Princess Waltz

[Umiman]

... is a very bad Fate Stay Night clone. It's terribly written, boring, predictable, and dull. The voice acting is okay, the art is marginal. The plot is dumb. The main character is dumb. It represents everything that is wrong with the erogame industry and why it's failing. Too much focus on the exterior that they lose sight on what makes these gems worthwhile in the first place. The content.

If people want porn, there's much easier ways than fast-forwarding through lines and lines of meaningless lame dialogue. People don't play Fate Stay Night, Tsukihime, AIR, or any of the other greats because of the sex or to look at pretty pictures...

edit: Okay, I take a little bit back. The main character acts just like me...

[Assassin]

... So mind showing us what's it's like? It's your review here but not much of a help for us knowing how it is like from just a voiced opinion, so can show us some things please?

[Umiman]

The Princess Waltz - a dance of whirling blades held to find the princess worthy of becoming queen of Seven Central in the fantasy world of Eldelant. Hopeful candidates travel from all the kingdoms of Eldelant to take part in the waltz, but only one princess will reign supreme...

You are Fukamori Arata, and you know nothing of princesses or waltzes. In fact, your daily life in modern Japan couldn't be any more ordinary - you live with your mother and sister, are woken daily by your childhood friend to go to school, and live a generally full but normal life surrounded by a gang of rowdy classmates. When rumors start circulating about a transfer student to your class, you don't pay much attention - princes from foreign lands don't study abroad here in this day and age, do they?

When Chris Northfield arrives, it seems the rumors might be true. What is such a refined, polite and accomplished youth doing at your school? Your curiosity gets the better of you, but as you investigate you begin to realize you're getting into something deeper than you ever imagined...

Peach Princess and Japanese maker Pulltop are excited to bring you Princess Waltz, a tale of sword and sorcery and an epic romance that bridges space and time, drawing you into a struggle that will take all the forces of Eldelant and this world combined to emerge triumphant. Hone your skills at the game's innovative card battle system to defeat mysterious minions of darkness, choose your path through the story wisely to avoid peril that lies in wait, and win the hands of the beautiful princesses of Eldelant! A game often compared to Type-Moon's Fate / stay night, and one of Japan's most popular titles of 2006.

http://www.peachprincess.com/Merchant2/ ... _Code=BGAL

NSFW 18+ only.

I'm not exaggerating when I say it's just a ripoff of Fate Stay Night. I'm sure you can tell just from the descriptive text. Even the battle music is so strangely similar. The story is very linear, with only one ending and you'll spend a majority of the time doing the same thing if going for repeated playthroughs because it doesn't really branch at all. The card battle system is so... so... stupid, it's just gimmicky. The battle scenes extend so damn long but are so damn boring. It's like the sex scenes in FSN, except there's no sex. There are also mahou shoujo transformation scenes all over the place... which would be nice if that's your thing.

I've stopped liking the main character already. He acts like generic shounen guy. The battle voices are... TERRIBLE. The characters sound alright outside of battle but once they need to grunt or pretend they're swinging a sword or something they sound like they're taking a dump or are being molested by penguins.

Lastly, this might be personal preference, but the character art is very... strange. They all look like children. And not the perverted lolicon style children, oh no. They look like children with the baby fat and the strange proportions. It's quite strange...

[Rectifier]

I haven't played FSN and even as an uninformed dude who doesn't play erogames I can tell that when juxtaposed, this game reveals that only the outside shell resembles FSN.

[Nerevarine]

wait...

how far have you gotten in the game?

and when does it start branching? ive gone thru at least 10 hours of it and i havnt seen any branching choices (i almost thought it was linear)
wait wait....i change my mind....dont tell me when it branches...

just...does it really branch?

o yeah...and no spoilers plz

Edit: and how does this relate to FSN?

yeah sure the plot/setting seems close to FSN at a glance but its only skin-deep

gameplay is different (braching visual novel /w choices vs [as far as i have gotten] linear visual novel with card battles)
characters are different (except well...the main character is a little bit like Shirou)
point of view is different (first person shirou vs a more omniscient view)

[Umiman]

How is it not like FSN? Aside from a slightly similar plot line, all their combat techniques, plot devices, and effects are basically the same thing as FSN. I really shouldn't blame them though. With the erogame engine, there really isn't much you can do that will differentiate one technique from another.

