Princess Maker 2

The Good
The premise alone is original: raising a daughter. The game analyses your every move which is quite rewarding; and the incredibly detailed game system allows you to map out your ideal daughter quite easily. The possibilities are huge and it's fun to see how one choice affects another. For example, having your daughter work at a sleazy bar ups her "sin" level; but if you combine it with a job at a church, you can nullify it. The graphics are charming and heartwarming in a typical Japanese fashion, and the small animations are good and quite funny sometimes. The sheer open-endedness of the game is great and the, count 'em...74 endings have got to rate among surely the biggest number in any game. Like someone said it's "replayable to the point of insanity". I personally found a lot of affinity with my daughter and I felt a bit sad when she had to leave home at the end, but -hey- I'm always like that. I also managed to pretty much create what I'd want my daughter to be like anyway. The endings are suprisingly thorough and it's amazing how your daughter's final stats make a difference to each ending. Which means that even after you've seen ALL SEVENTY FOUR you can still replay the game again and see something new.

The Bad
Princess Maker 2 does unfortunately get repetitive. I found this to be it's biggest problem. If you want your daughter to grow up to be an artist or whatever, it's quite easy to pile her into art school and get her a job at a hair salon, and she'll ace the competitions every time in less than 2 years. After that, there is no real need to keep her in the art school because it's costing you a bomb and she'll win the next competition by a mile anyway. So you're kinda stuck with what to do because if you try something else like fighting, it'll lower her artistic skill or push her in the direction of becoming a professional warrior. There could have been a few more random events I think. The schedules do seem to turn out pretty similar for every month too. You'll get your daughter into a routine habit and this may get boring if nothing happens very often either. It's also a pity your daughter doesn't say much as well, but then that may just be my inadequacies as a father.

The Bottom Line
Sweet, fun, light-hearted, and warm. Japan always seems to be able to produce games with so much more charisma than American ones. It's just a pity that not quite enough is happening most of the time; and after completing it, you won't feel the need to jump back in right from the start again. But how can you complain when this game has 74 endings? I mean...74?!...Wow

The Good
The 256 color anime styled graphics are very good and detailed. There's also a very diverse and colorful group of people to meet throughout the game.

The midi music is fairly well done considering it's in midi

Lots of things to tweak and visit and probe.

Lots of jobs to do.

The Adventuring segment is a very nice touch.

The daughters age and growing up is very convincing.

Those are some of the finer points but one of the things that I don't get is the father. How can he have his daughter work at such a young age? Along with that for being the hero that he is, he is also fairly poor and could be considered The Al Bundy of the game.

It's hilarious that the daughter can grow up to be a hooker or marry the butler. Aim high baby! There's also the perverted dragon

The game is overall pretty well rounded and there's a ton of endings that you can go after! So this game is highly replayable. You'll also miss it when she grows up since all that gameplay seems like a flash and POOF it's over. Though the replay value is sky high so you'll want to play it over and over again and discover everything there is to see in this game which is actually quite a bit if you don't use a walkthrough or faq.

The Bad
While the adventuring aspect was nice it wasn't very deep and could have really been much better with a few more places to adventure in or making the original adventuring spots a lot bigger.

Your daughter is automatically "fat" at 100 lbs and has trouble getting in the more expensive dresses.

If the game went by segments of one week each instead of three turns a month that would have significantly improved gameplay and made it more enjoyable.

The game never actually dwells on the history of the father being the hero or how the butler Cube came to serve the hero.

You can only have one rival in the game. What's up with that? Once you get a rival do other girls just go "I give up?" How's that for realistic?

The Bottom Line
Overall a very fun game that you will play several times through. I give it a 9/10 mainly for small faults. But overall a great game!

The Good
You don't see this kind of thing often. For those of you who haven't played it, another appropriate title would be "Sim Daughter". The objective here is to guide the daughter, and then depending on your actions, she will end up in one of several professions.

It's an original concept that is rarely seen anymore, especially in America. Somehow, this thing is strangely addictive, and you'll find yourself replaying, wondering what sort of outcome you'll get.

The Bad
If you're like me, and know little or nothing about Japanese culture, you're going to be exposed to some strangeness.. most apparently in the weight/height ratio of the child. When I played, she turned out to be 17 years old, 5' 7" and 97 pounds. With these statistics she complained about being "too fat" and the game would not allow her to wear some of the fancier clothes. I had to slim her down to 87 pounds to resolve the problem.

There's also the whole Child Pornography issue. Yes, you will see naked cartoon preteen art. At no time are sexual acts depicted, but nudity is not exactly scarce. It's my understanding, though, that the North American versions have been censored, and that the art for that is simply not available.

The Bottom Line
If you want something unique, try it out. It's fun, addictive, and just downright nifty.

