The team-based multi-player genre becomes one game bigger with the addition of "Fat Princess," a PSN exclusive where two opposing teams fight for their overly obese Princesses, but does Fat Princess stand out in the already saturated genre?
Fat Princess let's the player take their pick of 1 of 5 class types to fight in a Fantasy-Medieval battle. The classes can come off as generic after playing with the game for a bit. The classes are your expected standard Fantasy-Medieval classes (ex. Archer, Knight, Wizard, etc). Unlike in Team Fortress 2, where the classes have their own distinct personalities, Fat Princess' classes are uninspired; with all the classes sharing the same voicework and lacking any real distinctness, a choice that I assume the developers made to coincide with the game's underwhelming customizable avatars, Fat Princess still lacks personality even with it's charming narrative and cartoon look.
Fat Princess' main mode is it's twisted CTF mode, where instead of a flag player's must capture a Princess. To make her a fat princess, hence the title of the game, player's must feed her face full of cake. The more she bulges as the seams, the harder she is to carry. It's a neat little mechanic, but it just isn't dynamic enough. Feeding the princess becomes a chore, as you constantly have to feed her to keep her obese.
There's also a bit of RTS thrown in Fat Princess as well. The worker class can go out and collect resources such as stone and wood to upgrade the team's base. Resources can be spent on upgrading all classes to the next tier, or creating contraptions for people to shortcut across the battlefield. Creating a giant catapult that catapults the player half-way across the map is one of the funnest things that can be done in this game.
For a team-based game, Fat Princess needs to reinforce the idea that player's should work as a team. There is just not enough incentive or ability for one player to help out a fellow player. Let's look at Team Fortress 2 again for a comparison. In TF2, many of the classes compliment each other and they have good reason too. For example in a Medic Heavy combo, the Heavy works with the Medic to stay alive, and the Medic works with the Heavy to build up his ubercharge. No such relationships are created in Fat Princess. A Cleric Class exists, but when players can die in seconds during battle and can regenerate their own health, the Medic is left with no purpose or reason to be in the fight. It's weakly-designed aspects such as these that make a round of Fat Princess less than satisfying to play.
Fat Princess is visually charming game that had promise, but unfortunately this piece of cake falls flat.
