Volcano Princess – Review
Volcano Princess is great fun in general. The characters are endearing, attractively rendered, and appear to have depth and nuance. The game’s replay value comes from the fact that you can use the points you earn from completing challenges to upgrade your character’s base attributes, equipment, and more for the next run, making it more likely that you will reach the “better” ending (or the ending you are aiming for) this time around.
The game’s mechanics are child’s play. You can replenish your energy supply and increase your daily maximum. There are time jumps at several times in the game that allow the character’s daughter (your daughter) to age more quickly. The classes you take and the things you perform in the overworld directly affect the values you obtain in your stats, skills, and subject scores. Alternatively, one could use effort fighting monsters in the woods, eradicating corruption in the hopes of discovering the “Owl Princess” and thereby defeating the ultimate bad guy. You may even try your hand at being a socialite and using it to network your way into the upper classes. Like in Fire Emblem 3, residences here allow you to grow food, catch horses, and interact with the local populace. In which one may converse, spend time, engage in verbal or physical combat, exchange gifts, etc. The “dark alley” is only one example of an activity that seems to have been added at the very last minute, offers little in the way of reward, and is visually inconsistent with the rest of the game. However, this is not a common problem.
The music is well-suited to the game and occasionally pleasant, but the lack of tracks with more substantial lengths makes replaying the game a bit depressing after the first time around.
Although parts of the artwork may appear a bit strange, nothing does so to an unacceptable degree (I’m looking at you, dark alley, with your bizarre pixel-based imagery).
However, the English translation ruins all of these advantages and a fun game that costs only $10. It ranges from serviceable to incomprehensible, depending on the context. For instance, if you rack up enough “romance” points during a date, you’ll unlock an option labelled “ambiguous,” the meaning of which escapes me totally except from the fact that you’ll receive better prizes.
I fell in love with the game’s concept and played it nonstop for three days, despite the poor English translation. However, not everyone will be able to get past the awkward language structure, unusual methods of information delivery, and bizarre word translation that severely diminish the experience. The translation is so off that sometimes a character is given the name 50C. The developers deserve a lot of praise, as they are a small, all-female team from China. At this point, I’d nearly put the blame for the translation on the publisher instead of the developers.
If you can get beyond the translation, it’s well worth the price; if you can’t, give it a month or two, and it should be playable by everyone by then. One of the greatest games I’ve played this year; I look forward to a more accurate translation so I can fully appreciate the work of the talented pair responsible for it.
