Miss Princess is an otome game from Ruby Party and Koei-Tecmo based on a shoujo manga by Seizuki Madoka. It’s aimed at a slightly younger crowd than most otome games, probably with the hope of getting tweens and younger girls into otome games in order to expand the market and maybe open the way for Koei to develop games for other demographics too.
Story: There’s a butler boom in Japan and every girl dreams of having her own butler. Combine the two and you get the “Miss Princess” contest, a contest to decide the most beautiful butler-owning girl in Japan…? I dunno, I don’t get it either. But anyway you have to be 15 and under and you have to have a butler.
Enter our main character Himeoka Kokoro, an ordinary 15-year old middle schooler. Kokoro has dreamt of being Miss Princess since she was 5 but since her family is too poor to afford a butler, she had to save up for one on her own. Unfortunately a thief runs off with her savings right before she can enter the contest. Luckily while pursuing the thief Kokoro happens to help an old lady who just happens to run a butler agency. As thanks the old lady puts not one, not two, not three but four handsome butlers at Kokoro’s disposal. Now she can go to the ball!
Gameplay: Miss Princess must be aimed at a really young crowd because it’s so easy I could play it with my eyes closed. Kokoro has three stats to raise – Culture, Refinement and Sensitivity – and she does it by getting one of the butlers to put her through one of three mini-games.
Culture = catching books they try to drop on your head. Careful not to catch a mouse instead! My favorite game of the three, since it requires a bit of skill and it’s pretty hard to get a good score.
Refinement = horse-riding. Jump over bushes and fences with Y or B. I kept getting a bad score at first because I was accidentally pressing A and B instead of Y. Silly me.
Sensitivity = piano-playing. The butler plays a few notes and then you repeat them after him on the touchscreen. Easy-peasy even if you haven’t had any music training.
Different butlers give you different boosts in different games. E.g. Momo is good at piano playing so you get +19 to Sensitivity for a perfect game, versus +13 from Kaoru, that sort of thing.
Along with raising your stats, training also raises your stress by +7 per game, so you either play an extra game with the guys to reduce it or just rest in your room for one day to reduce it to zero. This makes Miss Princess much easier than games like Tokimeki Memorial because instead of constantly scheduling rest breaks, you can just train until stress is 99 and then rest for a day and poof, all gone, ready to start over again.
The contest itself is divided into 4 stages covering 3 in-game months. You’re told the date ahead of time plus the exact stats you need to clear the stage, so it’s quite impossible to fail. The deadlines are extremely generous and you will always pass as long as you have the required stats. It doesn’t seem like this is a very high-level contest if the likes of you can win so easily, but… it’s a “best butler-owning girl” contest, so what did I expect?
Romance: Your choice of 5 guys ranging in age from 15 to 22. This being a game for grade to middle schoolers, the romance is extremely worksafe and understated – no hugging, no kissing, no holding hands. At least not on the route I did for Kaoru (age 15 because it felt kind of squicky letting a 22-year old date my 15-year old protagonist). Just train with him and talk to him over and over again and you’re bound to get him. Even if you answer some questions wrongly and his affection takes a hit, just train and talk some more and he’ll be putty in your hands in no time.
Pshh, piece of cake.
Along the way you might have to deal with a little bit of dramatic backstory, but never anything heavy. Like Momo never knew his parents, Junpei just has issues through and through, Yoh is in a feud with his mom and Kaoru was a test-tube baby created by a scientist as part of a eugenics project. I thought that last one sounded rather interesting and wanted to learn more, but Kaoru just mentioned it in passing and never it brought up again. Instead his route is about him initially being cold and stand-offish and eventually learning how to have fun and hang out with other people thanks to the power of love. I suppose Koei didn’t want to burden kid gamers with anything deep or meaningful, but then why bring the subject up at all? Rrrgh, now it’s like an itch I can’t scratch.
Anyway, Kaoru’s route is your basic Defrosting Ice Queen scenario where you hang out and act all cheerful around him until he falls in love because can’t resist your charms any more. I kind of wish he had resisted, because while he is pretty handsome normally, he has one of the most awkward blush-faces I have ever seen in a game before:
He looks like someone punched him while he was constipated. All that trouble getting him to the blushing stage and I can’t even enjoy it.
What I actually think of the game:
I enjoyed my one playthrough, more or less, and it’s much less annoying than some otome games I’ve played. The mini-games were fun, the protagonist was easy to root for and it was a short and cheerful game, but it didn’t really set my heart on fire. It’s not really for my age group, I guess. The mini-games are too easy, the guys are too easy to get, the contest is too easy to win, most scenes aren’t voiced and nothing interesting happens from start to finish. I only liked one out of the 5 guys as well, so there isn’t much room for replays.
A replay would be boring anyway because you’d have to grind up all your stats from 0 again while watching the same scenes day after day. And for some reason the game never lets you get straight to training, you always have to watch a little scene where you wake up, another little scene where you go to school, another little scene when you arrive at the agency, then they finally let you train, then there’s another scene where they walk you home. It’s trying enough the first time. I can’t imagine going through it more than once.
Miss Princess is meant to be a “baby’s first otome game” kind of thing, designed for people who have never played a guy-romancing game before. It might also work for a gamer who wants something very short, happy and cute with minimal drama. And the developers didn’t plan it that way, but it would also be a good game for Japanese-learners because it uses relatively simple language with lots of hiragana, not much slang and with furigana added to any remotely difficult kanji. Everybody else would be better off playing something a little more substantial.
Yeah, it’s still creepy how some otoge have FeMCs who are under 18 and dateable guys who are 10+ yrs older than her 🙁
Yeah, I dunno what it is about the age 18, but that’s the magic number that makes dating okay even with much older guys. 18, dating a guy who’s 28? Yeah, okay. 15 dating a 25-year old? Call the cops! Probably has something to do with ages of consent + 18 is usually college age vrs. junior high.
I guess it’s something cultural… Lolicon and all that. I’m on the verge of clearing Criminal Girls, and I’m still shaking my head at the fact that Sako, Yuko and Alice declared that they wanted to protect me and be with me forever. Such declarations of undying love and loyalty were marginally believable coming from the other four, but these three look like they are barely out of childhood! I can’t decide if it’s creepy or just plain ridiculous… Probably both, actually. 😛
That part of CG didn’t bother me as much as the fact that they want to be with you after all you’ve done to them. That was harder to believe than that a 15-year old might have a crush on an older guy.
Congratulations on finally finishing Shiren!
Yes, this whole romantic outcome is just… weird, to say the least. It grossed me out even more than the minigames, to be honest. Criminal Girls could as well have been called “Stockholm Syndrom: The Game”.
Thank you! ^_^ It was so much fun, I really don’t regret all the time spent on that game.