The Princess Guide

A fast-paced title in both terms of gameplay and narration, The Princess Guide is not the deepest of games action-wise but surely is a fun experience. The visual style itself should be enough to get you hooked if you are in any sense an anime fan. If not, there are plenty of other games out there for you! But it won't make this game a bad one, even if you do skip it.

The Princess Guide is an uninspired dungeon crawler with a strategic twist, that sorely miss a good loot system and a clever level design. Still, can be entertaining in short bursts for fanatics of the genre.

The Princess Guide is definitely one of the weaker NIS developed releases I’ve played. If the port was great things would have been a bit better but as it stands, the Switch version of The Princess Guide is good but not an essential from any angle right now. If you adored Penny Punching Princess and want something similar with some simulation aspects, you will enjoy this a lot but for everyone else, there are better NIS games to play on both PS4 and Switch.

The Princess Guide is a missed opportunity for NIS America. It could have been a game that offered amazing interactions with cute and memorable characters. It could have been a game that offered a totally comprehensive and satisfactory battle system. It could have been a game with a straightforward approach to its mechanics. It could have been a fun and immersive title. It could have done lots, but ultimately fails to deliver what the developers had in mind. The main dilemma that comes with the game is “Praise” or “Scold”? Probably the latter.

Overall, it's an enjoyable action-focused romp, but everything feels a little scattershot. This is a game that packs in a lot but doesn't stick the landing on all that much. The Princess Guide offers up a pleasant little brawler that overcomplicates at every turn and is never truly satisfying.

When it’s firing on all cylinders, The Princess Guide is a somewhat deep, satisfying action game with vibrant visuals and humorous, whimsical storytelling. Unfortunately, it’s bogged down by trying to shove overengineered combat through a thick UX fog. After yet another “mission” that consists of moving on the map to intercept three enemy skirmishes to completion, a reasonable player might wonder: Is it worth $40 to praise-or-scold each Princess through a couple of hours of sword-swinging? This quirky game may meet the particular sensibilities of some, but others should probably pass on this one.

The Princess Guide is an adorable, energetic game. It has gorgeous art and fun, well-written characters. It's just marred by grinding through messy and poorly designed combat. The AI squad-mates that are so integral to the action have terrible AI that make it impossible to consistently coordinate any of their actions. There's massive heart and care put into the narrative and visual design of The Princess Guide, but that is weighed down by how frustrating it is to play the game.

The Princess Guide is cute and fun for a few minutes before becoming a messy grind of mechanics, systems and features the game never really explain.

The Princess Guide is a game I enjoy less and less the more I play it. There is a sound structure here and some really clever ideas, but the weight of all its small issues really burden what should a fun and frivolous experience.

The Princess Guide may have creative and ambitious concepts and ideas and there's no doubt that it has several good aspects in its favour. Unfortunately the game also reveals some flaws when it comes to putting its ideas into place and the result is something that feels rather confusing, without a proper explanation of how the gameplay mechanics work, and with a too repetitive combat system.

The Princess Guide bring a poor action gameplay, despite an interesting design and nice strategic phases.

For fans of NISA/NIS games in general, this is a complete let-down. None of the systems work well or are even that interesting. The story is bland, the combat unnecessarily complex and unfulfilling, and the lack of conventional progression against scaling difficulty results in an experience infuriating all the way around. Nearly everything is far more complex than it needs to be, from issuing battle commands, to simply trying to know what is being equipped or what effect is has. If one had to choose between one word to describe the whole experience this would be a battle between 'frustrating' and 'disappointing.'