The games I buy on an impulse...first saw this on Siliconera and became mildly interested in it and here I am speaking about this game featuring the self-proclaimed "best thief in the world" Anise who finds herself labeled as Hero by the fairy Kukri and forced by the king of Albyon to rescue his son, kidnapped by the evil Demon Lord.
The game opens with a rather classy intro with a catchy but repetitive BGM which I'll really like to see uncompressed and a brief introduction to a few elements: you can see Anise sneaking around, whipping her way through various suspended platforms and recovering a key to open a big portal. Just like the main story it's standard RPG fare, but with a thief as main character and the promise of the back cover of more than 150 brain-teasing levels, you'd expect to be entertained by puzzles and platforming rather than random combat.
For what I've played, there are puzzles and platforming but everything is either very simple or infuriating.
The objective of each level is to get the key to open the one and onyl door to advance and usually you get the key by slaying one or more monsters. Anise comes with a whip able to stun, grab and launch enemies and nothing else, monsters need to be killed by picking up various weapons found in each level; the catch is that all enemies have an elemental affinity and can be killed only by the corresponding weapon: green sword kills green enemies, red sword for red enemies and so on. So far I've found three weapon types (sword, mace and spear) that handle differently, but unfortunately you aren't told how they work. You see, Kukri is supposed to be your guide and her suggestions are hosted in the upper screen, however they last mere seconds and any action cancels any suggestion, leaving you to dechyper how a weapon works - it's no big deal, but I'll go in detail later.
The remaining puzzle elements are the standard switch abuse and platform jumping, with some crates to bomb to reveal something.
The platforming element is where everything falls apart, especially with the standard button layout: I'm playing with one of the first DS lites so diagonals aren't exactly easy to input and the game lives on diagonals to move. Jump, attack, pick up and everything else is mapped to the face buttons and obviously can be replicated via the touch screen, unfortunately touch sensing isn't 100% perfect and it will cause you to die many times.
Let me explain: whenever a "whippable" target comes into range, the game "locks" on it by putting a small arrow beneath it and during whip-heavy jumping you expect that it represents the target Anise will latch to. That might be true, until anything else comes into range, the game locks onto it and, bam, you're dead or you've just missed your only opportunity to complete the level.
Forcing your way with the touch screen isn't particularly good as many times hotspots fail to register and you'll see Anise whipping on a completely opposite direction from where you wanted to.
Paths where you have to whip to proceed are especialy treacherous, with Anise whipping the point where she is or even the previous, making navigation of these areas absolutely dreadful.
The third control scheme, which maps action buttons to the control pad and movement to the touch screen is by far the best as the touch screen is only used for movement and the d-pad is a good replacement for face buttons to input actions; I can't really understand why they haven't made this the standard layout, but at least it's nice there's this option.
However changing control scheme doesn't immediately make Steal Princess a good game as it's hard to discern height levels and hitboxes are far from perfect; the whip can be used to grab and launch enemies but while you know where you are launching them (Anise faces that direction), you don't know how far that would be...it won't be very far anyway (barely the width of your sprite), but when you are required to launch enemies and then use them as platforms, it would be good to know where they will land; as said before, height levels are particularly bad, with enemies you think floating above your head hitting constantly for no apparent reason.
This is partially due to the extremely low production values of the title: the DS can pull off some nice sprites and when coded correctly even decent polygons and textures; Steal Princess uses sprites for everything except the non-rotable map. Unfortunately the sprites are extremely blocky, with only an handful of frames for any given animation and displayed in four-five colors: you can understand that they are, but only because you are giving them their shape, not because graphics are well defined. Colors are generally de-saturated and the contrast with the opening movie and the rich and skillful character design is so strong to the point you're wondering if you are playing the same game.
BGMs and sound effects are...mhmm, no wait, there's a rather standard BGM but almost no sound effects. Anise shouts the same thing everytime she whips, jumps, picks something up or strikes and Kukri has a couple of lines told when you are standing still, maybe fighting against the control scheme...welcome back Navi, I missed you not. But at least Navi was helpful is its role as guide to Link.
