

Arata and Chris have the crown, and almost certainly the support of all the princesses. There's really nothing stopping them from ruling as emperor and empress, and instituting a regular monarchy now that the Princess Waltz is no longer needed. There probably will be tensions involved, not least because the real reasons behind the Princess Waltz were never public, so they're changing an international institution due to the resolution of a problem that most people didn't know existed in the first place, but I doubt it'll be that difficult to resolve. I get the impression that the Crown is sort of a Big Stick, and the people sitting on the throne and wearing it are in a pretty advantaged position with respect to keeping it.

Personally, I don't feel like this game really has multiple endings so much as one ending preceded by different possible sex scenes. I think I'd rather not see a sequel (a bit ironic considering it seems I enjoyed the game a lot more than you did.) First, I think that the somewhat open ending is one of its strengths; maybe they don't all live happily ever after, and Bad Stuff happens in the not so distant future, but at least they're changing things and not stuck in the past anymore. Second, while it's easy to set up further conflict after the events of the game, I think it would be awfully hard to make it as epic without adding elements which aren't foreshadowed by the first game, making them feel shoehorned in.

edited 12th Aug '12 9:27:07 PM by Desertopa