Princess Maker was originally released back in 1991, developed by Yonago GAINAX and now, publisher Bliss Brain has released the game for PC via Steam with some brand-new additions to the game. Princess Maker belongs to the genre where you raise someone or something and you have tons of choices to go for. In this case, you must raise your daughter to the point that she might one day become a proper lady and in some cases, even a princess. The game is exceptionally heavy in choice and because of this, it offers hours of fun gameplay. This is our review of Princess Maker Refine in which we raise our daughter and try our best to make something out of her if not a princess.
The story of Princess Maker Refine takes place in a kingdom that is under attack by a demon lord. You are a war hero who has managed to repel the attack of the demon armies and now the kingdom is safe. Upon your return to the kingdom, you tell your king that you are done with your sword, and you will now raise your very own daughter who is an orphan from the war. The king allows you to do this and this is where you step into the game as a father. It is now your duty to look after the child and raise her while educating her and teaching her different things so that she can be the best of herself.
Back in 1991, the game did not have any sort of opening animated cinematic, however, this time around, you are treated to a really cool animated cinematic which was created by Takami Akai who is the original designer of the game. The animated cinematic is exclusive to Princess Maker Refine. You start with a name for yourself and then you sort of customize your daughter as well. You can choose her name, her blood group, and her date of birth. After this, you are taken to the game’s main screen where you will be spending most of your time. At this screen, you can perform various tasks which include choosing your daughter’s weekly schedule, sending her to special tasks, changing her clothes, and checking her stats apart from accessing the game’s settings as well.
Since you have left everything in the world and now just sit at home raising your daughter, it is up to her to earn money and afford her classes. You have to manage that schedule as well. Even when she is resting, she will need money for various tasks, so you have to keep a balance between various classes, working, and resting. At the start of a week, you assign her tasks which include what sort of classes she will take, what sort of job she will do and how she will spend her free time. Once done, the game plays out the entire week with various factors kicking in such as fatigue and mood and they affect your overall income and learning. If you are tired, you will make mistakes at work which results in less income and also less learning from classes as well. Sometimes you will spend money but none of her skills will go up so you need to balance out things.
If you need to do something else, you can allow some free time for your daughter during which she can visit outside the castle as well however if you wander around at the night, you will encounter the worst the kingdom has to offer. You will come across monsters, kidnappers and other bad people during the night however you will need to choose between various options on how to tackle these situations and the responses depend on your current skill levels. You will keep doing this for some time until your choices and the skills you taught to your daughter, lead to one of the game’s endings. Not all of the endings of the game are happy, so it is a fun thing to look forward to while playing the game.
Technically, the game runs fine with the Steam launcher however the game crashed three times during my playthrough. It could be because of the emulator the game is using because it always starts in a Windowed mode and then you have to manually apply Fullscreen again and again from the screen’s menu. During Fullscreen, this menu pops up when you take the cursor to the top and you adjust different client settings from there. The game does not let you Alt+Tab as well so your only bet is to go to the Windowed mode if you want to do anything else while playing the game. None of these are really that game-breaking bugs or glitches, apart from the game crashing, but I am always switching between windows while gaming on my PC, so this makes for an annoying thing. Apart from these two, I did not encounter any sort of hiccups or glitches in the game.
Final Verdict:
Princess Maker Refine is certainly refined in every way. The game runs pretty well on PC and the new additions to the game certainly enhance the overall experience of the title. If you played the original 1991 release, there are tons of improvements this time around for you however if you are a new player and are just jumping in the game, you will experience the definitive edition of the title. The game offers hours and hours of gameplay and I can easily say that each playthrough in the game is unique. For retro lovers and players who love digging into character simulators, Princess Maker Refine is certainly a decent title to jump in with its brand-new intro, new voice acting, and plenty of paths to choose from.
Final Score: 7.5/10