The Good
Let me introduce you to the HUMAN version of Monster Rancher, wonder which game came first? Well, if you’re not familiar with either, you may be familiar with Tamagochi games. It's basically a game where 90% (if not more) of the game play is about character development...my favorite area in RPG's.

Princess Maker 2 is about you, a wandering hero, who been blessed with (more likely appointed to take care of) a child from the heavens, by the Moon Goddess. You have task to raise her as you see fit - either to become a pious well educated woman, a blood thirsty warrior, a royal princess, a common slut, or even a damned Queen of Darkness. However, you have a time limit. You only have 8 years to raise her (from age 10 - 18) until she is old enough to choose her own destiny.

The game combines a lot of game features that bring out the best in game play:

Character Development
Each month you decide what schedule your daughter should follow. In each of these months, you can choose up to 3 different schedules for the whole month. The statistics are various, from Primary Body Points (Strength, Intelligence, Charisma, etc.), Skills (Art, Cooking, Combat Skill/Defense, Magic Skill/Defense, etc.) and surprisingly Spiritual/Mental Stats (Sin, Morals, Temperament, etc.)

Character Development, primarily may only be obtained through 2 different activities:
[1] Through Schooling; [2] Through Working.

Schools offer various stat increases. Some specialize on increasing particular stats than others. Lessons costs money…a lot of money. A lesson that states for example 40G means 40 Gold Pieces a day (for 6 days out of the week).

Working gets you money and also increases stats, though working usually is more stressing to your daughter. Also, while increasing some stats, it also in return decreases other stats, so balancing the stats is a continuous form of strategy in character development.

Schooling and Working stresses out your daughter. Too much activity and she’ll either get ill or become rebellious. A delinquent child tends to be lazy and ignore schooling and working. If you’re too harsh on her, she may run away.

Item Manipulation
Like other RPGs, the game comes with various items for use, or combat related. Weapons, armor, food, accessories, and magical items help strengthen your daughter with stats boots or specific uses during combat. Some are only useful for certain plot events. Other more interesting items are clothing. Some are used for particular seasons to help your daughter from becoming ill due to weather (Summer Dress, Winter Clothing), some more useful for competing in dance competitions (Silk Dress, Leather Dress, etc.). Usually the more “permanent” items such as clothes, armor and weapons affect the stats of your daughter. Changing them for particular events help the changes of success.

Harvest Festival
The Harvest Festival comes only once a year in the month of September. In this month, you cannot participate in any other even except the festival or resting. In this festival you can test the abilities of your daughter by competing in many events:

The Good
While not a terribly unique concept in Japan, Princess Maker 2 is one of the few "real-life" sims that has (sort of) come across the ocean. It is vastly replayable, due to the large number of endings. In addition to the base ending (ie, your daughter's chosen career/lifestyle at age 18) there are other factors such as whether and to whom she marries, whether she considers her childhood to have been happy, etc. There are some truly bizarre endings out there... a few trial runs should be enough to figure out how to max out her stats... and messing with stats is the key to determining her future. I got the Princess ending once, ages ago... but its really far more interesting to seek out some of the obscure endings.

The Bad
It gets repetitive... in order for your daughter to accomplish ANYTHING in any field, she needs money and you will therefore spend a lot of time having her work or fight for the sole purpose of raising money. It also becomes important to make sure that she doesn't do the same job too often, unless you want her to go into that field. Too much cooking and cleaning will get you a housewife every time. It seemed like a waste to spend hours on the game only to get ANOTHER housewife, artist, dancer, or hooker (those were the ones that kept cropping up for me at least), knowing that there are around 40 endings that I have never got, it was frustrating to do something different and get the same ending over and over again.

Princess Maker 3 actually has more endings, and it is a bit easier to ensure a different ending by changing your actions to a lesser degree than is necessary in 2. But for those who don't read Japanese, this is just about the best--if not ONLY--game of its type.

The Bottom Line
Yes, it sounds dorky. Who wants to play a child-rearing sim? Well... I do, for one. It is AMAZING how addictive this game is once you give it a shot!

The Good
1. It looks great, even though it uses only 16 colors! Wow!
2. 74 endings... when I think that PM1 has 30 endings, and even PM3 has only 60 endings...
3. It's really addictive ^^. It means it's really good.
4. A lot of stats desciribing your daughter.
5. Adventure mode is really cool. It's not only walking around, killing monsters and finding treasures, you can also, for example, meet interesting creatures.
6. Ending with your daughter marrying Cube is so cute ^^

The Bad
1. A bit repetitive.
2. English beta doesn't have descriptions of some endings.
3. Why do I have to be the father, and I can't be the mother? It makes me feel a little confused...

The Bottom Line
Great game. What else can I say? Maybe just: you must play it!! ^_^