In any case, it does branch, but it's quite limited and only near the end. I won't spoil it for you, but there's not much to spoil. The branches converge back into the main path though.

The main character is a little less annoying than Shirou, though not by much.

I do have exceptionally, impossibly high standards, so what I consider to be C grade games are usually viewed much more positively by the general public. You might want to take that in mind.

[Nerevarine]

dont read if you havnt played

Spoiler! :

what the hell!

i got a BAD END....how the poke did that happen

there were no poking choices

it just follows a linear story and...you die

Edit: haha censor

o well...i see there is a second part so i guess that was suppose to happen

but it was a really nice twist... was never expecting that


and as for similarities to FSN...
really now...the only thing they have similar when it comes to plot is the basis that there are a handful of people fighting a battle-royal situation for a single goal... In both they have inhuman strength and a weapon/class that defines them
but thats about as far as it goes...they both take completely different turns to their story

the only thing thats similar are the way the graphics present the battles....but thats a given...with still pictures there are really not much you can do....so naturally they are going to be the same
and something as small as this is a terrible way to judge the game

as for battles...ok...
the battle scenes are long....extremely long...
but then again some people might like that....

as for me... i hate battle scenes
if you know the outcome of what is going to happen...the rest is completely pointless..
its the reason why the ShirouvsArcher in UBW is total garbage... o my god...force of will is the shittiest plot device ever...
its also the reason why i found all the ending battles in FSN pointless as well (shirou vs priest or gilgamesh)...its obvious who is going to win...

which is why Waltz is ok in this regard...
since the concequences of losing are so great...when 2 main characters fight its kind of hard to see who will win (so far)

but o well...i didnt play this for the battle scenes...i played it for the plot...

which is pretty good right now
there are twists and turns that keep me guessing
and right now i have no clue as to how it will end...

[Umiman]

If twists and turns like those are enough to keep you guessing... well...

Don't venture into finance is my advice to you.

[Macko Darlack]

the image reminds me somehow of Prism Heart and/or Prism Ark ...

[Nerevarine]

now... i still havnt played many bishoujo games...

but most follow a simple outline...you choose a main heroine and try to end up with her...

but then again...

(dont read if you havnt played)

Spoiler! :

finding out that your main heroine has died even though your on the right path...

yeah i would call that a good twist that i wasnt ecpecting

[ShadowZeroHeart]

Nere went back to FSN i see.

Spoiler! :

Saber route, ends with her leaving, you don't get to go all lovey dovey with her at the end.

[Umiman]

Umm... it was hinted at quite repeatedly. Sure, they threw a few red herrings, but that's actually quite an obvious plot conclusion for a story of this nature... Like ShadowZeroHeart said. They usually end like that. It's not limited to erogames or Japanese games. It's not limited to games. It's how literary prose typically progresses. They follow standard formulas.

For example. Tsukihime ends like that. So does King Arthur and 300. As was the original ending to Sherlock Holmes. Hamlet, Macbeth, etc. It's a standard plot device...

[Nerevarine]

yeah...except for the fact that...

it wasnt the end

its still only halfway through the story

its like in the first season of Code Geass how

Spoiler! :

Euphemia ended up dying

people dying (or parting) at the very end of a novel/story is fine and been used before...

its just that i didnt expect one of the main protagonists dying suddenly halfway through the story

i mean its not even at the part where the story starts branching and we actually start getting into battles via the card system

this ended up being just one giant prologue which btw...is unique

[ShadowZeroHeart]

Dying in the middle of the story is unique? Then what about FSN once more? LOLz!

Spoiler! :

Shirou died before anything happened! If Rin didn't revive him, the story would have ended there and then!

[Nerevarine]

bah...im talking about dying dying... (which actually since i havnt played the whole game yet [not even started the second part]...dont know if there is some rezzing thing)

also...technically at that point in time...

FSN started out in first-person point-of-view for Ren

and at that point of time...because of there not being any character development for him yet.... Shirou could have been considered a minor character... even so low as an extra
(for example: if you would have never read any discription about it and were suddenly playing FSN with no background information...you wouldnt have been able to guess that the begining was just a prologue and that Ren is not in fact the main protagonist)