It might be just the beginning of the game, but first impressions are far from being good. Will continue to play and see how it truly turns out.
The game opens with a rather classy intro with a catchy but repetitive BGM which I'll really like to see uncompressed and a brief introduction to a few elements: you can see Anise sneaking around, whipping her way through various suspended platforms and recovering a key to open a big portal. Just like the main story it's standard RPG fare, but with a thief as main character and the promise of the back cover of more than 150 brain-teasing levels, you'd expect to be entertained by puzzles and platforming rather than random combat.
For what I've played, there are puzzles and platforming but everything is either very simple or infuriating.
The objective of each level is to get the key to open the one and onyl door to advance and usually you get the key by slaying one or more monsters. Anise comes with a whip able to stun, grab and launch enemies and nothing else, monsters need to be killed by picking up various weapons found in each level; the catch is that all enemies have an elemental affinity and can be killed only by the corresponding weapon: green sword kills green enemies, red sword for red enemies and so on. So far I've found three weapon types (sword, mace and spear) that handle differently, but unfortunately you aren't told how they work. You see, Kukri is supposed to be your guide and her suggestions are hosted in the upper screen, however they last mere seconds and any action cancels any suggestion, leaving you to dechyper how a weapon works - it's no big deal, but I'll go in detail later.
The remaining puzzle elements are the standard switch abuse and platform jumping, with some crates to bomb to reveal something.
The platforming element is where everything falls apart, especially with the standard button layout: I'm playing with one of the first DS lites so diagonals aren't exactly easy to input and the game lives on diagonals to move. Jump, attack, pick up and everything else is mapped to the face buttons and obviously can be replicated via the touch screen, unfortunately touch sensing isn't 100% perfect and it will cause you to die many times.
Let me explain: whenever a "whippable" target comes into range, the game "locks" on it by putting a small arrow beneath it and during whip-heavy jumping you expect that it represents the target Anise will latch to. That might be true, until anything else comes into range, the game locks onto it and, bam, you're dead or you've just missed your only opportunity to complete the level.
Forcing your way with the touch screen isn't particularly good as many times hotspots fail to register and you'll see Anise whipping on a completely opposite direction from where you wanted to.
Paths where you have to whip to proceed are especialy treacherous, with Anise whipping the point where she is or even the previous, making navigation of these areas absolutely dreadful.
The third control scheme, which maps action buttons to the control pad and movement to the touch screen is by far the best as the touch screen is only used for movement and the d-pad is a good replacement for face buttons to input actions; I can't really understand why they haven't made this the standard layout, but at least it's nice there's this option.
However changing control scheme doesn't immediately make Steal Princess a good game as it's hard to discern height levels and hitboxes are far from perfect; the whip can be used to grab and launch enemies but while you know where you are launching them (Anise faces that direction), you don't know how far that would be...it won't be very far anyway (barely the width of your sprite), but when you are required to launch enemies and then use them as platforms, it would be good to know where they will land; as said before, height levels are particularly bad, with enemies you think floating above your head hitting constantly for no apparent reason.
This is partially due to the extremely low production values of the title: the DS can pull off some nice sprites and when coded correctly even decent polygons and textures; Steal Princess uses sprites for everything except the non-rotable map. Unfortunately the sprites are extremely blocky, with only an handful of frames for any given animation and displayed in four-five colors: you can understand that they are, but only because you are giving them their shape, not because graphics are well defined. Colors are generally de-saturated and the contrast with the opening movie and the rich and skillful character design is so strong to the point you're wondering if you are playing the same game.
BGMs and sound effects are...mhmm, no wait, there's a rather standard BGM but almost no sound effects. Anise shouts the same thing everytime she whips, jumps, picks something up or strikes and Kukri has a couple of lines told when you are standing still, maybe fighting against the control scheme...welcome back Navi, I missed you not. But at least Navi was helpful is its role as guide to Link.
It might be just the beginning of the game, but first impressions are far from being good. Will continue to play and see how it truly turns out.
Comment