Battle Princess of Arcadias

Battle Princess of Arcadias is a lot of things at once, an action side scroller, a JRPG, and a strategy game. Mostly it's just a great game made of simple, familiar parts.

Battle Princess of Arcadias is a beautiful game, and it has a truly charming narrative and set of characters.

There is a solid little ARPG here with a charming cast of characters, but the real question is, can you handle all the grinding?

While it doesn’t get everything it tries to do right, Battle Princess of Arcadias is still an enjoyable action-adventure that mixes some unique gameplay twists together with a serious level of beat-em-up satisfaction.

When the layers of the experience are peeled back, what we’re left with at Arcadias‘ core is a sluggish brawling RPG that can sometimes lack the kind of gameplay merit needed for sustainability beyond a handful of hours.

Despite its glaring faults, Battle Princess of Arcadias still makes for a decent hybrid of RPG and Beat-’Em-Up, even if it lacks the visual and mechanical polish of Vanillaware’s titles.

There are no puzzles, no secret rooms, no open exploration of any kind, and the game wants players to do this with ten unique characters, leveling them each to 99. Battle Princess of Arcadias is so monotonous that I kept playing it out of inertia rather than because of enjoyment, but I kept hoping for more of the magic from its first five minutes. Sadly, that magic never appeared.

I am The Destroyer. I will break games, complain about the littlest detail, and tell you whether or not you should buy this game. A lot of things to say but can't due to the 5000 character limit. Seeing this in the Playstation store, I decided to give this a go, and bought it without any prior knowledge on what the game was about. And after completing it I can say that Battle Princess of Arcadias is a huge disappointment. Many elements missing here that will forever prevent this game from being great. The longer I played it, the more my criticism would pile. But in the end, I just couldn't find myself to hate this game enough to destroy it. 1. Story If you're someone whose looking for a good story as well as gameplay, then don't look here. The story targets an audience range between ages 10 to 12. But most gamers are way above that age bracket because of them having the actual money or resources. Even then, this fairytale story is filled with plotholes, and predictable outcomes you can see coming from a mile **** story however is still worth paying attention too at least once due to it's colourful characters. 2. Voice Acting Heavy Criticism Alert!!! -The game only has Japanese dubs in all versions of the game, which is not acceptable!! When you release an NA version or an EU version ****, you hire a voice acting team, and put in english dubs! You don't leave the japanese dubs as the only option in the NA or EU version because no one outside of Japan is going to know what the hell they're saying! Oh- There's english subtitles in there so it must be okay, right? NO! It's not okay!!! Gaming companies have been hiring their dub voice acting team since the original playstation era! What the developers did for this game was the very definition of lazyness! They don't deserve a free pass! 3. Graphics and Visuals For a side-scrolling theatre type game, the graphics here are pretty good, even if some of the characters look like paper. During gameplay, there are a lot of different colourful backgrounds filled with detail and scenery. Of all the stale things in this game, graphics & visuals won't be one of them. 4. Gameplay Gameplay refers to combat, customization & level up, and various game modes you play within the game. Put it all together and it's average! -Battle System- The game is a 2D beat'im-up action rpg. Despite only having a few simple combos for the characters you play as, the fighting and controls are excellent! You have your standard basic attacks for Square, and your heavy attacks for Triangle. You can mix the two together to create a combo attack, which allows you to dish out multiple hits to an enemy. The game comes with 10 playable characters, and each character's combo attacks are different. -Customization- By visiting a blacksmith shop, it is possible to customize your weapon stats by improving or adding an element (Fire, Ice, or Lightning), luck, or further increase it's attack power... - that is if you can get though it's dysfunctional menu. By end-game you'll have so many items that it will require you to scroll through a list of junk to reach what you want. There's no sort button or separate menus for stats either. This is the only thing that can be considered customization. There is no alternative attires or costumes, and level-up stats is fully automatic. -Modes- All 3 modes; lacks tactics in Skirmish, danger in Siege, and platforming in Combat. 5. Soundtrack Mostly forgettable. The soundtrack here is the type where you're gonna put on your own tunes to help you get through a grind because you'll quickly lose interest in hearing the 1-minute loops. 6. Bugs & Glitches It isn't a big deal but I feel it needs to be mentioned anyway in case someone out there is receiving the worst of it. The game randomly crashed on me once when I was trying to do a "crazy dance" attack with a character. No further damage was done to my save file or PS3, but it is recommended now for players to turn on the auto-save from the options menu. 7. Personal Enjoyment The game took me about 3 days to complete, having playing it non-stop other than sleep. So it does take a reasonable amount of time to finish. Some parts felt pointless, but overall was a fun game. 8. Overall Verdict The final verdict for Battle Princess of Arcadias is a 5 out of 10. Had english dubs been put into the game it would have been a 6 out of 10. I cannot recommend anyone to play this game. It isn't by all means bad, but there's just not enough of an incentive here for paying full price or even $29.99 . Wait until it comes down to bargain bin price before purchasing. And if it never does, just move onto another game.